help with new web site

I can tell by looking at things here I am in over my head LOL.
I have a website and a couple of forums and want to do more. The forum I have is okay but not really suited to what I want to do.

I want to create a poetry site where each member can have their own page and post as many poems as they want. Would also like a feedback feature, pm, and other goodies.

I would like something similar to poetrypoem.com but don't know how much it would cost or how difficult it would be to create and administer.


http://poetrypoem.com this is the model for what i want to do

I seem to learn this stuff pretty quickly so maybe there is hope for me yet lol
thanks for you help

Note: Topic moved to Website Design Discussion.

poetrypoem.com is using the same forum board script as OZZU does and it can be found and downloaded and used for free here:

http://phpbb.com/

That's the cheap part. The part you'll need to check into is whether or not your web hosting service supports php, and that you have a mySQL database available with your hosting plan. The set up is beginner level if you know how to read the installation instructions, and administering it isn't much more difficult.

If you're wondering why this board looks so much different than that one, it's because there are a wide range of themes that can be used to customize the board for appearance, and the ability to create your own theme exists as well. But don't worry about that for now. You can do what you want, provided your host service supports this type of forum.

phpbb still has too many quirks for my liking. It's pretty easy to break the vulnerabilities. Oh well.

I don't know blackhat, because I don't make much effort to hack things, but I have studied the security of phpBB, and it's much better than other forums that I have easily done little hacking tricks with in the past. Besides, I have determined that I can very easily and completely restore a phpBB forum should anybody try. Probably in less than 5 minutes if I really needed to. I've even learned how to change and restore people's passwords without having to go through the email confirmation stuff.

I would be curious as to your suggestions for what you think may be a more secure forum script, because to date I haven't found a more secure one.