How was Ulysses website/forums built?

[allofmywutsteam]

Hey I'm interested in building a site (not just using some widget based site... Enjin). I like the simplicity of this site (SMF), but I've heard a lot of good things about phpBB as well.

I was curious if I could get some insight on how this site was built (process), so i can possibly mimic it with my own themes, and whatnot.

Things I'm looking for:
- Steam sign in
- store feature
- forums
- user groups/permissions

What web hosting service is used here, or some good ones you've had experience with? Did you get a custom domain from them or someone else?

Lastly, why are the forums here not under ulysssesmod.net? and instead a sub domain?

[Megiddo]

We initially used phpBB, but switched to SMF because SMF supported addons and phpBB did not. This was a long time ago.

We use oneall.com for the social login, which integrates with phpBB as well.

All forums these days support a store feature of some kind. SMF integrates directly with Paypal as a first party feature now, I believe.

We have no custom user groups/permissions these days, though we used to integrate the SMF groups into our Garry's Mod server.

We use dreamhost.com for our hosting. We've had some issues with them, but not as many issues as we've had with other hosts. No host is perfect, and you generally get what you pay for -- do not look for the bottom dollar. Most hosts will also sell you a domain, we get ours from dreamhost and have enjoyed their price and service. Just don't buy a domain from godaddy (horrible company).

If we were using a CMS, I guess we could easily have the forums at ulyssesmod.net directly. Mostly a style choice I suppose, though most communities with a forum that I know of use forums.xyz.tld.

[JamminR]

I dislike going to a websites www.blah dot com and lo and behold, it's only a forum site with some special front page. It still looks like a forum usually.
Much prefer a main www site, with a link to forums (either sub domain or sub folder) totally separate.
Shared theme colors, news feeds or other items, sure, but that's just my preference.

[roastchicken]

I completely agree JamminR. To me it just screams "look how unprofessional we are!". I can't say much, because my server's website is just the homepage of our forums, but eh.

[allofmywutsteam]

I dislike going to a websites www.blah dot com and lo and behold, it's only a forum site with some special front page. It still looks like a forum usually.
Much prefer a main www site, with a link to forums (either sub domain or sub folder) totally separate.
Shared theme colors, news feeds or other items, sure, but that's just my preference.

I see what you're saying, and I'll definitely take that into consideration. IN essence, you're stating that the front page should ideally look like a site, and not necessarily like a forum, and then have a redirection to the forums somehow?

[JamminR]

That's a preference of mine, yes. (and roastchicken's too)
Much like www.ulyssesmod.net - has a link to our forums, among other things (Downloads/news/etc)
The news link page at our site literally feeds off the forum news section topic headlines.
(SMF has some basic instructions for feeds such as this, as I'd bet other forum software does too)

What's great about the web and authorship though is, you get to design what you personally want.
Your tastes, and that of the community you have in mind may not care or may have different tastes.
Or, may not want to design a site, so instead use the forum as the main beginning (as roastchicken does at this time )