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"I want to start a new site using XenForo"
One of the frequently asked questions XenFans.com receives via contact-us or our Services forum is the request for information (or for help) on how to start a new site using the XenForo forum software. To keep it simple, a) get a domain, b) get a host, c) buy a XenForo license, d) Install and finally e) Configure it. But is that all?
tl;dr (too long; didn't read) could apply here, but if you're serious about starting a site, perhaps it's worth 5 minutes of your time to make sure you understand what you're doing, and that you're doing it right. Site owners that 'Mah, I will just learn as I go", are just winging it and usually don't make it past three months. Learn from their mistakes, do what it takes - the extra mile that they won't bother with. Your community could be there still, in ten years from now, or heck, perhaps the next Facebook (hey now! we can dream)
It all starts with a personal place on the Internet
When you type in the domain of a web site (like http://xenfans.com) the dns server resolves the host to an IP, and sends the request to the hosting provider's web server who's listening, then serving back the xenforo web page for the account where it's hosted. Which is what you will see in the browser as a result.
For you to have your own domain, account on the Internet and the XenForo license you have to do a few things. Simple put: Get the things you need. There are free and paid solutions, but we're going with Paid, because we want to guarantee performance, support, security (in theory) and because XenForo simply isn't free software.
Let's start with the domain you type in. Our site is xenfans.com, what's yours? Exactly. You have to either use a domain you already have purchased, or buy a new one. We recommend namecheap.com (XenFans has all their 50+ domains registered at namecheap) or hover.com. A domain name can start at around $10 for a .com And we suggest to keep your domains short and simple, and check if it's available.
You're free to contact the xenfans team requesting help buying a domain name. We have a lot of experience with namecheap.com and their support team.
Ok, once you thought of a domain, checked if it is free to register, have actually purchased it, it's ready to be pointed to a hosting provider, where you should get an account to host your xenforo licensed files. That's the next step.
There are many hosting providers out there, and many types of solutions. To cut the options in half we recommend to go with a LAMP solution. LAMP stands for Linux (distro: Ubuntu or CentOS will do fine), Apache2, MySQL5, and PHP5. Find a hosting provider that offers at least this setup, and you're almost guaranteed to be able to run XenForo.
And I make a good point there. Before I mention Shared hosting versus VPS or Dedicated Hosting, I want to mention the minimal requirement for XenForo that you should consider. A script to 'check' can be found here: http://xenfans.com/pages/requirements/
Ok, before I derail. Hosting Solutions. A hosting provider gives you a place on the Internet where you have a private account with a public html directory where you upload and install XenForo. And there are quite a few; XenFans.com has a simple thought "If you really care about your site, and not just short term, consider going with a VPS solution, skipping Shared Hosting".
- Shared Hosting: 1 server, with hundreds of accounts, you're a regular user with a control panel to your data. This should be cheap, and enough for a beginning site with low traffic.
- VPS: 1 server, a virtual private one, with hopefully less than hundreds of accounts, you're a super user with either just a command line interface, or at least a control panel. Some VPS solutions are a bit more expensive because they're managed by the hosting provider. The benefit of VPS over Shared is that you have shell access, allowing you to control your VPS with much more power, detail, and guaranteeing you a good backup solution. These are more expensive than a shared solution, but great for site owners that are in it for the long run and value their community and content, and the backup of the data. Great for medium to large sites with constant traffic.
- Dedicated: 1 server, 1 account: it's all yours (at least, with a trustworthy host). You rent a complete server in the rack at a data center. You're full server user and manager, though some come with a management contract. These are usually not needed for small and medium sites, unless you're going to host multiple sites, forums, or expect heavy traffic. The bill is a lot more for some people.
Let's say you decide to try things out, you go with Shared Hosting, that's fine. Say you invest in the future from the get go, because you know a bit more what you're doing; And go with VPS, perfect. Either way, it's ok. And finding the right host is horrible. We can't really recommend anybody but Linode.com for VPS hosting in the cloud. Excellent service, average VPS pricing, and upgrading later is a breeze. Maybe the users in this thread can post positive experience with hosts they're with as alternatives. For shared hosting I have to say xxlwebhosting.nl - but they're Dutch, I have very very little experience with Shared Hosting myself.
Once you have the account at the host, you tell it you've got that domain. And you point the domain to the host. The host will set the account up so it points to the domain. And we're ready to rock.
