I’ve recently been busy working on an all new online forum for Malaysian iPhone developers – The iPhone Kopitiam. Although there are quite a lot of information available on the internet for iPhone programming, I started this forum for the following purposes:

- A virtual hangout joint for Malaysian iPhone developers

- Create a closely knit community

- One stop shop for resources

- Share any news related to iPhone in Malaysia

- Any hacks or mods that have been uncoveres

- And finally also share any potential job opportunities

Since this is my first experience in starting an online forum, it was quite a learning experience for me. I had to do quite a lot of research before setting up the online forum and also while setting it up. It wasn’t as straightforward as wordpress installation and I thought I could share how I did it with my readers.

First of all you probably will need to choose between free hosting and paid hosting. There are quite a number of free forum hosting websites but you will not be able to use your own domain. Here are some of them:

Forumotion
Lefora
Website Toolbox
Zetaboards

Note that when you use free forum hosting like the above, you forum will have quite a number of ads and this could be annoying for your users. So I would advice you to go for paid hosting instead. Here are some of the top paid hosting forum software available:

Vbulletin – $180
PhpBB – Free (opensource)
Simple Machines – Free

You could actually evaluate which suits you the best. But after doing some research I found that vBulletin suited my needs as it was pretty easy to use and to setup as well. And the support also made a difference in making my decision. Of course it meant that I had to fork out $180 as initial investment but then which business doesn’t have an investment? So I went ahead and purchased vBulletin.

I found a great website which has a comprehensive review of all the top forum softwares available and even demos/screenshots. In fact I used this website to make my final decision. If you would like to check it out, head on to Forum Software Reviews.

Stay tuned for “How to start an online forum – Part two” where I will discuss hosting packages available and also how to install vBulletin for first time users.

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4. Making quick money with iPhone Apps?