I'm planning a small, invite-only forum for a tabletop roleplaying group, with no more than about 40 members. The site would be primarily text-based, but members often write lengthy roleplay posts involving mature themes and adult content. There would be no need for heavy bandwidth usage, and file uploads may not be necessary.
I'm hoping to keep hosting around $10–15 per month. I have experience maintaining phpBB, but I'm open to other self-hosted forum platforms such as MyBB, SMF, Flarum, or Discourse. The main requirement is finding a hosting provider whose terms clearly permit this kind of written adult content, since I don't want the site removed because of vague or restrictive policies. What software and hosting setup would you recommend?
4 Answers
Free, self-hosted software such as MyBB, SMF, phpBB, and Flarum can work fine for this. The software itself generally isn't the limiting factor; the hosting company's terms are. Avoid inexpensive shared hosting unless the policy explicitly permits adult written roleplay, because providers may suspend accounts based on broad or unclear rules. A small VPS from a provider that openly supports this content should fit your budget.
A small VPS should be more than enough for 40 users, and a $5–10 monthly server can handle a text-focused forum easily. Since you already know phpBB, using the self-hosted version would save you a lot of time. You could also look at MyBB or SMF, which are free and self-hosted. The important part is checking the provider's acceptable-use policy first—some hosts allow adult written content, while others prohibit anything categorized as adult material, even if there are no images or downloads.
You could self-host from a home machine if you have reliable internet, but that adds maintenance, security, backups, and availability concerns. A low-cost VPS is usually easier for a private group. At this scale, CPU and bandwidth won't be an issue; regular backups, software updates, spam prevention, and a clear moderation policy matter more.
Discourse on a modest VPS is another possibility, although it may require more setup and resources than a traditional PHP forum. A domain and a reverse proxy or security service can add some protection, but those services do not override the hosting provider's content rules. For this use case, a basic VPS with a familiar forum package is probably the simplest and most affordable route.
That makes sense. The group already has a chat server, but long posts can run into several thousand words, so a proper forum would be much easier to organize. I'll focus on hosts with clear policies rather than assuming text-only content is automatically allowed.