How much would it cost to set up a place like this?

[Ichneumon]

Disclaimer: Now, obviously I am not asking what mr Burlew pays for this site, as that is entirely his bussiness and none of ours.

I've been looking at starting an internet forum and would like to know what the average costs on a monthly basis would be. I know you can host forums for free, but I really want to own it myself. I know I'd have to buy forum software and I know the price of vBulletin is something like 144 euro's once and 60 for the years after that. However, you'd also need to pay for place to host it on and that's where my knowledge fails me. How much space would a forum take? I'm not planning on the forum becoming as big as this one.

Anyway, I'd just like to know some of your views on this so I get some orientation.

[Astrella]

Well, unless you got something really big planned, I would start out with a free forum to be honest to gather up a community first.
I myself am moderator on a spriting forum (phpBB) with a community of about 100-150 active members and we manage fine with ours.
A forum host like http://www.freeforums.org/ gives you a good quality forum with enough options and all.
You say you want to own the forum, is this because you're afraid data might get lost? Because you could avoid this by making regular back ups.

Obviously, I don't really know what you got planned though and I'm not really an expert on hosting the actual forum, so just dropping my two cents.

[Ichneumon]

Well I prefer having my own mostly because it looks more professional (which I think increases the chance people will want to stay and make an account, instead of googling for others), but more importantly indeed, like you said, because I like to be in full control over what happens to the data.

[Jack Squat]

Some of the software is free, such as YaBB (http://www.yabbforum.com/).

IIRC, vBulletin (what this site is) costs $180 for ownership of the software, $100/year for a leased policy. Dunno about other versions.

Assuming you know how to set it up and maintain it (or know someone who will for free), the only other costs are for the server and domain name...both of which you'd need to pay to run a site anyways.

[Last_resort_33]

If you're looking at making it look good then you should be getting a domain name. Lots of domain hosts provide free/low cost server space. Pretty much all hosts will provide you with access to a mysql database and php. Get phpbb (which is free, fully open scource and thus fully customiseable) and you will only be paying for your server space and domain name, you should be able to get those, together for less than $5 per month.

[valadil]

I use dreamhost for webspace. I think I'm paying $10 a month and an additional $10 to buy a domain name for a year. It's not the best host in the world, but it's good enough for my purposes. As previously mentioned, phpbb is free and more than adequate for a simple forum. Dreamhost can help you set it up pretty easily too.

Of course the difficulty in running a forum like this is getting people to show up. If you post a link here, some people will look at your forum and some will get pissed off at you for advertising. You're going to need something to draw visitors though.