I have a couple of ideas that i want to try out but i learned from my first forum, that i dont want to put all of my money in it. This is going to be a free time kind of thing. What is the best free hosting company that can host a forum basically i just need mysql and php p.s. I know they are not reliable or anything but i am in no place to spend any money, these are just ideas i want to try. If they work, then i will get true hosting
IMHO, none! you can get real hosting for as little as $25 a year and that is not all that much, and well worth it in many cases as there are far less risks involved. I think it's better to find out what cheap hosting it worth paying for (as many of the cheaper ones are as reliable as the free ones). But enough of that I guess, as it's not the answer you are looking for. I can not give you the name of any free hosts, I've never used one... though when you do find one make sure you have server access or at least downloadable backups. I have a friend on a free host, and when he went to upgrade to a better server he found out he had no means of transferring the data over... and that really sucks.
i will make sure, but i use shared and personal hosting for my other websites, this is just going to be free time project and i am putting no more money into it.
I have a couple of small (free) forums at http://netboards.org/ - you are very limited to what you can do though - you cannot edit any of the files and netboards have their own adsense ads on your forum. However, I have not had any problems with any of the forums there
Keep in mind most free forum places will no give you access the the database if you later decide to change the forum over to a non free one youll have to start it all over from scratch
I think you may want to check out "http://www.lefora.com/", free forum hosting by Lefora. They have all kinds of bells and whistles over there, and you can import your content from your present forum if you wish, and visa-versa. I just signed up for a forum with them and I am very impressed with all their features, most of which are not available on pay forums, nevermind free ones. My users can embed videos right into their posts, I can add RSS feeds to display on other sites, headlines on my forum are automatic, blog included, etc.. I was able to choose one of several themes (templates) and completely customize my forum with my own uploaded headermast and choice of colors, sidebar additions, and widgets. There is too much to list. Their servers are reliable and the feedback from forum owners and users alike is amazingly enthusiastic. The support is top-notch. They truly do offer the forum of tomorrow/ I have never seen anything like it offered anywhere and believe me I have looked! Its worth a look for sure.
Man listen, Don't waste your time, learn the right way. Nothing comes Free, This is reality. buy a host and enjoy an learn
Register at vgchat, you get 300 megs of space & 10 GB's bandwith, we have a few installer scripts with mybb, smf & phpbb so take your pick. http://vgchat.info
i prefer Forumotion.com. out of all of the boards i've ever registered at (around 50 or so now i think, i lost count) i've only ever joined 2 proboards forums. the first one was utter crap, and i stopped going there after a few weeks. i only joined the second one last week, cos the original board, which was on IPB, was hacked, so the new one is temporary.