(This paper was written by SYSOP in 1987,  I have made
modifications to it.  Preston Burner, Sysop Hiram's Oasis RBBS
703 938 4990    February, 1991)

          So you want to start a BBS?

Preface:  read BBS-USE.ZIP!!  Be a Bulletin Board user before
even thinking about operating one.  The  comments below are
understatements.

          1   Introduction
          
I was asked about starting a BBS. Rather than give a short,
private response, I thought I'd take the time to provide a more
detailed description.
          
          First of all, it's almost impossible to overestimate
the time needed to run a good BBS. A lot of time is spent on
administrative BS. Then there's the time you spend on managing
files which to keep, which to review/plug, which to trash. The
largest chunk of time is spent on messages answering questions
(like this one), helping new callers, moderating threads and
conferences, etc.

  I spend many hours preparing the Short Talk Bulletins,
 Scottish Rite Journal, Philalethes, and other publications for
 the board.  They are indexed and cataloged.


          In this paper I'll attempt to give you some idea of
what you're letting yourself in for, but I'll probably overlook
some of the areas which you'll need to know about. Don't worry,
SYSOPs as a breed are very helpful and most will be happy to help
you out with any other problems you run into. Feel free to ask
your favorite SYSOP for help in any area.
          
          Since I use RBBS from Ted Mack and Ken Goosens, the
following discussion is specific to that system, but most of the
areas will be similar for whichever system you select.   RBBS is
FREE and is available from this board.   PCBOARD is the other
"BEST" board, but it cost about $170 for one node.

          2   What's in it for me?
          
          The first question you should ask yourself is "why am I
thinking about doing this?" Hopefully it's not to make money. You
will surely end up paying more in terms of hardware, software,
supplies, and telephone charges than you will ever take in from
user donations. At best, you can hope to recover some of your
operating expenses.  The Computer Club pays for the telephone
line, the 9600 modem, and for printing and mailing the newsletter
and membership into several of the topflight local boards.--the
computer is my property, and |I| pay the electric bill outlay for
equipment.
          
          Well, what else can you expect? Lots. If you provide a
high quality service and attract a good set of users, you will
benefit from it in several ways:
          
            1. Some Sysops have boards to get others to upload
Software to them.  I discourage users from uploading for two
reasons.  1), Users tend to upload OLD JUNK, GAMES, and other non
essential files.   2), I have only a 30 MB hard drive and am
forced to constantly prune it for space.  To get  good files, I
visit about 10 high quality boards evgfery morning starting at
about 0430h.  I personally know the operators of these boards and
I am assured that the files are clean and genuine.  (There are
many bogus files).  Viruses are NOT a problem, but we sysops
check for them anyway.
            
            2. Information - BBS's have become the best place to
share information about new hardware, software, vendors, books,
etc. They are also the best place to get help with hardware or
software problems. The spirit of sharing or, as the Capitol PC
User's Group likes to describe it, "users helping users" is alive
and thriving on the bulletin boards.
            
            3. Friends and business contacts - it's not unusual
for casual conversations on bulletin boards to develop into
friendships, business arrangements, and sometimes even marriages.
            
            4. Karma - call it what you like, but by offering a
good bulletin board service, you're giving something back to the
community which helped you along with free software, advice,
etc. Without getting mystical about it, I firmly believe that
there is a balance to the universe, or as the Beatles said, "the
love you take is equal to the love you make." Or call it the
Golden Rule.

            5. NEW MASONS -- Already more than 10 men have asked
for petitions and are now Masons.

            6. The Joy of spreading the Good Word about
Freemasonry--

          3   Hardware
          
          Well, let's go over some of this in a bit of detail.
First of all, hardware. Naturally, you need at least a PC, a 286
machine is the minium, even though an XT will work.  {HO (Hiram's
Oasis) had an XT / 30MB for 4 years and it worked well}
monitor, hard disk, and modem. you should have 1.2 and 1.44 High
Density floppy drives for compatability with others. Don't assume
you can just run the BBS when you're not using it - you really
have to dedicate the hardware to the bulletin board, otherwise
both you and your callers will get frustrated at the intermittent
system availability.  A dedocated phone line is VITAL as is 24
hour operation
          
          You really need at least a 40 megabyte hard disk. most
good boards have 200-600meg HDs.  Your BBS software, utilities,
message files and logs will easily consume 4-5 megs. You'll be
surprised at how quickly the rest of it fills up with files for
downloading. A larger disk minimizes the frequency of required
maintenance cycles. (about $400 with controller card).
          
