Web Review: GetForum.Org
Micheline de Rothschild
August 21, 2008
Website: GetForum.Org
Rating: 5 Stars = Excellent
Pictured: Mr. Daniel Eriksson, Owner
While surfing the Internet, I come across a lot of free forum hosts that promise a lot, but deliver very little. And then there is GetForum.Org. What a great experience! The ultimate in professionalism, GetForum.Org is one of the most user friendly forum hosts on the internet today.
Exclusively for American Chronicle readers, I had the opportunity to sit down with the owner, Mr. Daniel Eriksson, who had a lot to say about his company.
MTdeR: Thank you Daniel for granting this interview. Can you tell us about your background?
DE: I am a Master of Science Engineer in Telecomunications with interest in Servers, Linux and the internet. Computers has always been a part of my life; I got my first computer from my father in 1983, an IBM XT with a green monochrome screen. Since then, I have always been interested in where IT was heading. I had my first server during my study time in 1997. I hosted 80 accounts with domains, mostly for students. I have been working both with Nokia and TDC Song (it is a big internet infrastructure company in Nordic countries.)
MTdeR: How did you come up with GetForum.Org?
DE: When the internet started to become an important way of communication, I wanted to be a part of it. I have always been close connected to servers and hosting. In 2004, I started putting up simple guestbooks and forums, and from there everything has been growing little by little to where it is today, running one of the biggest forum services in the world.
MTdeR: What I love about your site is that everything is right at your fingertips. Why so user-friendly?
DE: I have always been interested in making IT (information technology) understandable by everyone, and I feel satisfied when I can bring IT to people. GetForum.Org improves a lot of things, and I feel we are on the right track.
MTdeR: How many sites do you host currently?
DE: We host over 100,000 accounts, which includes forums, blogs and websites.
MTdeR: What sets your site apart from other forum hosting companies?
DE: It is a common fact that the free forum business is a fast and easy way to earn some money without being responsible or giving people your very best efforts in support and quality. Many forum hosts just close down their service without saying anything to anyone. I have always been trying to change that in the best way I can. My effort is to offer free forums with good support, to work very hard on having extra functionality in the forums and offer a lot of extra free services like a domain connected to your forum, email and webmail, WordPress blogs and in the future, eShops.
GetForum.Org offers forums free of advertisements for the English speaking forums, and we also have a affordable system to take away ads for the forums that are not in the English language. Currently, we are having our "GetForum.Org Olympic Games" that we and our forumers enjoy; we love to see how our forumers compete in different branches and we have prepared nice prizes to give to the winners.
MTdeR: I love the fact that whatever you need is available in your Administration Control Panel. Why did you decide to give all access to your users?
DE: We are lucky within GetForum.Org to have good programming skills and server knowledge. Therefore, we have decided to give away everything that is possible to give to our forumers. We are constantly improving our service and developing new features. If we can make our users happy, then we are happy.
MTdeR: The templates are so cool! How many template designers do you utilize?
DE: We use completely free templates made for phpBB2 and phpBB3. The only thing we have done is to implement extra feature support in the templates and to install them in our system.
MTdeR: Can you tell our readers about spam bots? What are they?
DE: Everyone can post a "bad" unwanted message in a forum such as "Please come to my site and buy something". Spam bots are servers programmed to do this automatically. They can behave like humans searching for forums and input forms and even register themselves as users on forums. They can then post hundreds of spam posts in different forums every second.
MTdeR: What does GetForum.Org do to ensure the security on your sites?
DE: We have a great firewall system with very strict rules; we also have security systems to make for example SQL injections impossible.
MTdeR: I heard that GetForum.Org underwent a major security overhaul on August 10th; can you tell us about that?
DE: We have set up a new firewall system for increased security, anti-spam and anti-Dos protections.
MTdeR: Dos or Ddos? What's that?
DE: Dos or Ddos is when someone or several computers are accessing your page so many times, that no one else can access it. There is a way to do this in an efficient way, by making worms. These worms can later be spread throughout the internet, and the creator of the worm can later tell the worms to access a specific web page a hundred times per second from every computer that is infected by it. We have set up a 4-independent anti-Dos protection system.
