Making a website

[The Napster]

Ok im using microsoft frontpage to make a business/fun website. I am the most familiar with frontpage that is why i use it, but im having some trouble setting up a forum style page. Im new to web hosting/design, but im slowly learning. I want to setup a page which is just normal forums similar to these tech forums and the built in frontpage forum isnt cutting it. So what should i do about setting up this page? do i need to setup a database with my host?

Another side question, im also having trouble having my forms to send the data to my email. It just says frontpage error. (I do have frontpage extensions installed to my hosting account)

 

[synergy]

Forums are software products. See the following:

IPS, Inc. - We're community experts
phpBB • Creating Communities Worldwide
Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software
vBulletin® - Instant Community

Those are the big ones, but there are many more. phpBB is the most popular freeware, and vBulletin is the most popular proprietary.

Those are all PHP & MySQL based packages too, so you would need both platforms installed on your web server. The software will have an installation script that will build the database for you, you just need to create one for it to connect to first.

See also:
Comparison of Internet forum software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Osiris]

I suggest HostMonster - Web Hosting I find them by far easier than others such as GoDaddy. Especially for a first time users, the GUI is simple and everthing is easy to find with lots and lots of free stuff and its cheap. I use them to host my sites. Installing a forum such as this would take about 2 minutes. Select forum type, select where to install, click install, create an Admin account if one isn't automatically generated for you, name the database unless it automatically does it for you, then use your FTP client such as FileZile which is free ( I use Cute FTP Pro 8 ) and have at it.

Then if you need further help, ask us.

The time consuming part is customizing the forum, etc, especially if you have't done it before.

Get with times and ditch Front Page, are you a student? I think you would find Microsoft Expression easy to use and it could be free if you are a student.

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

 

[sourcecipher]

I highly recommend Adobe Dreamweaver for web development. It is the most standards compliant WYSIWYG developer out there. You can also use it to edit the files in whatever forum engine you are using to make sure you keep the code compliant. Using engines like phpBB is also a great way to learn how to build things like that your self. Usually the code is heavily commented so you know what everything does.

 

[AdampskiB]

Dreamweaver is quite a bit of complicated software, but if your familiar with frontpage and HTML then have a go at Dreamweaver and look for some tutorials somewhere to become familiar with it.

Like mentioned above, forums is a piece of software that could be installed on your website (install it through cPanel, it's fairly easy that way. Most hosts allow their clients to install forum boards like phpBB through their cPanel. Usually found in Fantastico). Some forum softwares I think do require a database to be created, but if you set one up via your cPanel, it gets done for you, hence why I recommend it.

As for sending data through forms, I've personally never been able to work the frontpage's user form data to be sent to my e-mail. So I googled it and found a PHP script to upload onto my server and install. I just done a quick google search and found this:
Free PHP FormMail script : Form processor : Form mailer
I don't know if it works but it says its free and seems to be able to store/send information to your email!

Like these guys mentioned, get an FTP Client like CuteFTP (I use that, so easy!) or just search free FTP clients.