Dear Reader:

Creating your own community site can be very rewarding - and even fun. When you have a strong interest in a topic or a good amount of knowledge you might want to consider setting up your own on line community.

There are lots of different typed of software out there that you can use - both free and paid. One of the easiest ways to do this is to set up a forum. Forums have been around since the Internet was first publicly available and literally millions of them are hugely popular.

The good thing about using a forum for your community is that it is drop dead easy to install and set up (if you use the right software). Not only that, it comes loaded with everything you need to get your forum going right out of the box. You will also find that most forums have many add on modules to increase the functionality. So having to have something custom programmed will not be necessary.

Another good thing about forums is that they are so widely used on the Internet that almost everyone is familiar with how to use one and get around within the forum structure.

Now when it comes to installing a forum you have a lot of choices, but I suggest you use the open source Vanilla Forums Script.

The reason I say this is because:

It is Free to Use
It has a lot of functionality that you can add to it for free
There are a lot of free site themes you can choose from
It is very easy to install and maintain
As you can see using Vanilla for your community forum will be a very smart move. In the video series you will be taken step by step through the install, setup, and customization procedures!