          I prefer a monochrome monitor. Since your system will
mostly be showing text data, you'll find a monochrome monitor
easier on your eyes as well as being less expensive (about
$100-150).
          
          Of course, you need another PC for your own usage and
for BBS maintenance. One alternative is to run on an AT class
machine with two partitions (DoubleDOS, Taskview, or Desqview)
and two monitors, but you should realize that having this type of
complicated operating environment is much more fragile and will
fail with certain ill-behaved software.
          
          Obviously you also need a second phone line. It's
helpful to also have a second modem - this way you can test
changes to the board (e.g. doors, new BBS releases, utilities)
without having to wait for someone to call in and try things out.
          
          I would suggest that for the BBS, you get the best
modem you can afford. Modems are NOT created equal, and Hayes
compatable probably is NOT.  Many of the inexpensive modems which
promise Hayes compatibility, really are not fully compatible and
may not operate correctly when used for a BBS. Additionally, the
more expensive modems have better equalization circuitry which
will give your callers cleaner connections. Also, consider
getting at least a 2400 bps modem - your users with faster modems
will appreciate the greater throughput. I recommend  that you
have a 9600 bps modem. Don`t try to save money on a modem!
          
          You should probably consider adding an EMS card
eventually. Whether you use it as a RAM disk or disk cache, it
will provide a dramatic increase in system performance and save
wear and tear on your hard disk.

          Oh yeah, you need disks -- lots of disks. You should
have at least two sets of backup disks and alternate between
them. Also, you'll want to periodically move some things offline:
outdated or low-usage files, older messages, caller logs, etc.
Naturally you could just trash this stuff, but I find it
occasionally helpful to keep them available for reference.


          4   Utility software
          
          While none of this is required, you'll find that having
the right tools will ease your workload and improve your system
performance. For most of these there are public domain or
shareware alternatives. In general, I prefer the commercial
packages - you will be using these a lot and for most of them
will require reasonable support and updates.
          
            1. Backup utility - unless you can afford a tape
drive ($500-1000), you really need a backup utility. I prefer
Fastback (about $100).  A tape backup us almost highly advised.
My ultimate backup is our second and sister RBBS in Shanandoah
VA.  It is Hiram's Oasis II

               Even if you can afford a tape drive, you might
want to consider adding a second hard disk instead (about $300
assuming you put both disks on a single controller) and use it
strictly for backups. This is a lot faster, but not quite as
reliable since a huge power surge could easily wipe out both
disks (not to mention a fire).  While out of town for 2 months
last year, I lost my HD due to electrical storms continually
downing the power before the HD could restart.  Had to do a Low
Level reformat upon arrival back home.   The Tape BU was really
worth it then!!
            
            2.  Spinrite to run about every 6 months.

            3. Disk organizer - with all of the disk activity to
message bases, system logs, files, etc., eventually your hard
disks will become hopelessly fragmented, increasing your system
overhead. A disk organizer will defragment your files, minimizing
disk arm movement. I use Norton Speed Disk.  PC Tools is good
too.
            
            4. Disk Maintenance utility - considering that your
system will be running night and day for months on end without
interruption (hopefully), eventually you will have some disk
problems. The right maintenance utility can sometimes save you
from having to do a full disk restore. I use PCTOOLS from Central
Point Software (about $30), but a better choice might be the Mace
Utilities (about $100). Another possibility is the Norton
Utilities.
            
            5. Editors I'm sure you have your own favorites
here, so whatever I say will be ignored, but I would suggest that
you need two different editors - a full-function wordprocessor
for composing lengthy messages, bulletins, etc. and a quick
little editor for making little fixes to directories,
configuration files, etc.   I use QEDIT, shareware from Sammy
Mitchel ($35) for all the little things. The nice thing about
QEDIT is that it's real fast and doesn't require any other files
for its operation. Also you can configure it to be similar to
whatever other editor you're comfortable with. Of course, there
are hundreds of alternatives.  I also use a memory resident
program called QDISK33 to manipulate files on the board without
taking the BBS off line.
          
          I'd really suggest that you not stint on these tools.
It's like working on a car -- the right tool can turn a difficult
task into a real breeze, and the less time you spend on
maintenance the better. You'll have plenty of other things which
will consume your time.

          
          Tom Mack's RBBS-PC is the grandaddy of PC BBS's. It has
numerous add-ons (utilities, doors), and may be the widest used
(with PCBoard nipping at its heels). It's semi-public domain
(free, no donation requested, but copyrighted). It suffers from
the lack of control over its operation - most RBBS systems will
differ in details of their operation and every caller has to
learn each board's individual operation.
          
