Forum help

[mark721]

hi, i am mark, and i have came here actually for information on this actual forum itself, and other things as well. first of all, here is a short story. my school is in huge financial trouble, and it is now my duty to buy a server and forum software, so our school, and the families are more connected in communicating with everyone else. the only thing is, im not too sure on where to start! i am looking at the cheaper servers from dell, but i dont know which OS to get for the server! i have a dsl connection at home, so that will probably be sufficient for running a small to medium website/forum, so that is where the server will be operating. also, i need forum software to run the message board. after looking around, this forum's software, VBulletin, looks the best to me. I am sorry if this is disorganized or rambling. in short, i need a brief description of the basics of a server, their OS, installing and setup, and a brief walkthrough of setting up a forum. I will REALLY APPRECIATE everyone's input! this means a lot to me.
Thank you,
Mark

 

[Diego]

Well for school any dell,hp,gateway server will do good. For OS i would just go for windows xp home edition.

 

[MiniRatFck]

yeah stick with dell and windows xp pro, i wouldnt get home edition

 

[ack]

For forum software, if its just gonna be for you and the parents and such, i would suggest just getting some free forum software like phpbb or yabb.

 

[Xycron]

you can get Vbullitoin from here
http://www.vbulletin.com/
If you want free forum softwatre i suggest PHPbb 2.0
http://www.phpbb.com/

If you want a better paid one, then instead of Vbullitoin I would actully sugest IPB(invisoinpower bored) I like the administrative defeatures better.
http://www.invisionboard.com/

Its naterally more expensive though.

 

[Qlutch]

I've heard SimpleMachines is good forum software.

www.simplemachines.org

 

[spamdos]

invisionfree.com free forum

 

[mark721]

okay, i have made some final descisions. (Note- there will be no more than 300 users, so perhaps no more than 15 at a time) For forum software, im buying invision power board. as for the server, i am getting a dell poweredge 1800, with an Intel Xeon running at 2.8Ghz, two 250GB hard drives, along with a SATA RAID 1 card, windows xp professional, 1 gig of memory, and finally, 17" flat panel monitor. the grand total comes a little short of $2000. do people think this is sufficient, or too much?
thanks,
mark

 

[computer_tom]

sounds good

 

[Vampiric Rouge]

Sounds okay, Play around with it and you might find you need another gig of RAM but it depends on how bussy your server ends up being.