8. Facilities of a Forum

You can choose to purchase commercial forum software and install it on your own server. You can do the same for free open source forum software. A third choice is to use the services of a professional hosting company that can handle all the technical details for you.

But the following facilities should be considered when making a decision

• Commercial, open source or hosted?
• Do you have a server and database system to support it
• Are new posts handled easily
• Can new threads be created
• Can posts be moderated
• Is there good account management support
• Does it support email
• Does it support attachments
• Does it have anti-spam features such as Captcha
• Is there a good statistics reporting system
• Does it have an effective search facility
• Does it have privacy features to keep personal profiles confidential if need be
• Can it be 'themed' to offer a different style
• Is it well supported in terms of upgrades and software patches