          FIDO is another widely used system and it features the
ability to have national and international messages, conferences,
and file transfer. Within each region there is a designated
gateway node and all of the FIDO boards will contact their
gateways in the middle of the night for message and file
transfer. On the negative side, FIDO is slow and suffers from, I
think, an awkward user interface. FIDO is also distributed as
public domain (or shareware, I forget).
          

          6   Getting Started
          
          You'll probably find it fairly easy to do the initial
BBS setup. RBBS comes with a couple of hundred pages of
documentation which explains how to set up your modem, file
directories, conferences, etc. You should be able to get going by
just taking most of the defaults, though as you become familiar
with all of the features you'll eventually want to start
customizing things.
          
          I'd suggest avoiding things like doors, graphic
displays, conferences, networks, timed-events, and the like until
you become fairly comfortable with the system's operational
characteristics. Start out small with a few directories and
bulletins until you know where you want to go.
          
          There are a number of files you'll have to create to get
going:
          
            1. Welcome message - this is what your caller sees
each time he or she calls your system (though it may be skipped).
You should at least identify your system here. Some SYSOPs put
incredible amounts of energy into designing flashy displays for
these. I don't.
            
            2. New user message - a file which is displayed to
every new caller the first time they logon. This should provide
them with a brief list of rules and let them know where to go for
more information.
            
            3. Level message - a unique file for each level of
user you define for your system: unregistered, bad guy,
registered, participating, contributing, visiting SYSOP, etc. You
should let the user know where they are and what to do next
(answer the questionnaire, upload files, etc.).
            
            4. News - this is where you may put any daily news
announcements (system going down for maintenance, important
events, etc.).
            
            5. Questionnaire - this file contains a list of
questions which will be asked of your callers if they issue the
[S]cript questionnaire command. Most SYSOPs use this for caller
validation.
            
            6. Bulletins - Here's where you may put all the
detail information you want to make available: rules, helpful
hints, system statistics, honor role of users, etc. Feel free to
use any of the ECFB bulletins (with proper accreditation) you
think worthwhile.
          

          Several of these are optional and there are a few
additional files you may choose to provide: customized menus,
additional questionnaires, goodbye message or questionnaire,
additional versions of these files for each conference, graphics
versions of these, etc.

          7   File Directories
          
          Naturally, a fair amount of your caller activity will
be uploading and downloading files (mostly downloading). You
should organize your files in a way which makes sense for your
user community: helpful files for novices, disk utilities,
communications, etc. You will probably find it helpful to set up
a separate directory for each category. There are a number of
utilities around which will help with this.
          


          8   Decisions, Decisions
          
          You have a number of decisions to make on how you will
run your
          board. I can't begin to touch the surface of all these,
but will
          describe a few of them.
          
            1. Open or restricted access? - will you let anyone
dial in and access all of your board's facilities (downloads,
messages, conferences, doors, etc.)? Or will you restrict access
to those who have registered, answered a questionnaire, read your
bulletins, mailed in a form, sent you a check, etc.? Many SYSOPs
restrict downloads to those who have answered a questionnaire and
been validated. A few go so far as to personally call each and
every new user and chat with them before granting full access.
Hiram's Oasis is set up so that the newuser must answer a
questionaire which asks for name, address, phone, whether a mason
ro member of an appendant body or supported oraginization, and
whether a Shriner, and finally a statement that Hiram's Oasis is a
Club Bulletin Board and would you like to become a member or a
friend.  This information is kept confidential and is used to write
an intorductory letter to those who might be interested.  our
database of new users has more that 1000 nemes (many others were
not complete or were duplicates.)  About 30% of the new users
indicate an interest and these receive a letter.  Of those letters
sent, 10% are returnd for bad address, about 30% resopnd with a
check for $10 (the yearly dues).  We have a built in scheme to
automatically eleminate those who are not interested.There is also
an EPILOG file that is shown when those whose user level is less
than 8. (HIRAMCNF.ZIP contains a full explination of drives,
directories, user levels and such).  All full and known users have
a user level of >7.  A newuser gets 5.  The questionaire has the
power to change userlevel as the caller responds to the questions. 
If the caller says NO to the question "Are you a Freemason or a
member of and appandant body etc." his level remains 5--if YES,
user level is raised to 6.  Now the EPILOG file changes user level
too.  EPILOG, which appears when the user logs OFF, asks again
whether the user is interested in becomming a Member or a Friend.
If the responce is No, the user level is dropped 1, if Yes, it
remains a 5.  Should a user call 3 times and answer the epilog
question NO each time, the fourth call would be a "Lockout".  This
is an automatic method of removing the disinterested callers.
User level 5 may download (30 minutes) any text file from the /ARTS
directory--no others.  The level 6 users can download (30 min.)
from all directories, but they still get the EPILOG that tends to
remove any but the serious.  I am leiniant with long distance
callers,  I give them a 7 which is open, but 45 minutes.

