how can i host my own forum?

[egbert]

i'm in this one anime fanbase and have been for 5 years; i've noticed there haven't really been any good fansites or dedicated places to discuss it... sure, there's a subreddit but no one likes reddit... also it's just full of stolen art...

so! i'd like to host my own forum! i'm just a kid so i would like it to be free [impossible feat.. yeah :( ] anything else is a background priority.
i was also thinking that maybe i could make a neocities and host a message board there? i'd be thankful if someone directed me to some sites or widgets or thingys that helped me do this

the anime is mob psycho 100. btw. yeah! yeah! yeah! yeah! yeah! yeahhhh! 👍

[egbert]

to clarify, i know neocities is static and you can't like, host an actual forum on it, but I've seen people do trickery using html comment boxes to make it look like one..! i know kf the existence of ProBoards btw, if i cant find any help ill just use that

[Melooon]

There are actually lots of old-style free forum hosts around; I can't vouch for any of them but you can try:

• https://www.boardhost.com/
• https://www.createmybb.com/
• https://www.proboards.com/

Frankly if you just search for free forums you can find many

The pitfalls to watch out are:

• Free forums will often have ads or collect data
• Free forums may have limits to the number of users/topics they can host
• Free forums may have very limited ability to modify themes
• A free forum might be deleted at any time without warning

All that said; I think it's totally fine to use one of these services if you are just trying to make a small old-style forum and it's your first try. By all accounts making a forum is very easy even if you have no technical skills; the challenge is always in building a community and keeping it active, so those are the skills you wanna work on 

[wris]

https://www.proboards.com/ was pretty popular with the gaming community I was a part of... in like 2005. Hopefully it's still good.

[egbert]

https://psychohelmet.freeforums.net/
i finished setting it up and it's in its testing stage! yay! yay! yay!

[lime360]

i used a russian site to host l-blog back in 2021