3 Reasons Why PHP Message Boards Rock

f you are web designer, chances are you include forums on at least some of the sites you manage. If you haven't explored PHPBB2 you are missing out as this type of message board offers to designers a forum that is well supported, easy to manage, and above all else: free! Let's see why PHPBB2 is a hit with so many web designers.

Compared to some web designers, I am relatively new to the business. I created my first forum with MSN groups in 2002 then, six months later, I made the move over to EZBoard. Sure, it did not have all the bells and whistles of vBulletin and other corporate developed boards, but it did the trick for me. That is, until EZBoard was hacked and my livelihood nearly disappeared in moments some two years later!

In search of something different, I considered the move to vBulletin, but I was quite frankly not wanting to shell out license and upgrade fees on a regular basis. At the time of the EZBoard incident, I was running six forums, so I knew that I would eventually have about that many when I completed my transition away from EZBoard.

So, why PHPBB2? For three reasons:

1. It is free. Yes, absolutely! Since it is "open source" code, developed by the developers, it is offered as a free download to whosoever will. Believe me that is a big appeal and, apparently, many designers around the world feel the same way as over 200,000 people are members of their support forum.

2. It can be used across platforms. Whether you work in Windows or Linux, IIS or Apache PHPBB2 is usable and fully functionable.

3. Highly modifiable. Open Source extensibility is evident with the incorporation of PHP, HTML, CSS, and MySQL into the forum.

For the novice, PHPBB2 does take some getting used to especially since you are responsible for installing, maintaining, backing up, upgrading, and modifying your own forum. For your benefit you can access onsite Flash tutorials which are a great way to walk your way through the installation process too. As with any software it is vulnerable to outside attacks, so take care to make sure you regularly back up your forums and familiarize yourself with the security procedures.

In all, PHP message boards really do rock and at a price that cannot possibly be beat!

By Matthew Keegan

What Makes A PHP Web Hosting Companies Perfect

Most of us know PHP has revolutionized web designing and dynamic web programming since its public release in 1995. Main reason behind this is its stability, fast performance and FREE availability. With its ready to use source code, powerful core libraries, it has become one of the most popular scripting languages over the years.

We'll try to find out here some of the best companies supporting PHP web hosting.

Following are few points which must be looked into before going for any of the best web hosting company.


Reliability of the company

Disk Space offered

99.9% Uptime

Customer support

Data transfer / Bandwidth

Scripting support - CGI, PHP, ASP

Control Panel

FTP access

Multiple Domain and sub domain support

From our research and analysis, we've found out few companies offering the best web hosting in the market.

We've taken example of three companies among the web hosting providers 1.BlueHost, 2.GoDaddy and 3.HostMonster.

BlueHost offers $6.95/month (2 year) package which includes 300GB web space, host unlimited domains, 2500 e-mail accounts, e-mail forwarding and autoresponders, unlimited subdomains, 50 MYSQL databases, 50 postgre sql databases, CGI Support, Site statistics, Support for PHP and Flash, Additionally Blog, guestbook and mailing list and CMS (Mambo and Joomla) support, Streaming video and audio support, OS Commerce and SSL secure server support, FREE search engine submission.

GoDaddy offers $5.59/month (2 year) package (Deluxe plan) which includes 100GB web space, 1000 GB transfer, 1000 e-mail accounts, unlimited domains, 25 MySQL databases, unlimited e-mail forwards, support for forum, blog and photo galleries. Additionally offers $25 google adwords credit, $50 Microsoft adCenter credit.

HostMonster offers $4.95/month (2 year) package which includes 300GB web space, 3000GB transfer, unlimited domains and subdomains, unlimited e-mail accounts, forwarding and autoresponder support, CGI /PHP Support, 100 MySQL Databases, 100 PostGreSQL databases, Web statistics, Audio and video streaming support, Flash support, Real Audio and video Support, $50 yahoo credit, $50 google credit and search engine submission for your website.

If we carefully compare the packages offered by these companies, we can see that HostMonster offers the best package with $4.95/month for 2 years. You can follow the same guideline for choosing other best web hosting packages available out there.


By Ben Huang