So I have this idea...

[IRuleYouHard]

and I want to get it into motion without giving it away before-hand so no one steals my idea [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. The idea is... People play games against each other for daily/weekly/monthly prizes (generated from advertising revenue). My question is to you experts... what would it take for a forum much like 2+2 with polls and where people can upload pictures/videos/anything to your site.

[elus2]

There are plenty of opensource/free content management systems and forum software.

read up through the forum project threads on choosing a cms like wordpress, joomla, drupal. figure out what forum software each one supports and then choose the cms that will serve your needs. joomla should be relatively easy to setup for what you're trying to do. you'll still need to find some guys to help you edit the themes so that you can create your own brand.

[Sniper]

Free and low cost forum software is readily available...

One of the biggest issues with forums, is cleaning up the spam... to give you an idea, 2+2 has roughly 100 Red/Greens with the primary responsibility of spam eradication...

[IRuleYouHard]

Sorry to be such a newbie at this but how much would something like this cost me (if I did all the work myself) a month? And yes I will look into the rest of the forum for more info.
Also, if the cost is too much and one of you rich guys out there wants to pitch in for a % let me know [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[Frinkenstein]

check out PHPBB, or SMF forum software. Both are free.

PHPBB is more popular I believe.

It would cost you nothing except the hosting costs.

[Sniper]

like elus said, there is Open Source Free CMS and Free Forum software.

Not counting your time, assuming you did all the work...

Cost: Domain + Hosting

[elus2]

Most of my difficulties after choosing the forum software is diving into the code/documentation to figure out what's what in the templates and then changing the graphics and adding in appropriate extensions. depending on how far you want to make your site stand out and the types of functionality you want to give it, this step could consume a major portion of the effort you put into the project (and you haven't even put up any content yet)

[IRuleYouHard]

Thanks for the help so far guys this is awesome! I wish I knew a LOT more of the programming side of things besides just the basics of "C". So hopefully I'll be letting you guys tell me how much my site sucks within the month!

[IRuleYouHard]

Could anyone give me a few hints on the database thing with MySQL ? Any knowledge on this would be awesome!

[elus2]

just choose a host that offers multiple mysql databases for free and follow the instructions on setting up database accounts for each of the applications your installing