Total newb looking to start a forum!

Get some backlinks from other websites to your own vBulletin forum site so it gets indexed by Google and other search engines and has a chance for search engine results (SERP). That's SEO. You can make your own related and associated social media accounts and profiles to help you do this, on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (Google plus), Tumblr, Pinterest, reddit, StumbleUpon, etc., and make pages at blog sites, such as, WordPress, LiveJournal, and Blogspot (Blogger), again with backlinks to your own site on your own hosted domain, your vBulletin website. You will also want to do SEO to be able to increase your site's PageRank. Just because you know your site is there, nobody except people you know and tell directly will know that it is up and online until you can get it recognized some how. Newbs to webmastering are usually insufficiently aware how hard it is to get good search engine ranking (depending on how competitive your thing is), and how hard it is to get a lot of good quality traffic and hits is. You will probably get spam bots, and you will have to deal with them, but you want to get real people as valued members who contribute.

Hi nikoklaus, sorry that my reply is a very long worded attempt to give you some helpful information to answer you.

You are going to want your own domain, and your own hosting for same.

Your laptop is merely how you connect to the internet such as to post here.

A registrar is where you register a domain, such as GoDaddy or Namecheap or many others that people can buy a domain registration from, such as register dot com, or name dot com. You need this.

Web hosting is the web server the delivers your site to make it available and accessible over the internet so that it is delivered to everyone's computer's when they try to access it online. You need this.

Typically, you pay a hosting company for web hosting. There are many different specific levels for different hosting packages, such a virtual (shared) hosting, VPS (in between), and managed dedicated hosting, among others, such as, I believe, newer cloud based or type, of hosting.

You should figure what your needs will be and get what is sufficient to your needs without being way too much.

Registering a domain, although, it is a thing that varies some, from one registrar to another, is still somewhat limited in cost.

There is a very big difference in the cost to pay for the many different levels of different hosting packages, on the other hand.

You will want to know how to register your domain, get it hosted, and to use the control panel within your hosting to work your site, and to FTP files to your site, and probably good to learn some HTML, and other skills, photo editing, some design capabilities.

If you are just starting out, your forum may not get very big and busy too soon (I do not know, maybe you have a way to get people and or traffic really well), so it is doubtful you will need a big and expensive hosting package, and you probably are not ready for that bill, either.

But to strictly just upload, install, and admin and use, vBulletin, you do not totally have to be able to do HTML and some other design aspects, but they will come in handy before too long, probably.

You should have a good grip on the other things I said, that are very basic to actually owning and running a website (forums included) as a webmaster, that may not be immediately apparent to someone who has used a forum as a member, or, even as a moderator before, though.

I think you would probably want at least a VPS hosting account, rather than shared hosting, but I may be wrong, and it is possible some shared hosting packages will be good enough.

You can find FTP programs to use such as FileZilla (a good one), or WinSCP (I have not used this one before myself), or Core FTP LE (okay), on MajorGeeks or other similar sites, or via a Google search.

I have used GoDaddy for many years, even though they have become more expensive in recent years. You can find a better deal at other registrars such as Namecheap, etc.

There are many different registrars you are able to register a domain via. You will need this in addition to the software.

When you do register a domain, you will set your DNS (Domain Name Servers), at your registrar (the place you registered your domain such as Namecheap or GoDaddy, in your account there, and for the information for your domains there, at your registrar) to the name servers according to whatever hosting you have for your domain (the name servers of your web hosts web server for your domain). This is typically such as NS1.whatever-example.com and NS2.whatever-example.com.

You get your name servers from your web hosting, and then you set the name servers for your domain at your registrar.

If you think it costs too much to simply register a domain, you really might not be ready for being a webmaster and owning and running your own site.

Having your own domain is important to make your site stand out as having the possibility of branding it as your own. You probably already knew that and probably want it and may already have it.

I think it is pretty much needed to run vBulletin adequately, as even though there are such things as making sites at a site that is not ones own, like a domain that is not yours, the requirements of running vB are such that you would not be welcome, and it may even be impossible to do so, at least well, without it being your own domain, and on your own hosting.

If you are tempted to use free hosting, I strongly advise against it, as that basically means that it really is not your website, and here again, it may be very unlikely that it could even work well enough, or possibly at all, that way. You need web hosting. You probably already knew that and may already have it.

If you are not ready to pay for your own sufficient hosting, again, being a webmaster and owning and running your own site, is something that may not be for you.

I have been a customer of a relatively small hosting company that I am satisfied with, called Rackco for many years (that I have a managed dedicated server on), though there are many hosting companies you can easily find to provide web hosting for your site, such as HostGator, Bluehost, InMotion, and many others that can easily be found via a Google search.

You will need to be sure that whatever hosting that you do get, that it has sufficient specs as to what it is, and what it is running, to be able to run vBulletin, specifically, such as what version of MySQL and especially what version of PHP it is running. I mean that these have to be new enough versions to run vBulletin, especially vBulletin 5 Connect, and as especially concerning what version of PHP. PHP version 5.3.X is now deprecated, it is too old, and it is not good enough for vBulletin 5 Connect, and it needs to be PHP version 5.4.X at least, from now on, and going forward.

Learn how to install vBulletin (if you do not already know) such as to put your own information (for your site's hosting/server) into the files such as the config.php file(s), and so on. That is, that you have to edit the config.php file(s).

Including, MySQL Database Name, MySQL User Name, MySQL Password, which you will need to create within your web hosting (control panel) for your domain.

The reply and answer that you, nikoklaus, received from Glenn Vergara:

"http://www.vbulletin.com/en/purchases" only pertained to the purchase of, and the price of the software, itself, alone.

You should be mindful of, and aware of these other aspects and factors, as well. And also your capabilities with same.

And it is probably wisest for you to know about these other aspects before you even do purchase vBulletin, as well, of course.

I did not mean to insult your intelligence by mentioning any of this, as to assume you did not know any of this, but I cannot know if you did or not, either, being that you said you are a total newb.

Here is some info you will need to go over and have a good idea of, or, at least be able to continue to make use of, for future reference, as needed.

http://www.vbulletin.com/en/manual/ <---< Here is a lot of needed info such as downloading, uploading, installing, administering etc., vBulletin, and many useful or needed points of information regarding owning and using vBulletin.

You probably already know that one of your ongoing concerns will be to admin it in a way for having to deal with spam bots, and so on.

Important: Read Before Purchasing.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...ore-purchasing

Recommended System Requirements
For vB4:
PHP 5.2.6 or later
MySQL 5.0.19 or later
For vB5:
PHP 5.4 or later
MySQL 5.5 or later

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