 
            
            2. Free or pay? - will you accept, request, or demand
payment for use of the board? There are pros and cons to each of
these alternatives. If you accept payments at all, then you are
committing yourself to keeping the board available and probably
allowing your paying callers to tie up your board without any
other participation. Is it worth the $20 or so to you to have a
paying caller logon every few days and do nothing but download?
If you demand payment then you may be excluding people who
could possibly enrich your board in other ways. On the other
hand, if your board is totally free and open, then you may find
yourself swamped with people who do nothing but download.

KENA COMPUTER CLUB Membership is $10/year.  Interested users
have been happy to pay that much.
            
               I would suggest that, until your board is fairly
well established, you not insist on payment. You may wish to
provide incentives for people to contribute money to your boards
operation - special conferences or download directories, extra
time, first crack at new files, etc.
            
            3. Monitor downloads? - Many SYSOPs monitor upload to
download ratios, at least for their non-paying callers. Typical
is requiring at least one upload for each 10 or 20 downloads. A
few SYSOPs are tougher, demanding 1:3 or 1:5 ratios. I guess the
question is whether you're doing this in order to collect
software or if you're trying to provide a public service. I'd
suggest being fairly loose about this until you have established
a good reputation for your board.
            
            4. Games and pictures? - If you allow games and
graphic pictures (known as Readmacs, often R-rated) on your
board, then you will certainly get your share of immature callers
of all ages. On the other hand, games are a important part of
most people's computer usage. What to do? What to do? Beats me.
(HO has none of these)
            5. 300 bps callers? - Many SYSOPs restrict 300 bps
callers since they tend to be in the category of immature callers
and they can't make as efficient use of your facilities as
callers with faster modems. Again, by doing this you may deprive
yourself of good, contributing callers who happen to lack a
faster modem. I allow 300 bps callers on the ECFB, but restrict
their downloading activities to the wee hours of the morning.
            
            6. Operator page? - Do you want callers to be able to
page you by sounding an alarm on the PC speaker? It's nice to be
helpful to new callers, but I'm amazed at the number of people
who feel free to page you in the middle of the night. If your PC
will be located within hearing distance of your bedroom, I'd
suggest you disallow the page bell, especially if you're married
to someone like my wife, who's a light sleeper and doesn't like
being awakened.
          
          Well there are hundreds of other decisions you'll have
to make to set up your board, but this should give you some feel
for the kind of stuff you're getting into.

          9   Maintenance
          
          9.1  Daily
          
          You really need to check your board at least once a
day. At first this might seem like fun, but after awhile it
becomes a bit of a drag.
          
            1. Message check - you really MUST read (at least
scan) every message on your board. Your standards are your own,
of course, but I'd suggest making sure that no one is promoting
software piracy, phone phreaking, or whatever else you consider
offensive. Some SYSOPs disallow bad language; I don't feel
strongly about that, but don't want to have anyone leave abusive
messages on the board.
            
            2. Registration - you should promptly register new
callers, especially if you require that they complete a
questionnaire to gain access to your board. It's discouraging for
someone to make several long-distance calls before they're
allowed to read messages or download files.

(I mail a letter of introduction to those who indicate an interest.
About 25% of these respond with a check for membership).
            
            3. File check - you should do at least a quick check
of any uploaded files to ensure that people haven't uploaded
commercial software. If possible, you should verify that the
software isn't a "Trojan" or "worm". If you do this, try out new
software on a system without hard disks (or one on which you can
disable the hard disk). Also, there is some public domain
software around which will attempt to discover or protect you
from such software. Be especially careful with uploads from
people you're not yet familiar with.
            
            4. Respond to questions - your callers will really
appreciate it if you're consistent in replying to their questions
within a day or so. You must be responsive if you want to attract
a good set of callers.
            
            5. Defragment - I'd suggest that you run your
defragmenter (disk optimizer, etc.) daily. It'll surely improve
your overall system performance. I include Vopt as part of my
AUTOEXEC.BAT.
            
            6. Reboot - PCs have gotten a lot more reliable in
the last few years, but I'd still encourage you to reboot on a
daily basis; this way you'll be starting out each day with a
clean slate.
          
