Creating A Community-Based Website

[Jay718]

Im interested in creating a community based website without 3rd party software can someone tell what I need to do to get a a good server for my site

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Jay718. A few comments/questions:

1) What kind of community are you thinking about? A discussion forum? Blog? Wiki?

2) When you say you don't want to use third-party software, does that mean you want to write your own? If so, why? There are some great free and inexpensive community building tools available that would let you focus on building your community instead of coding.

3) In the early days of your community, a shared hosting setup (vs. your own server) will probably suffice.

[Jay718]

well the kind of site I want to build is something like the sites <snip>....I have no problem with the coding and the time put into the project I just want to know where to start

[edited by: rogerd at 1:52 am (utc) on Nov. 7, 2005]
[edit reason] No specifics or URLs, please. [/edit]

[rogerd]

The first step is to decide what kind of community you want, which will determine the base software for your site.

Lots of communities start with discussion forum software, and then use the forum features plus plug-ins or "hacks" to add additional community-building features (like chat, user ratings, etc.)

I'd suggest you look at a variety of communities to see what you like and don't like about them. This can help produce a list of "must have" features.

[Jay718]

Well I do want to have a user rating profiles also I want my users to be able to customize they profiles along and of cousre the forum discussion....chat im not sure if i want it yet