Tim and I are thinking about starting a new site that offers free hosting for forums.  The forums will have one single ad placed somewhere in the forum itself (user specified, but at the top of the forum).

We'll also allow diffrent services, such as hosting thru your own domain:

myforum.myowndomain.com

This will not be free, though (it'll cost a small fee).  Larger forums will require larger sums of money than smaller ones.  For example, free forums would be up to like X amount of posts or X amount of posts per month or something.

So anyway, who would be interested?  The forums not hosted on your own domain would be like "myforum.somedomainwechose.com".  The forum software will be up to date (10.1.5), and would remain up to date.  I'd have to figure something out with the CSS items that are new.  The forum would of course not have a modification center, setable directories, etc.  Also, probably only a set attachment directory.  The free accounts may also be limited by bandwidth (like 500MB's per month, which is plently for a GZIP'd small forum).

So here's what I want from everyone ... who would be interested?  Do you think it's a good idea?  Would you help advertise it?

Also, these are more detailed and specific:

How would you like the members to be kept?  One login for the entire website (a "global account" basically, where you can login to anyone's forum and not have to register on each one), or a seperate login for each forum?  How large should a basic (free) uploads directory be?

This isn't set in stone, but I'd like some ideas on it.  Also, if you want to throw out some names, that might be nice too.  

Quoted from Justin

Tim and I are thinking about starting a new site that offers free hosting for forums.  The forums will have one single ad placed somewhere in the forum itself (user specified, but at the top of the forum).

We'll also allow diffrent services, such as hosting thru your own domain:

myforum.myowndomain.com

This will not be free, though (it'll cost a small fee).  Larger forums will require larger sums of money than smaller ones.  For example, free forums would be up to like X amount of posts or X amount of posts per month or something.

So anyway, who would be interested?  The forums not hosted on your own domain would be like "myforum.somedomainwechose.com".  The forum software will be up to date (10.1.5), and would remain up to date.  I'd have to figure something out with the CSS items that are new.  The forum would of course not have a modification center, setable directories, etc.  Also, probably only a set attachment directory.  The free accounts may also be limited by bandwidth (like 500MB's per month, which is plently for a GZIP'd small forum).

So here's what I want from everyone ... who would be interested?  Do you think it's a good idea?  Would you help advertise it?

Also, these are more detailed and specific:

How would you like the members to be kept?  One login for the entire website (a "global account" basically, where you can login to anyone's forum and not have to register on each one), or a seperate login for each forum?  How large should a basic (free) uploads directory be?

This isn't set in stone, but I'd like some ideas on it.  Also, if you want to throw out some names, that might be nice too.  

if you will make some type of button or banner i will put it on all the site and forums i manage. that's 8 sites so far. have a couple more coming on line shortly

Its a good idea ... l will spread the word around for sure.

http://www.forumready.com/

More details to come.

I'll definitely plug it on a number of sites.

To get people to pay, I think you have to have a decent sized uploads directory - half a gig, and half a gig of bandwidth.

Free accounts maybe half that.  There should definitely be a function for people to upload themes with graphics n stuff as opposed to just making css changes.

Obviously for paid accounts, the copyright should be taken off.  You should also NOT have anything on an 'About' page crediting yourself - just something like the base software is the eblah forum, but no more than that.

The only things it shouldn't have are mod Center as you stated, and access to the directories.  All other settings including clicklogging should be enabled.

Hummm Digger.

i was thinking about the members for all forms too but if you did that there would be problems:

1-a member could delete members for all the forms
2-all members would be admins for all the forms, because there stat would be admin, and it would be that for all of them

if you ever change the code so this will work that would be cool and let me know

also where did you get that cool fading "vista user", "samsung user", etc thing?

Look up Userbars on Wikipedia.  Oh, and I don't use Vista, going to wait until I get upgrade to it (I was using an RC).  The thing got in a blue screen loop (different error each time).

As for the other -- member deletion is centralized now, so you can just delete that code to disable member deletion.  The Administrators are kept in a separate file, Ranks2.txt now, so there's no issue with Admins across all forums.  

I have a website http://www.officebomb.com I am no expert, infact Im just a humble midwife. I am asking the opinions of all of you who seem to know so much. I have seen many companies that offer forums and message boards, stuff like that for websites. If I was to add a feature like that to my site would people still be able to visit my site when they are at work or would the spy ware not allow it. The thing is that, my site is targeted to people who fool around on the net at work. This is why I am worried. Also not 100% sure my site suits a forum/message board, think I might be getting carried away! Please advise

Hey, that is a nifty web site   Sure eblah, can be part of it... there is NO SPYWARE with this script, it is 100% clean. On my own forums, I have a number of people that post up from work, when they should not *tut tut* but they do not have any problems... My advice? is Go For It...