Suggestions for Free Blog/Forum Hosting Services?

I'm looking to tap into the expertise here of those who create blogs and fora with free hosting services.

Which do you like?

 

WordPress - Blog without a doubt is easiest.

Guild Website - Enjin, no expertise required

Forums - Discourse - Amazing... There are other solutions but I highly suggest you look into Discourse.

If you don't want to do any set up you can get all three of these working with little to no money and little to no work.

 

+1 for wordpress, super easy to set up a blog or website.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

Vanilla is another excellent forum solution you might consider looking at, especially because it can be almost seamlessly integrated with Wordpress (including single-sign-on capability and the ability to embed the forum directly within a Wordpress page).

 

I would normaly think Tumblr is most suitable for Gaming Stuff from Age and Interest Groups.

The more relaxed way to go is of course wordpress... but less gaming intensive... Of course I did end up with my first steps into this world on wordpress: http://eyeoftheavatar.wordpress.com/

Hmpf...need to write again...

 

Simplemachines .org ; Forum also appears to be free?

 

I have few points to add. There is a completely free route that you can take or a mostly free route.

Completely free route is to use WordPress / Enjin and never pay for premium services nor have your own domain. Alternatively pay for your own domain name and hosting package then install free software.

WordPress allows you to create a free blog or you can use it as free software that you can install to a hosting package. Simple Machines Forums are good and you can install a free version to your hosting package. I actually opted for a phpBB forum which is fine, the reason I went with it is the integration with WP. It was the easiest to find information on at the time.

I'm happy with my hosting package, it isnt too expensive to run. I think Stile said in another thread he was circa $700 a year for hosting. Which is quite a surprise! My hosting package costs the equivalent of less than $100 per year.

 

Yeah, but my stuff is abnormal due to the wide array of different projects, content, and tools in use.

If your running a domain with a more narrow focus a 100.00 a year shared hosting package will be fine.

All my expenses come near 700.00, but thats not just hosting. Hosting is about 550.00. I also use vaultpress for the main site, the teamspeak server, and a few other misc things.

You cant get a service for a 100.00 a year that will handle everything running on my domain.. Not that ive found anyway, and i looked at a LOT of them. Called them via phone as well. Also spoke to people like Kenneth (and others) about it.

I need more concurrent mysql database connections then most hosts give you.. Or if they give you a lot the cutback is somewhere else such as space. Most hosts give you 10-20. I use at least 40-50.

The podcasts are tearing up hundreds of gigs in traffic on their own. Someday id like to add a CDN service.

My wordpress site for the main site runs close to 60 plugins (all top quality, i research them deeply), to put out the content and tools the site has. I try to eliminate some of them when i can, but unfortunately everyone im using is doing something important. Just on the main site though, my other sites run about 15 each.

Im currently running 5 wordpress sites, a phpbb (with over 40 mods installed), a gallery 3, and a few other misc things (a vanilla site just added but is in testing).

All of that added together, without counting users is highly intensive in terms of resources.

Dump a few thousand hits a month, cron jobs posting things to over a dozen other places, (2 facebooks, google, tumblr, itunes, youtube, etc), automated backups, etc..

Well, a vps with a gig of ram kept crashing under the RAM needs and i had to increase to a higher vps service with another gig.

Its not the norm, my domain has s lot more running on it then a lot of people relate to.

I recently surpassed the number of pages a wordpress install can handle natively in a menu as an example (that was fun to figure out how to get to work.. Took another plugin using more resources.. Bleh).

If i was a expert coder rather then an amateur? Might be able to do it with less hosting needs.. But even then just content volume might be an issue.. And my last estimate from a coder good enough to build a custom theme to handle all my content and integrate what my plugins do into the code, was over 3,000.00. Most of the coders i contacted that where good enough looked at things and said no thank you.

 

Tumblr is more popular for music and images from what ive been told, but i dont know. I have some people that follow me on tumblr, but its one of the smallest groups of all the platforms i use .

 

You can do this with PhpBb also.

But i agree Vanilla is pretty slick. I choose phpbb over vanilla only because of some off the wall mods i wanted, and vanilla is a bit more streamlined (and probably more stable as a result!)

 

And I find it less susceptible to spam...

 

Just wanted to thank you again UC for the suggestion, and for you to know that the advice you gave mattered!

The Round Table is up and running in Vanilla. I am a hack at the modding so far, but it's underway!

 

That's really cool. I'll have to pop by and check it out.