Howdy folks, My fiancé is working on a project for one of her MBA classes and she needs some data on the costs of maintaining a forum such as stangnet. Her project is to do a business proposal for a net internet service, and her idea is for a home improvement site/forum where people could discuss and argue about home projects, download plans and instructions (for a small fee, actually I guess it would be included in the membership fees), and post their own plans on the site. All plans are reviewed by some panel of experts and are rated by forum members. While her idea goes a little farther beyond what stangnet does, I think that the initial set up cost, maintenance costs, and potential revenue from advertisement could be similar to those things involved in the operations of this site. Any info you could provide on this would be greatly appreciated.
Hmmmm sounds a little like www.doityourself.com Maybe visit that website and see if you can get some info from the Admin. For a basic site, you'll need to buy the bulliten software (stangnet uses V-bulliten) and then pay for the hosting fees. Hosting fees are usually determined by a combination of things.. diskspace used and monthly traffic. How much diskspace and monthly traffic is used will really depend on the site and the amount of visitors.
Sorry, I can't. Pricing rates seem to be dropping daily. It should be a pretty simple matter to contact a hosting company and ask them. Might even be able to find some pricing online.
Unfortunately I don't know. I'm not a regular at that site... I just stumbled across it a few days ago when researching home-improvement stuff.
My fiance already knew about the do it yourself site. She hasn't had any luck getting in contact with them. I was wondering who the admins for stangnet were actually. Hey thanks for the information you've given so far B.T.W.
Stangnet owner/admin goes by the username of Mrayburn (or something close to that). It's been a long time since I've seen him post tho... Here's a link to a website hosting company. Take a look... there are some pricing rates listed. http://www.apollohosting.com/hosting/
To run a forum such as Vintage-Mustang forum costs Bob about $12-$14k a year. Stangnet is considerablly larger, especially if you consider the parts site, i'm guessing more like $20-$25k a year. Mike would definitely know, but he's a really busy guy, so someone else in the office may help you. 334.444.2942
