Just Starting Out

[Time To Shine]

So I have been looking into getting this for some time now. What I can't really understand is where do I even begin? I want to make a website soley of a forum and I just don't know where to go to get a good, trust worthy server. What is the best places to go for vBulletin? I am just going to get the VBulletin Publishing Suite Only for now. Is that enough to make a full forum site? How would I install it? Can I use vBulletin offline? Im wondering if I can buy vBulletin now and then make everything just the way I want it, view it, use it just on my computer, then when I feel it is perfect, then go out and get a web url and server and post everything on there. Is that even possible?
Sorry for all the questions. Thanks in advanced for your time.

[Fredman]

You can buy a domain name for $10, you can get two years of a server for $120 total, and the doc will answer all of your other questions.
I think you are much better off with just doing the above and getting it onto a web server, because I seriously doubt you have all the apps on your home PC that are required to run Vbulletin. Again, read the doc on 'requirements'.

[Stallyon]

Buy a domain for $10, get some shared hosting from your favourite hosting company (some as little as a few bucks a month), install your vBulletin suite, and then tinker with it in "offline" mode. That way you can see it as the admin, but the rest just get an "under construction" type message.

To run it on your computer (a Windows PC for example, you'd need something like Apache or similar web server application for Windows, PHP for Windows and MySQL for Windows). That should be enough to get you started, but I'd recommend just getting a domain and some cheap hosting. Startup costs could be as little as $15 if you've already purchased the suite.