MTdeR: As with all forum hosting companies, I would guess you encounter those who do not follow the rules. How do you handle them?
DE: We usually tell the forum administrator to do something about it, if nothing happens then we close the forum.
MTdeR: Suppose my forum is getting spammed; how quick is your turnaround to resolving the problem?
DE: We have a lot of spam filters and I have not seen any forum hosted by GetForum.Org that has been full of spam. We do daily backups, and we can quickly restore a forum.
MTdeR: Your support team is superb and always available to help; can you tell us about them?
DE: I am proud to introduce the American Chronicle readers to them:
Get Forum Web Team:
English Service: Agentok, Support Team, Gooner, Support Team, Eclipse2564, Support Team
Spanish Service: MigueltFt, Responsible Support Team, Odisea, Senior Support Team, Wagu, Support Team, Kantun, Support Team, Djunkpid182, Support Team, Beatriz, Moderator, Booster, Moderator
Swedish Service: Peetra, Responsible Support Team, Leon, Support Team, JonatanRaven, Support Team
These are the people that started having a forum in our servers. They all love to help and they have a passion for running forums. They started to help out in general until they eventually became a part of the support team. They work very hard to solve problems and they always escalate problems should they not find any solutions.
MTdeR: How many forums does your company generate in a day?
DE: We are happy to say that GetForum.Org currently averages 250-300 new accounts per day.
MTdeR: WOW! That's incredible. Tell me, are there times because you are so busy when you want to just shut everything down and close up shop? What keeps you going?
DE: I get very tired sometimes when I have been working very hard, sometimes for 10-15 hours per day, but at the end of the day when I see that people are happy for their forums and the service we are able to give them, it gives me more energy and strength. We have been receiving offers to buy our service, but I have decided not to sell my forum service. Forums and Web 2.0 movement have just started on the internet and this is really the future, and I want to have a big role in this endeavor.
MTdeR: There are so many modules to install on your site; can you tell us about them?
DE: Yes, there is a lot of modules or extra functionality made for the phpBB2 forum, and we have done our best to put in as many as we can. Currently, 30 modules are installed. Some of them have small added features like shoutbox, extra statistics, the birthday of users. There are more complex add-ons like a complete portal system with extra pages, photo album, file upload system and shop systems.
MTdeR: Are you surprised with the creativity of the forums that are listed with your company? Do you have any that stand out to you?
DE: Yes, often I get overwhelmed by the creativity of the forum administrators, especially our Spanish-speaking friends. They are intelligent and creative.
I would like to say that we have some forums that we are really proud, such as:
Vuxna Barn till Narcissistiska Föräldrar
This is a Swedish site that has used all our services in an outstanding way, such as webpage, forum, blog with a nice menu all through the site.
MTdeR: What steps do you take to prevent warez and illegal downloading sites trying to host on your servers?
DE: We are using freely available systems for checking our servers, but we also have internal systems and filters installed to prevent warez and illegal content. Our systems are automatically closing forums that have triggered our security systems.
MTdeR: Thank you for all this valuable information, but let´s get personal for a moment. What inspires you?
DE: My inspiration is to make a living out of what I have created myself and also to go into the things I am really good at. When I see people getting happy with what I am good at, my day is really great.
MTdeR: Do you have any particular thought process that best describes you?
DE: Not to ever give up, and to go for the things you really believe in, I prefer to work in a normal work from 8-5 if no one is interested in what I can accomplish. I have had a lot of good jobs but no job has ever made me as happy as I am with GetForum.org and forum services. It is my life.
MTdeR: Do you have any shoutouts you want to give at this time?
DE: I am very pleased and excited about this interview. The biggest thing I hope is that more people would find their web home with us, getting satisfied and happy with our services.
I really would like to encourage people to get into internet, creating a blog or a forum showing the world what you can do or what you know.
Internet and Web 2.0 is the future, let's jump on top of the train together, you will not regret it. You will only regret you did not jump on top of it when you were younger.
MTdeR: I wish you the very best of success and thank you so much for granting me this interview.
DE: And thanks to you Tiara for conducting this interview; it has been my pleasure answering your questions.