Ok, this is turning out to be a lot of information, that's confusing, quick summery of where we are right now: The domain name [check], and the place on the Internet for the XenForo files, at a hosting provider [check]. Moving on to the actual XenForo license.
XenForo.com > Purchase > Spend the $140 > And you will get an email upon completion that it's yours to be used. After which you can go to the customer area, point it to the domain you've purchased. And download the .zip file. That's it, you're done with getting XenForo version 1.
If you need help buying and/or installing XenForo, you can contact the xenfans team, we've got a lot of experience buying and installing this product.
The next step is to install this software and to configure it so your site can go live.
XenForo has uploading and installation steps explained in their manual here:http://xenforo.com/help/installation/ If it sounds too complicated you can ask the xenfans team to help you install it on your behalf.
Once it's uploaded and you've run install, you are already quite ready to go.. Users can instantly register, post discussions and enjoy spending time on the site. But, it doesn't hurt to go through the admin control panel (the back-end) of XenForo and configure it to your liking.
There are global options you can go through, the pages, categories and forums structure you could set up to better help identify the type of content your site is expecting (for your visitors). And the permissions for certain forums (such as 'only allow staff to post announcements') And yep, the xenfans team can also help you with that step.
Well, that's it. The costs are affordable, especially if you have a niche topic for your community and get advertisement income or donations to help cover the costs. It's a one time fee of $140 for the xenforo license which allows you to run the version for an unlimited amount of time. The domain is around $10 per year (don't forget to renew it in time!) and the host account could be $10 to $100 per month, depending on which solution / plan.
Starting a new site requires a lot more than just a domain, hosting and a forum license. It requires patience, dedication, hard work, a support team for the site, perhaps a custom style and unique features. It can require advertising, sponsors, but most importantly: Good content.
Know what your site is about, what you want to discuss and write this down in a mission statement that's suitable for your visitors. Have a support team rather than a moderator team. Your 'helpers' are there to assist, and they have to do so with a smile. They're not the police. Write content, unique content, and socialize this to help spread word of mouth. Go and think outside the box, create events or realize community meetups. Consider premium content, or just give back to the community.
And all of that requires a bit of skill, and many discussions with experienced site owners that started at some point as well. XenFans.com can help - ask away!
One of the frequently asked questions XenFans.com receives via contact-us or our Services forum is the request for information (or for help) on how to start a new site using the XenForo forum software. To keep it simple, a) get a domain, b) get a host, c) buy a XenForo license, d) Install and finally e) Configure it. But is that all?
In this short article we will be offering some hints and tips for newcomers to the Internet that are interested in starting a new web site with xenforo. We're sharing what we recommend to consider, and we're inviting our members to give their input and share their experience.
tl;dr (too long; didn't read) could apply here, but if you're serious about starting a site, perhaps it's worth 5 minutes of your time to make sure you understand what you're doing, and that you're doing it right. Site owners that 'Mah, I will just learn as I go", are just winging it and usually don't make it past three months. Learn from their mistakes, do what it takes - the extra mile that they won't bother with. Your community could be there still, in ten years from now, or heck, perhaps the next Facebook (hey now! we can dream)
It all starts with a personal place on the Internet
When you type in the domain of a web site (like http://xenfans.com) the dns server resolves the host to an IP, and sends the request to the hosting provider's web server who's listening, then serving back the xenforo web page for the account where it's hosted. Which is what you will see in the browser as a result.
For you to have your own domain, account on the Internet and the XenForo license you have to do a few things. Simple put: Get the things you need. There are free and paid solutions, but we're going with Paid, because we want to guarantee performance, support, security (in theory) and because XenForo simply isn't free software.
Let's start with the domain you type in. Our site is xenfans.com, what's yours? Exactly. You have to either use a domain you already have purchased, or buy a new one. We recommend namecheap.com (XenFans has all their 50+ domains registered at namecheap) or hover.com. A domain name can start at around $10 for a .com And we suggest to keep your domains short and simple, and check if it's available.
You're free to contact the xenfans team requesting help buying a domain name. We have a lot of experience with namecheap.com and their support team.
Ok, once you thought of a domain, checked if it is free to register, have actually purchased it, it's ready to be pointed to a hosting provider, where you should get an account to host your xenforo licensed files. That's the next step.
There are many hosting providers out there, and many types of solutions. To cut the options in half we recommend to go with a LAMP solution. LAMP stands for Linux (distro: Ubuntu or CentOS will do fine), Apache2, MySQL5, and PHP5. Find a hosting provider that offers at least this setup, and you're almost guaranteed to be able to run XenForo.
