[mindwaves]

So I have this idea to create a Wiki style website which allows users to create and edit the appropriate material. It's really in its infancy as all I have are just ideas. I do not forsee this website garnering huge amounts of traffic or generating money, but maybe just enough to recuperate my operating costs for the month. It is just going to be my hobby.

The main purpose of the website centers around a particular branch of food. People will edit the food's description of what it is, where it can be found, and maybe how to cook it.

Now, having never really run a website, how would I go about doing the following.

1) Get a domain name and hosting company. Are they the same thing?
2) Get a wiki style website going? I assume that I can borrow the wiki code and edit appropriately?
3) Get a small forum going complete with some minor graphics. How would I go about doing this?
4) Have Google ads on it.

I would be willing to pay a person or multiple people (1-3) to do parts of the website for me provided that it is relatively cheap. I actually just want a skeleton version of the website up and going as my hobby will be to edit appropriately and to build up the website.

Please post here if you would be willing to help me or PM me for prices and whatnot. Thanks.

[besson3c]

mindwaves,

I provide hosting services myself and have done all of that stuff with the musicians I work with, so PM me if you'd like to continue this conversation further.

To get you started, the wiki used by the Wikipedia is called "Mediawiki". It is open source, and is the most simple and straight forward of all of the wikis I have used. There is a good chance that your contributers will have some familiarity with MW. I've setup a few MW driven pages on my own site which you can see here.

As far as forums go, the new version of phpBB (version 3) is excellent, and open source. My goofy, famous, and ever so popular Fuzzy Wombat is based on phpBB.

As far as domain names, I would suggest registering yours as soon as possible. Your domain is your property. You can have any webhost host your domain (including me), and relocate your domain to another host as you see fit - you have complete control over your domain, this is your legal property.

Again, if you'd like to discuss this further with me, I await your PM

[Big Mac]

1. Domain name registrars like Godaddy (the largest) allow registrants (individuals and entities) to buy domain names. Web hosting companies provide web server hosting services. Registrars often act as web hosts on the domain names bought from them. However, you can (and probably should) buy a domain name from a particular registrar and host it on a different web host - all you need to do is change the DNS settings so that they point to the proper locations as provided by your host. I concur that you should register your domain names ASAP and consider registering some of the popular variants of them if you have a unique name you want to protect (.org, .net et al in addition to .com).

2. besson covered wikis pretty well, but yes they are mostly all open source.

3. There are a number of different forum software packages available. Some are free, others are not.

4. You sign up for Google AdSense.