Copyright © 2008 Micheline Tiara de Rothschild
Rating: 5 Stars = Excellent
Pictured: Mr. Daniel Eriksson, Owner
While surfing the Internet, I come across a lot of free forum hosts that promise a lot, but deliver very little. And then there is GetForum.Org. What a great experience! The ultimate in professionalism, GetForum.Org is one of the most user friendly forum hosts on the internet today.
Exclusively for American Chronicle readers, I had the opportunity to sit down with the owner, Mr. Daniel Eriksson, who had a lot to say about his company.
MTdeR: Thank you Daniel for granting this interview. Can you tell us about your background?
DE: I am a Master of Science Engineer in Telecomunications with interest in Servers, Linux and the internet. Computers has always been a part of my life; I got my first computer from my father in 1983, an IBM XT with a green monochrome screen. Since then, I have always been interested in where IT was heading. I had my first server during my study time in 1997. I hosted 80 accounts with domains, mostly for students. I have been working both with Nokia and TDC Song (it is a big internet infrastructure company in Nordic countries.)
MTdeR: How did you come up with GetForum.Org?
DE: When the internet started to become an important way of communication, I wanted to be a part of it. I have always been close connected to servers and hosting. In 2004, I started putting up simple guestbooks and forums, and from there everything has been growing little by little to where it is today, running one of the biggest forum services in the world.
MTdeR: What I love about your site is that everything is right at your fingertips. Why so user-friendly?
DE: I have always been interested in making IT (information technology) understandable by everyone, and I feel satisfied when I can bring IT to people. GetForum.Org improves a lot of things, and I feel we are on the right track.
MTdeR: How many sites do you host currently?
DE: We host over 100,000 accounts, which includes forums, blogs and websites.
MTdeR: What sets your site apart from other forum hosting companies?
DE: It is a common fact that the free forum business is a fast and easy way to earn some money without being responsible or giving people your very best efforts in support and quality. Many forum hosts just close down their service without saying anything to anyone. I have always been trying to change that in the best way I can. My effort is to offer free forums with good support, to work very hard on having extra functionality in the forums and offer a lot of extra free services like a domain connected to your forum, email and webmail, WordPress blogs and in the future, eShops.
GetForum.Org offers forums free of advertisements for the English speaking forums, and we also have a affordable system to take away ads for the forums that are not in the English language. Currently, we are having our "GetForum.Org Olympic Games" that we and our forumers enjoy; we love to see how our forumers compete in different branches and we have prepared nice prizes to give to the winners.
MTdeR: I love the fact that whatever you need is available in your Administration Control Panel. Why did you decide to give all access to your users?
DE: We are lucky within GetForum.Org to have good programming skills and server knowledge. Therefore, we have decided to give away everything that is possible to give to our forumers. We are constantly improving our service and developing new features. If we can make our users happy, then we are happy.
MTdeR: The templates are so cool! How many template designers do you utilize?
DE: We use completely free templates made for phpBB2 and phpBB3. The only thing we have done is to implement extra feature support in the templates and to install them in our system.
MTdeR: Can you tell our readers about spam bots? What are they?
DE: Everyone can post a "bad" unwanted message in a forum such as "Please come to my site and buy something". Spam bots are servers programmed to do this automatically. They can behave like humans searching for forums and input forms and even register themselves as users on forums. They can then post hundreds of spam posts in different forums every second.
MTdeR: What does GetForum.Org do to ensure the security on your sites?
DE: We have a great firewall system with very strict rules; we also have security systems to make for example SQL injections impossible.
MTdeR: I heard that GetForum.Org underwent a major security overhaul on August 10th; can you tell us about that?
DE: We have set up a new firewall system for increased security, anti-spam and anti-Dos protections.
MTdeR: Dos or Ddos? What's that?
DE: Dos or Ddos is when someone or several computers are accessing your page so many times, that no one else can access it. There is a way to do this in an efficient way, by making worms. These worms can later be spread throughout the internet, and the creator of the worm can later tell the worms to access a specific web page a hundred times per second from every computer that is infected by it. We have set up a 4-independent anti-Dos protection system.
