A Website That Suits Me? Needing something that works for me.

[Errordotocx 0]

I'm new here so I would like to start off by saying HI!

I am in need of some assistance in finding a website or structure that suits my needs. A few weeks ago I got myself a website over at Bluehost.com, and so far the hosting site seems just fine for my needs minus the part where uploaded files cannot be more than 50mb. But my main problem is that I am unsure of a setup or a system that works for my needs. Bluehost has something called "simplescripts", which makes it a lot easier to get certain systems easily running. After going through several different blog setups, CMS setups, some cheap web tool thing and just plain forums. Eventually I ended up using PHPnuke 8.0 that is available through simplescripts. The look of the site, http://www.theocx.com/, isn't too bad and and happy on that end and I like the way it manages the downloads. The other stuff is "ok" I guess but there is some things that don't work the way I believe they should, like trying to link YouTube videos on my news page and the fact that I haven't found a good way of converting the forums to phpbb3 and I can't delete forums that have been made. I feel like what I want to do with my website doesn't really work with the setup.

Now that I've covered a little bit of where I'm currently at, let me try to describe what I'm looking for. The things I am mainly looking for in the site is first off a blog where I can share whatever happens to be on my mind. Secondly, I like the Download manager, or what have you, that PHP nuke uses. I am a gamer so there are files such as maps, models, scripts...etc that I would like to make available to download. The third major thing is to have forums for my website, most likely phpbb3. Those three are the main focus I would like to have, but having the ability to also add extra pages like an about, reviews, and links when needed. This type of setup would be great for what I need, but I have yet to see anything like this and am needing some help and opinions on what to do.

Hopefully someone here has an idea of what might work, maybe there is a site structure out there I haven't seen or maybe it would be best to just have one built for me?

Again, here is my website right now,
http://www.theocx.com/

Thanks in advance!

[Iniyila 2]

I saw your website and it seems you are trying to put counter strike 1.6 maps for downloading, first i have two suggestions for you, the first one is that most (and probably all) of the counter strike 1.6 maps are available on their official website for download but if you are the author then story differs but if not then just put the direct link for downloading them from the main website of counter strike, so by this way you don't need to be worry about 50mb upload size limit. the second one, i think a shared web hosting service is not a good choice for a website like yours which needs a lot of bandwidth because of its download, so my suggestion is to use VPS for better experience and less problems, by the way if you don't have many visitors which download your maps then you can just continue using your current host.Now for what you have said about your needs i will give you some examples, for blog you can use wordpress instead of your current CMS which seems to be phpNuke. for that download stuff my suggestion is to use this plugin with the wrodpress i said about https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-downloadmanager/ , by using this you will get those abilities but if you don't like that then you can find many other plugins which will do same but with different interface and themes and some different abilities too, for example another plugin is this : https://wordpress.org/plugins/download-manager/ , by just searching the main website you can find many of them doing what you need. now for the forum my suggestion is VBulletin which is not free but it is the best, so if you can pay then go for it and you will have no problem because you can find tons of documents and helps for it but if you can't pay the money then go for mybb or phpbb.I can't understand the problem you have with phpbb but you need to install it beside your wordpress in a different folder like /Forum and then pointing some sub-domain to it if you like. by the way the process of installation of PHPbb is just easy and i haven't found any problem with it in anytime. do not use script installers for installing phpbb, just install it yourself, it is very easy and you don't need much knowledge for doing that. if you faced any problem then just ask in their support forum which is very active and i can say you will get your answer in it within 4 - 10 hours, so by doing this you will also learn something more for your latter developments.In the end for the problem you had with phpNuke and youtube links, if you want a preview to be available in the content of your posted article then you need to use a plugin in wordpress which gives you the ability to embed a full featured youtube player into your post and contents and even in comments. again there are some plugins available for doing that, an example for you : https://wordpress.org/plugins/smart-youtube/

[Errordotocx 0]

Awesome, thanks for the reply! I'll start of with saying that my website is only about a week old, so some of that stuff is there for testing. Regarding the maps, official 1.6 or source or any other valve game maps come packaged with the game when you buy them. So you are right, there would be no need to offer them for download. Games such as those have a community that thrives on custom content such as custom maps, models, game modes, scripts...etc which aren't available from their website. That being said, some place has to offer them for download, but what you said does remind me that there are other well established websites that already provide the custom content, and would be hard to ever compete and I really don't intend to. Most of the current downloads on the website right now are creations from me and my friends for those games. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with the website, but at this time I don't plan on ever going big with it. It will still remain a personal website where I offer a few downloads, both mine and other peoples, for anyone that is interested. So a larger VPS probably won't be needed at this time. But I'm glad you did mention it as now I have an idea for the future if things need to go such way.Also, I gave WordPress a try awhile back but didn't mess around with it much. From what you have told me it seems like it actually might be a great idea for what I am looking for, especially with that download manager. As for the forums, I have looked into the paid ones and what they offer is great, but I would probably consider those more if I ever do decide to grow. Phpbb3 will probably suit me just fine for now.Thanks for all your help.

Edited February 27, 2011 by Errordotocx (see edit history)

[mayank 2]

I'm a WordPress fan! Reason - It's the best!! It can be extended to a level that'll fulfill your requirement. WordPress has extensions where, it'll hhave that download counter script, use bbPress or buddypress for features like forum or other facebook like social networking features. WordPress+BuddyPress can be used to literally make a Facebook clone.... so will you still have doubts over it power? The concern raised by Iniyila that you may be running out of bandwidth and all is true, however you can relax till the time your site gets popular....

[Errordotocx 0]

Cool, thanks Mayank. It's been about a month since I bought the site, and all the new has worn off and I have had time to think about it. I think i'll keep stuff a lot smaller than I had intended. So I think Wordpress will definitely suit my needs. Also, I see where you all are coming from when talking about the bandwidth, and yeah if the website was ever to grow large it would be a problem. But i'll cross that bridge, if and whenever the time is needed. Thanks a lot guys.