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To give you an idea of what things cost, let me give you a run down of my expenses. I am starting a large scale social networking website, designed to get people thinking about their life goals. Forums is just the start of it.

I've incurred about $150 on paperwork, like business license fees. I had to see a laywer about writing up a nondisclosure agreement for my website which cost $825, which is a steal from what I'm told. I paid GoDaddy I about $300 for 10 years at webillions.com, .net, .org, and .us. I also get hosting from DreamHost for about $5 a month, which has really worked out for me. If you happen to be interested in Dreamhost, I can get you a $50 discount if you use my code WEBILLIONS. We've bought a few cheap books for research for programming and advertising. Advertising is the main cost I'm looking at now, but there are a lot of things you can do for cheap or free. I hope this gave you a good idea.

Check out http://www.360websolutions.net

Don't opt into the site builder, I'm not a fan of it, so I offer the same service for about the same price, besides which you pay for additional pages and the templates are no where near as nice as mine.

With the regular hosting plans, and whatever bells and whistles you want, the overall cost through this site should be one of lowest you'll find.

Send me an email with your site's "vision" and I will reply with what I suspect the best set up for you would be - cost and time - and also what maintenance (sustainability - yearly cost after the initial) would run you.

It's my site, part of my small-business resource offerings to community businesses where I live and work, but you are welcome to use it too. Let me know if I can help. I've got over 100 sites hosted with this company, all small to mid-sized businesses and Professionals. Most of my sites are on there too. I've been with the company since they were about a year old, know them well, and have total faith in them.

Stukie
bluerhino@bresnan.net

This is a great list. Another option for a online forum that is very compelling, cheap, and hosted so you don't need to do anything other than configure it and respond to your community is GroupSwim (full disclosure - I work there). The main issue with "free" solutions are they are never free. While the software itself may be opensource and free, the costs of installing it, maintaining it, maintaining the hardware, etc. can add up. A really strong hosted solution if community is something that is key to whatever business you are starting is a great option that you should investigate.

Another CMS platform I would encourage you to consider is Drupal: http://www.drupal.org

It provides a wide array of modules to tie it into other systems (like shopping carts and message boards) there is also a large network of developer's that you can utilize to either help you setup the site (not free) or to simply answer questions (for free via mailing lists and forums) you have. It is also easier to manage for many people compared to the Joomla! platform.

One thing I did not see others mention (and I apologize if I just missed it when reading the previous posts) is if you plan on selling things or simply want/need high level security for your website then you will need to purchase an SSL certificate. GoDaddy.com also sells these for varying prices depending on the specific cert your site needs (which you should plan out on how many parts of your site need the security before making the actual purchase).

If you need any more assistance (since you've listed this question as already answered) I hope you feel free to posting another question on the forums or if you wish to privately discuss more details go to: http://www.xenopodinc.com and click on the contact link. Good luck!

When I started my business, I was on a very controlled budget as I'm sure a lot of startups are. I didn't know one thing about how to do a website. I purchased my domain name through Yahoo, and also built my website myself through Yahoo. They have an excellent step-by-step process you follow that is so easy. If I can do it, anyone can. The price for my website is approximately $13 a month and the building of the website was free.