And I make a good point there. Before I mention Shared hosting versus VPS or Dedicated Hosting, I want to mention the minimal requirement for XenForo that you should consider. A script to 'check' can be found here: http://xenfans.com/pages/requirements/
Ok, before I derail. Hosting Solutions. A hosting provider gives you a place on the Internet where you have a private account with a public html directory where you upload and install XenForo. And there are quite a few; XenFans.com has a simple thought "If you really care about your site, and not just short term, consider going with a VPS solution, skipping Shared Hosting".
- Shared Hosting: 1 server, with hundreds of accounts, you're a regular user with a control panel to your data. This should be cheap, and enough for a beginning site with low traffic.
- VPS: 1 server, a virtual private one, with hopefully less than hundreds of accounts, you're a super user with either just a command line interface, or at least a control panel. Some VPS solutions are a bit more expensive because they're managed by the hosting provider. The benefit of VPS over Shared is that you have shell access, allowing you to control your VPS with much more power, detail, and guaranteeing you a good backup solution. These are more expensive than a shared solution, but great for site owners that are in it for the long run and value their community and content, and the backup of the data. Great for medium to large sites with constant traffic.
- Dedicated: 1 server, 1 account: it's all yours (at least, with a trustworthy host). You rent a complete server in the rack at a data center. You're full server user and manager, though some come with a management contract. These are usually not needed for small and medium sites, unless you're going to host multiple sites, forums, or expect heavy traffic. The bill is a lot more for some people.
Let's say you decide to try things out, you go with Shared Hosting, that's fine. Say you invest in the future from the get go, because you know a bit more what you're doing; And go with VPS, perfect. Either way, it's ok. And finding the right host is horrible. We can't really recommend anybody but Linode.com for VPS hosting in the cloud. Excellent service, average VPS pricing, and upgrading later is a breeze. Maybe the users in this thread can post positive experience with hosts they're with as alternatives. For shared hosting I have to say xxlwebhosting.nl - but they're Dutch, I have very very little experience with Shared Hosting myself.
Once you have the account at the host, you tell it you've got that domain. And you point the domain to the host. The host will set the account up so it points to the domain. And we're ready to rock.
Ok, this is turning out to be a lot of information, that's confusing, quick summery of where we are right now: The domain name [check], and the place on the Internet for the XenForo files, at a hosting provider [check]. Moving on to the actual XenForo license.
XenForo.com > Purchase > Spend the $140 > And you will get an email upon completion that it's yours to be used. After which you can go to the customer area, point it to the domain you've purchased. And download the .zip file. That's it, you're done with getting XenForo version 1.
If you need help buying and/or installing XenForo, you can contact the xenfans team, we've got a lot of experience buying and installing this product.
The next step is to install this software and to configure it so your site can go live.
XenForo has uploading and installation steps explained in their manual here:http://xenforo.com/help/installation/ If it sounds too complicated you can ask the xenfans team to help you install it on your behalf.
Once it's uploaded and you've run install, you are already quite ready to go.. Users can instantly register, post discussions and enjoy spending time on the site. But, it doesn't hurt to go through the admin control panel (the back-end) of XenForo and configure it to your liking.
There are global options you can go through, the pages, categories and forums structure you could set up to better help identify the type of content your site is expecting (for your visitors). And the permissions for certain forums (such as 'only allow staff to post announcements') And yep, the xenfans team can also help you with that step.
Well, that's it. The costs are affordable, especially if you have a niche topic for your community and get advertisement income or donations to help cover the costs. It's a one time fee of $140 for the xenforo license which allows you to run the version for an unlimited amount of time. The domain is around $10 per year (don't forget to renew it in time!) and the host account could be $10 to $100 per month, depending on which solution / plan.
Starting a new site requires a lot more than just a domain, hosting and a forum license. It requires patience, dedication, hard work, a support team for the site, perhaps a custom style and unique features. It can require advertising, sponsors, but most importantly: Good content.
Know what your site is about, what you want to discuss and write this down in a mission statement that's suitable for your visitors. Have a support team rather than a moderator team. Your 'helpers' are there to assist, and they have to do so with a smile. They're not the police. Write content, unique content, and socialize this to help spread word of mouth. Go and think outside the box, create events or realize community meetups. Consider premium content, or just give back to the community.
And all of that requires a bit of skill, and many discussions with experienced site owners that started at some point as well. XenFans.com can help - ask away!