Questions about unauthodox business model use

Pre-sales questions for phpBB 3 forum hosting script.
Post Reply
mceb
Posts: 5
Joined: 01 Feb 2009, 10:51

Questions about unauthodox business model use

Post by mceb »

Hi, we are investigating use of your script for a different type of business model. We aren't necessarily looking for these features as part of your script but this is more of question of would there be any technical roadblocks to us using it in this unorthodox way.

Our business model approach is to market forum hosting to small closed groups of people (10-20) in an annual subscription fee approach. This differs from traditional multi-forum models of ad & upgrade revenue.

1) We would be provisioning clients ourselves, collecting orders and payments on our own so would there be a creative way to set the script up so the new forum creation is only for our administrative use and not exposed to public? One such method might be installing script as a subdomain itself (admin.ourdomain.com). Another might be us keeping 2 domains, 1 for administration where the script would be installed and controlled and a 2nd separate domain where the end user forums are hosted.

2) The other different approach we are exploring is because these groups are similar in nature we'd like to offer some sort of pre-delivered content out of the box (baseline forums, smilies, avatars). Normally new forums are created as an empty shell. If we kept a forum containing only "shell content" and backed it up and restored it over a new empty forum before delivery, would that be a potential viable option? I think your control panel shows backup/restore capability.

Thanks for any input you can provide.
User avatar
CyberAlien
Coder
Posts: 2159
Joined: 07 Jun 2007, 07:57
Hosted Forums: 0
Contact:

Re: Questions about unauthodox business model use

Post by CyberAlien »

1. All you need to do is disable registration. That will remove visitor's ability to create forums, while you will still be able to create new forums in control panel.

2. It can be easily done. Installation of a new forum is done by executing set of sql queries to fill database and creating files/directories for it. All you'll need to do is edit sql file, so all modifications will be automatically installed. That sql file is almost an exact copy of a database after normal phpBB installation, with few small modifications.
mceb
Posts: 5
Joined: 01 Feb 2009, 10:51

Re: Questions about unauthodox business model use

Post by mceb »

That sounds good. Thanks so much for the information :)
mceb
Posts: 5
Joined: 01 Feb 2009, 10:51

Re: Questions about unauthodox business model use

Post by mceb »

Hi Cyber, 1 quick follow-up question, I'm sorry I'm a little weaker then I should be in knowledge of domain management :oops: We'd want to maintain our own content at the root domain for marketing & order processing purposes.

I've read in your instructions that the script can be installed as a sub folder (domain.com/forums) but then all client forums would also carry the sub folder name in their URL (client1.domain.com/forums).

I read a few older posts where I thought that the script itself can be installed as a subdomain such as signups.domain.com. I wanted to double check if my understanding of that is correct? If that true would the client forums still be in the form client1.domain.com then?

Thanks.
User avatar
CyberAlien
Coder
Posts: 2159
Joined: 07 Jun 2007, 07:57
Hosted Forums: 0
Contact:

Re: Questions about unauthodox business model use

Post by CyberAlien »

It can be done, it will require a separate hosting account for it. You need to set domain.com and http://www.domain.com to your current website, *.domain.com to a dedicated IP where hosting script will be. Considering that you aren't going to use signup page, you don't need to setup signup.domain.com.
mceb
Posts: 5
Joined: 01 Feb 2009, 10:51

Re: Questions about unauthodox business model use

Post by mceb »

Yes true we will be turning off registration and managing provisioning from the control panel like you outlined above so I think I went off track with that signups at subdomain idea.

We were just confused about potential ability to use own HTML pages/content on the root of the domain (http://www.ourdomain.com) instead of the tabbed framework shown here http://www.demo.phpbbhs.com/index.hs (which I assume sits at the root of the domain).

Thanks again, we'll be buying the script once we get off the ground :)
Post Reply