First forum venture

Recently, I've been looking around for a fashion site, with all the things I had an interest in, but my looking around never came to a conclusion. I'm still looking.

For this reason, I'm beginning to want to start a site of my own - a fashion informational site, with a forum, blog and avatar section, where I'll have premade dolls, and members can dress each of them up.

My plan is to have the informational part of the site with fashion lingo, fashion tips, how to be "different," a "trendsetter," and a general "fashionista." However, I'm stuck between using Subdreamer and Wordpress. Wordpress seems to be easy-to-use, very convenient and mostly everything I want, is preinstalled. Subdreamer, on the other hand, seems to be more modern, sleek and has a more wide variety of designers. Which is more easy-to-use, best for beginners and easy for users to use.

For the forum part, I'd like to use something VERY simple, and something easy to modify, design and handle. I've been looking at Drupal, JForum, Phorum, PunBB, Unclassifed NewsForum, UseBB, Viscasha, Zetaboards and BBPress. All of them have great reviews and are easy for installation, administration and forum usage. In yuor opinion, which should I settle with? Which is best for beginners, users and designers?

Blog wise, I'm going for Wordpress, mostly because I used it and it was way easy.

Last but not least, the dressing up the avatar part. I know this may be hard, but I've seen it around. Not only will it be hard, but it will be money! I'll need to hire developers, designers, etc, etc. Although I'm not looking to spend a lot on this part, I do want to have my own setup. Unless, of course, I partner with a site like Roiworld or Meez. Both would be expensive.

Last but not least, I'm looking at all these different things, and have all these different ideas, but will I be able to integrate Wordpress with JForum, perse?

Thanks!

 

I've never used Subdreamer, but WordPress has never disappointed me. Amazing script, it is.

I don't have much (well, any) experience outside of vBulletin, IP.Board and MyBB...

However, when I read "VERY simple" the first thing that came to mind is BBPress. We have a few discussions on that around here, I believe.
It's the only simple script I'm familiar with, so that's why it came to mind; it doesn't mean that the others aren't feasible.

Testing the choices out on your own is the best way to determine what suits you best. Reading reviews and such is a good way to figure if it's worth your time to try, but to know if it's a good fit, you need to try it yourself. Window-shopping with CMSs is rather ineffective.

If I understand what it is you want to do with the avatars correctly, then it may not be so hard afterall... have you checked out LivingAvatars before? Living Avatars - Home

 

Thanks Nick!

WordPress has never disappointed me either, but Subdreamer seems good also. I want to try something new, but I don't want to go into something where I don't know what I'm doing. Ya know?

I looked at vBulletin, IPS and My BBoard, all of them seem overused, hence me not using them. But then again, using something overused may be for the better, because, well, then the crowd is aware of the functions.

BBPress is beyond simple, the layout even is. To be honest, I've only been on a board with BBPress, and I must say myself, it may be the best choice for me - especially when I'm not too worried on the forum part. I'm only interested in having that if users want to interact outside of commenting with each other.

Great point here. I want to try each of them out, and I plan to, as soon as I settle on a good domain name - and I can set up a subdomain for testing each software.

I did not, check out LivingAvatars, and in fact, I don't think I should - especially if I don't plan on using the softwares it's compatible with.

 

Post too long, makes my head hurt,,,,

If you want to try those other forums, buy a domain name, set up a test site, install the forum and play around with it. See how well the search engines index the forum, see how easy it is to customize,,, and go from there.

At one time I was running 3 - 4 different forum software and content management systems at a time. In the end, I picked vbulletin and wordpress.

 

Thanks Kevin! I'm really leaning towards BBPress, or phpBB. As much as I am discouraged because of the posts here, I've got to do what's best for me, and if I want to have LivingAvatars, I have to pick one of the three LivingAvatars can be integrated with.

There are some good phpBB skinners out there, right?

 

Why are you trying to dress up avatars? Do you mean providing avatars that the members select?

Especially for your forum topic I'd suggest allowing users to upload their own avatars, as we do here at AA.

Good luck! That is very cool to offer something new in your area of interest, something not available now.

 

Hi 3Phase! I'm not going to dress up the avatars, but instead, have a section for members to dress them up. With a fashion site, why not include mannequin-like things for fashion-loving people to dress up! This may attract the younger crowd more than I'd like, but it'd set me apart from the rest.

So I guess with LivingAvatars, I can't enable the option to have a custom avatar at the forums?

Thanks for the wishes - I plan to make this big. I'm hunting for phpBB designers as we speak.

 

Actually Wordpress will probably be the best choice. When version 3 comes out they are planning to merge the MU version with it.

I've used SubDreamer for a few years and yes you could use it like your going to, I don't think it would have the flexibility you are looking for.