MTdeR: As with all forum hosting companies, I would guess you encounter those who do not follow the rules. How do you handle them?
DE: We usually tell the forum administrator to do something about it, if nothing happens then we close the forum.
MTdeR: Suppose my forum is getting spammed; how quick is your turnaround to resolving the problem?
DE: We have a lot of spam filters and I have not seen any forum hosted by GetForum.Org that has been full of spam. We do daily backups, and we can quickly restore a forum.
MTdeR: Your support team is superb and always available to help; can you tell us about them?
DE: I am proud to introduce the American Chronicle readers to them:
Get Forum Web Team:
English Service: Agentok, Support Team, Gooner, Support Team, Eclipse2564, Support Team
Spanish Service: MigueltFt, Responsible Support Team, Odisea, Senior Support Team, Wagu, Support Team, Kantun, Support Team, Djunkpid182, Support Team, Beatriz, Moderator, Booster, Moderator
Swedish Service: Peetra, Responsible Support Team, Leon, Support Team, JonatanRaven, Support Team
These are the people that started having a forum in our servers. They all love to help and they have a passion for running forums. They started to help out in general until they eventually became a part of the support team. They work very hard to solve problems and they always escalate problems should they not find any solutions.
MTdeR: How many forums does your company generate in a day?
DE: We are happy to say that GetForum.Org currently averages 250-300 new accounts per day.
MTdeR: WOW! That's incredible. Tell me, are there times because you are so busy when you want to just shut everything down and close up shop? What keeps you going?
DE: I get very tired sometimes when I have been working very hard, sometimes for 10-15 hours per day, but at the end of the day when I see that people are happy for their forums and the service we are able to give them, it gives me more energy and strength. We have been receiving offers to buy our service, but I have decided not to sell my forum service. Forums and Web 2.0 movement have just started on the internet and this is really the future, and I want to have a big role in this endeavor.
MTdeR: There are so many modules to install on your site; can you tell us about them?
DE: Yes, there is a lot of modules or extra functionality made for the phpBB2 forum, and we have done our best to put in as many as we can. Currently, 30 modules are installed. Some of them have small added features like shoutbox, extra statistics, the birthday of users. There are more complex add-ons like a complete portal system with extra pages, photo album, file upload system and shop systems.
MTdeR: Are you surprised with the creativity of the forums that are listed with your company? Do you have any that stand out to you?
DE: Yes, often I get overwhelmed by the creativity of the forum administrators, especially our Spanish-speaking friends. They are intelligent and creative.
I would like to say that we have some forums that we are really proud, such as:
Vuxna Barn till Narcissistiska Föräldrar
This is a Swedish site that has used all our services in an outstanding way, such as webpage, forum, blog with a nice menu all through the site.
MTdeR: What steps do you take to prevent warez and illegal downloading sites trying to host on your servers?
DE: We are using freely available systems for checking our servers, but we also have internal systems and filters installed to prevent warez and illegal content. Our systems are automatically closing forums that have triggered our security systems.
MTdeR: Thank you for all this valuable information, but let´s get personal for a moment. What inspires you?
DE: My inspiration is to make a living out of what I have created myself and also to go into the things I am really good at. When I see people getting happy with what I am good at, my day is really great.
MTdeR: Do you have any particular thought process that best describes you?
DE: Not to ever give up, and to go for the things you really believe in, I prefer to work in a normal work from 8-5 if no one is interested in what I can accomplish. I have had a lot of good jobs but no job has ever made me as happy as I am with GetForum.org and forum services. It is my life.
MTdeR: Do you have any shoutouts you want to give at this time?
DE: I am very pleased and excited about this interview. The biggest thing I hope is that more people would find their web home with us, getting satisfied and happy with our services.
I really would like to encourage people to get into internet, creating a blog or a forum showing the world what you can do or what you know.
Internet and Web 2.0 is the future, let's jump on top of the train together, you will not regret it. You will only regret you did not jump on top of it when you were younger.
MTdeR: I wish you the very best of success and thank you so much for granting me this interview.
DE: And thanks to you Tiara for conducting this interview; it has been my pleasure answering your questions.
Copyright © 2008 Micheline Tiara de Rothschild
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