Thanks Malcom
It is encouraging to know a neophyte can set one up. I looked at your site and it looks professional and ready to go. Considering ice fishing and skating are the main uses of water here right now, I'm not too interested in surfboards at the moment but I did like the layout and the number of topics to start with. It will be interesting to see how it evolves. I am moving more in favor of the idea of having a host administer it. Seems like a good solution to spam and space. Only thing I found on it was the homepage link doesn't seem to work.
best
don
: Hello Don,

: I recently developed a wood surfboard forum which actually hasn't
: yet been launched. I used PHPBB's software and it's a little
: tedious, but with no programming experience I was able to set it
: up, and even figured out through creative Googling the way to
: download custom skins for the forum, and then to take my own
: banner and replace the crappy one the skin had.

: I guess I can go ahead and post the link, but just FYI folks, it's
: online, but not quite finished yet. Feel free to log on if you
: like. I am going to launch it officially soon.

: www.schweizersurf.com/forum

: Don, once you sign up for an internet host (I use ipage.com and was
: very VERY pleased with the service and ease of getting started)
: You can start your forum. With ipage I get unlimited storage so
: I don't care if people want to post pic after pic. Also they
: gave me free tools and one included a download for PHPBB. Just
: be aware that the normal skins are kinda plain. The skin I found
: was in a list of free skins developed by other users. Since it's
: made free to the public I took the liberty to edit some of the
: graphics and incorporate my own logo. Honestly I have this weird
: nack for figuring stuff out. It may be more than you want to do.

: My brother is a computer programmer and he reviewed the hosts I
: wanted to use and reviewed the bulletin board software and I
: took his recommendations. So far he hasn't had to do anything
: for me. for the website itself ( www.schweizersurf.com - also
: not quite finished but live now) I bought a $50 website design
: kit from Office Max and went to work. I need to pretty it up
: more but was anxious to get something online for now. There is
: also a blog that I used another software for that also came with
: the ipage package. Everything has a link from the page. The
: gallery doesn't work- not real happy with their 2 meg download
: per picture limit, and I'm figuring a way around that before it
: goes online.

: Good luck!

: Malcolm

: P.S. Feel free anyone that wants to comment on improvements to the
: forum. It's new, and as you see yet to be officially launced.