webrampage

PowWeb‘s support sucks. I think even free web hosts have better support than PowWeb. Their support is a joke. A complete waste of time. I used their service and I can tell you how it is.

Their first level support is full of dumb people. Like I have to tell them what to do. They don’t know what “root” is. I mean like they don’t know where root is. I had to tell them where it was. I thought they were supposed to tell customers about stuff like that. Well its the opposite at PowWeb.

And their second support is just great! I was being sarcastic. They take forever to do the simplest things. They probably have like 10 people working on the second level to serve like a couple of thousand customers (5000 maybe). I think I know how to perfectly describe them. Monkeys which have been trained. I’m pretty sure trained monkeys could even do a better job than them.

Now their plan is great. 1.5 tb of space, 15 tb of bandwidth and 75 MySQL databases for $5.77/month. But their support really sucks. I don’t care how good the deal is. You need to provide customers with the kind of support they deserve.

So, I don’t recommend you using PowWeb unless you know that you’ll never need to contact support. And that’s like impossible, at least when you’re using PowWeb. By the way, they don’t use cPanel. They made their own ghetto control panel. That’s a nice way to save money.

Everyone wants to make a forum. Pretty much everyone who knows what a forum is wants to make one. Therefore the number of forums are growing. But, only a few will be successful. I’ll tell you a few things that you could do to build a great forum.

The Big Mistake!

I’m not just calling it a big mistake. It is really a big mistake. Or maybe even the biggest mistake. People have to understand that a forum isn’t like a blog that you could run it all by yourself. You need a few good people working with you! A forum needs to be maintained. There is a lot of work.

Go ask someone (maybe a friend) if they are interested in making a forum. Look for someone who you can meet in person and can trust. Also make sure that they are responsible and active.

Never start a forum all by yourself! Look for at least 2 people who would work with you. Together you could make something successful. Why? A quick example. Lets say there are 3 of you who are making the forum and each of you have like 50 contacts on MSN. So, if you guys start emailing your contacts about the forum then 150 people would get to know about it. If you do it all by yourself then 50 people would know about it.

Choose a Topic

What will be the forum about? Will it be a forum for gaming, hacking, seo or graphics? Think about it. Try to keep it about one or two topics. Like web design and web hosting. They would attract the same type of people.

I really recommend that you start the forum about the things you’re interested and good at.

The First Steps

So, now that you thought about how will help you and what will be the forum about. Lets talk about how you’re going to make the forum. First of all, do not use those free instant forum builders. If you’re thinking about using them then please do yourself a favor and don’t make a forum.

A Domain Name

Buy a domain name. It will cost you about $5 (from Netfirms.com) and people will be able to remember your URL. You don’t want a URL like “myinstantfreeforum.org/mike/anime-forums”.

Web Hosting

Now I wouldn’t suggest that you use paid hosting. You could start by using a free hosting service (ad/pop-up free service recommended) and when the forum starts growing buy a paid hosting service.

Forum Software

Think about which forum software you would use. There’s lots out there. Like phpBB, myBB, SMF, vBulletin, IPB, etc. I would suggest that you go with a free forum software unless you are really serious about the forum. If you buy a paid one then buy vBulletin (its the best!).

And for a free one, I would say that you should go with either phpBB or myBB. Installing plugins on phpBB is pretty difficult. I haven’t used myBB, but a lot of people say that its just as good as vBulletin. And one more thing, you can switch to vBulletin anytime you want and your forum will stay same. They have a script called ImpEx that converts your forum’s database to vBulletin’s database.

Getting the word out

Now you need members. A lot of active members. Start by asking your friends to join. And send an email to all of your contacts about the forum and ask them to join. Also ask them to forward the email to their contacts.

Try to make it like those chain emails. You’ll get some members like that. And also bookmark yourself on social bookmarking sites like digg, stumbleupon, etc.

Responsibilites!

Talk with the people who are helping you about who does what. Also ask them to be as active as they can and to promote the forum. And also talk with each other as often as you can about improving the forum.

So, follow these simple tips for now and the results should be good.

There are few things that you should be aware of when you choose your web host. Whether its a free hosting service or a paid one. I think these are pretty important if you care about your site.

Paid Hosting

• See if your host is reliable. Ask a few people about their service. Or you could just Google the web host’s name with a few keyword and see what comes up. You’ll probably get a few blog posts and/or forum discussions about them.
• Keep in mind that you get what you paid for. If your host is giving you a great deal like 50gb of space, 100gb of bandwidth, etc and the price tag is only $3 per month. Then I think your host is overselling (its when you give people more than you can since most customers don’t use all of their resources). And they might not have a good service since their server is packed tight with a lot more users than it can handle. And if a host doesn’t make money how will they stay in business. That means that they might go out of business like a lot of web hosts. So, don’t always go with the cheapest. Look for the one which offers a reliable service at a reasonable price.
• Check if they are a reseller. A reseller is someone or a host which buys a reseller plan from another host and they use the other host’s resources to provide you a web hosting service. Pretty much like pretending to be a web host. Now they might give you a good deal but their service might not be reliable. And anyone with a few extra bucks to spare per month can be a reseller. And so they might not have a good support.
• See how long they have been in the business. So that the next morning you don’t wake up to find your site down and your web host gone. No refund or anything. They probably ran out of business or they ran away with your money.
• Check their Terms and Conditions of Service and their policies and shit. If they are overselling and you use up like 60-90% of your resources then they might close your account and give you some bullshit reason. Why? Because if you use all of your resources then there will be a shortage on the server. Since they rely on resources that have not been used by other customers.
• Good support? Check for that. You need a good reliable support. And before you actually buy one of their hosting plans go chat with the sales rep (if they have a live chat) or email them and see if they are nice and if they type in a formal way or like “ok. we;ll do dat. dont worry about that.” or like “Yes. Sure we can do that for you.”

Free Hosting

• See if they have support. Like even a support forum where the users pretty much help each other.
• I know a guy who had a pretty successful forum and the web host downloaded his database and forum files. And made a clone of his forum and redirected the traffic from the real forum to the clone. And he could have sold the forum database to people (yeah there are people who buy them).
• Reliable? Check for that. You don’t want your site to be down all the time.

So, that’s it for now. I might later make a list of good hosting deals. Both free and paid.