# Preferred message board host? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 2, 2003, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807 "2003-07-02T16:50:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Verminous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5e9695/32.png) [@Verminous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Verminous)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2003, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/1 "2003-07-02T16:50:49Z")
I’m looking to start my own message board, but i’m not going to host it myself (56k connection :X ). Now, I am much opposed to an EZboard, since the pop-ups are quite intrusive to the enjoyment of posting, so - does anyone know of any free hosting sites that rise above and beyond the rest of 'em? Thanks ---
**Author:** ![Sister\_Vigilante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2003, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/2 "2003-07-02T19:19:28Z")
I’m pretty sure you are not going to find a free board system that doesn’t have popups. I’ve surfed a lot of different ones, and some of them have even worse systems in place for their free service, such as a popup telling you to please turn off your popup killer or you will get **their** popup on every page, and even the browser-embedded popups that popup killers won’t stop. Probably the only way you’d get something free without these problems is if you used very little bandwidth on your particular board. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/3 "2003-07-02T22:05:16Z")
[cgi-resources.com](http://cgi-resources.com) has tons of remotely hosted CGI boards, but you have to deal with ads… I went with [turboweb.net](http://turboweb.net) comes with a free PHPBB2 forum but it’s not free. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/4 "2003-07-02T22:09:07Z")
I meant the forum is free, the account is not. But you get 100 megs of space & tons of other things too. ---
**Author:** ![P.Nym](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@P.Nym](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P.Nym)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/5 "2003-07-03T16:16:24Z")
If you’re paying for hosting, check out [invision.](http://www.invisionboard.com) It’s pretty similar to the forum software in use here. It’s also free. Hosting isn’t all that expensive. The host we’re using charges $10 a month, and they’re not the cheapest I’ve seen. It’ll cost you an extra $10 or so annually to register a domain name. That doesn’t seem like a lot to spend on a hobby. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2003, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/6 "2003-07-03T22:47:22Z")
Yeah Nym, turbowed had a special for a couple of days, it was $9.98 per year. You could select a PP2BB forum or Nuke. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2003, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/preferred-message-board-host/185807/7 "2003-07-04T00:13:59Z")
Allow me to recommend [tForum](http://www.tforum.org). It’s a PHP-powered message board package with many of the features of vBulletin and other expensive forum board software, but it’s totally free. You’ll need a webhost that supports PHP and MySQL. I’ve set this up for several people and have also done script mods on it.