“[@Michiel:] here in Belgium they let you pay for a whole year at once and that's something I'd rather not do :)”

To be honest, every single country I have ever had dealings with (Netherlands, US, Sweden, all over the place) wants you to pay a year in advance. And personally I wouldn’t trust hosting companies that bill you every $3 bucks separately, monthly.

That is not to say they can’t offer refunds. My current host — Binero — has a money back guarantee that promises me they will refund the months I have left on my account in case of an early termination. You might want to look for similar deals.

People tend to switch hosting once they have learned more. Don’t be afraid to start out with something (very) cheap that seems to offer the right set-up for you. One.com is a hosting provider that comes to mind. Many starting website owners I have come to know here in Sweden use it. They are cheap, fast, and simple. (I haven’t checked it they have what *you* need, but generally, they have.)

But as @Ben says, it is better to set-up a local server on your own computer for testing before doing anything. This way you can learn about NNF and how you want to customise it before paying people for time you need to test things out.

If you do end up looking for hosting I’ll leave you the following tips:

1. Don’t do too much shopping around. If you find a cheaper hosting provider but their website looks more dodgy: don’t take them.
2. Look for a company close to home. This makes it so much easier if you need support as you will be familiar with country customs, holidays, language, etc. Doing business with Japan or Kuwait might not be the smartest move.
3. Test their support. Do they have a telephone number? Maybe call them for information about your first ever hosting deal; Email them some questions about their service and see how fast they answer you back; See if they do support in your own language: this might not seem important but if you ever need something specific in the future it will really make things easier.
4. Make sure they support what you need. Most systems like NoNonsenseForum, CMS, and blogging tools, are developed on Unix machines. Unix (Linux) hosting is often the better choice over IIS (Windows) hosting. For nice URLs (URL Rewrites) you need `.htaccess` and `mod_rewrite` to function and to be accessible. PHP is often a given, *but beware!*

*PHP is tricky* and a lot of hosting companies provide only half the information you need without you asking!

The current version (as of writing) of PHP is `5.4.3`. You want at least `5.4`. The previous version is still around as `5.3.13` but in accordance with the PHP timeline this one is only getting known bugs and security issues fixed and nothing more. From Wikipedia:

“Once per year, a minor release should occur which can include new features. Every minor release should at least have 2 years of security and bug fixes, followed by at least 1 year of only security fixes, for a total of a 3 year release process for every minor release. No new features (unless small and self contained) will be introduced into a minor release during the 3 year release process.”

You will find a lot of hosting companies stating they are running PHP 5. If they tell you this, ask them *what version*. PHP 5.0.0 was released late 2004. That is almost 3 3-year release cycles ago. If they tell you they run 5.3 you can ask them when they are planning to update or just move on and find a new hosting provider.

I hope you’ll take this to heart when you start looking :)

Martijn added on 22 Jul ’12 · 17:40

As Kroc correctly points out [1] you will be looking for `5.3`, not `5.4`. 5.4 is almost never supported by simple shared hosting providers. I was confused because I am running this version myself and it is the current stable release along with 5.3.

`5.2` is not unheard of, but hosting that provides you with `5.3` is in my opinion much better. As I commented to Kroc:

“PHP ended its support for the 5.2 series with 5.2.16, 02010-12-16: http://www.php.net/archive/2010.php#id2010-12-16-1”

[1]: http://forum.camendesign.com/help+2#1919oirnmxl8

@Martijn

" You want at least `5.4`."

That's silly. I don’t know a single host that provides PHP5.4. Most support some flavour of 5.2, sometimes with a cpanel switch to change to 5.3.

PHP upgrades on shared hosts are notoriously slow. I’m always hearing from users stuck on 5.2, which is why NNF targets 5.2.3.

“@Kroc: That’s silly. I don’t know a single host that provides PHP5.4.”

You are completely right, of course. Will add an addendum to the previous post. I was confused because I am running 5.4 locally.

That does not change the fact that, if you are going to look around for a hosting provider, you should not give 5.2 much thought. PHP ended its support for the 5.2 series with 5.2.16, 02010-12-16: http://www.php.net/archive/2010.php#id2010-12-16-1

@Michiel Yes, change the `FORUM_NAME` option in your 'config.php'; refer to INSTALL.txt for more details on customising the forum.

@Michiel: If you please, read the instructions in "lang.example.php" (/themes/greyscale) for guidence. If you need any help with that, get back to us.

@Michiel: Hello and welcome back!

" I would like to incorporate an iframe or so to share files could I do that ?"

The easiest way is to create an "about.html" file, with the code you want; it will be added to the top of the forum index page. If you require something more specific, you can make a new theme to house your changes; full instructions are here: https://github.com/Kroc/NoNonsenseForum/wiki/How-to-Make-A-NoNonsense-Forum-Theme

“doesn't scale well , what do you mean with that ?”

It simply means that NoNonsense Forum probably won't handle a thousand people using it at once :) It's a simple forum designed for no more than a couple of hundred people at a time. Also note that it lacks many features for protecting against abuse (such as banning); so you are expected to handle that yourself. You can choose for example to have an open sub-forum where people can request permission to post, and then lock the other forums so that only registered members can post.