          
          9.2  Weekly
          
          There are several maintenance activities which are needed
every
          week or so.
          
            1. File maintenance - distribute your uploaded files
into their proper directories.  Take the time to verify that you
aren't keeping several copies of the same program with different
names, or that you don't have out-of-date versions of a package. If
you let file maintenance drag on for a month or so, you will find
yourself faced with an almost insurmountable task.

(We have programs that keep the files straight and I use QDISK33 to
maintain the baord while it is on line.)

            2. Backups - it's a real drag, but you really should
do full backups on a weekly basis. At the very least, you should
back up your user directory and message bases.
            
            3. Message cleanup - if you have an active message
base, you should probably go though it once a week, deleting
older or irrelevant messages. I usually protect the non-general
interest messages (thank-yous, etc.) so that they're only visible
by the intended recipient. Your other callers will appreciate not
having to sit through this stuff.
          
          
          9.3  Monthly
          
          You may need to do these things more or less frequently
depending on your board's activity.
          
            1. User maintenance - eventually your user directory
will have a large number of entries for people who haven't called
in quite a while. They may have lost interest, moved, or died. It
doesn't matter. People who haven't called in a while should be
purged from your user directory. I give unvalidated users (those
who never completed the questionnaire) 30 days, 90 days for
validated users, and 6 months or longer for those at higher
levels.
            
               Also, you will probably wish to sort your user
directory so that your best callers are at the top of the file
(this will slightly speed up their logons). PCBoard comes with
another excellent utility, PCBEdit, which lets you sort and edit
your user directory.
            
            2. Message base maintenance - you must periodically
prune your message base of outdated or deleted messages. PCBoard
has a maximum limit of 1000 messages per conference, but the
larger the message base, the longer it will take your users to
logon and switch conferences. Fortunately there is a SYSOP
command you can use to compress your message base. PCBoard will
copy only the active messages to a new file and leave your old
file available as a backup. I compress and save these backups on
floppies.
            
            3. Caller log - PCBoard produces a log of all
significant caller activity (logons, uploads, downloads,
messages, doors, etc.). For an active board this can easily grow
quite large. You should probably start a new log at least once a
month. Also you may wish to run your log through one of the
analysis utilities (see below) which will create a system usage
file you may wish to post as a bulletin.
            
            4. Full backups - C'mon now - at least once a month!
If you use Fastback it will only take a half-hour (and 40-50
diskettes) for a 20 meg backup.
          
          
          9.4  More than monthly
          
          Here's a list of other things you'll want (or need) to
do on a periodic basis:
          
            1. Hardware maintenance - especially if you're a
smoker, I'd suggest you give your machine a good cleaning every
so often. I dust or clean all the exposed surfaces. Also, I
vacuum around the keyboard, vents, etc. Clean your monitor! Dusty
or greasy monitors will make it hard to read.
            
            2. Software upgrades - you'll probably want to take
advantage of the new features in upgrades to PCBoard and the
various utilities. I'd suggest keeping copies of the previous
versions until you've verified the correct operation of new
releases in your environment.
            
            4. Bulletin maintenance - you probably need to go
through your bulletins periodically and verify that they're still
accurate for your system. Of course, you may need to do this more
frequently if you maintain bulletins of current events, software
or magazine reviews, etc.

          10  Utilities
          
          There are a number of public-domain or shareware
utilities around which will help you run a high-quality BBS
operation. You can find these on most of the larger BBS's,
especially those which have a SYSOP's conference. I couldn't hope
to describe all of the available utilities (besides, it changes
every week), but here's an idea of the type of stuff currently
available.
          
            1. PCBFiler - this one comes with PCBoard and was
described previously. It helps you do file and directory
maintenance in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it
manually. Essential!
            
            2. PCBEdit - also described previously, this is also
distributed as part of PCBoard. It allows you to edit all of your
user directory information. You may also use this to sort and
print your user directory and adjust their access level based on
upload/download ratios.
            
            3. QNE - a nice little utility from Scott Pazur (of
the Fleamarket BBS which gives you a fast, simple way of updating
your PCBoard news file.
            
            4. Arcvue, ARCDoor, PCBArc - doors which allow your
users to inspect an archived file without having to first
download them. I use Earl Beachler's Arcvue door since I support
non-IBM PC callers and Arcvue allows them to extract files for
subsequent download (in case their system doesn't support the ARC
file format).
            
            5. CALLSTAT - analyzes your caller's log and
generates a file of interesting caller statistics (files most
frequently downloaded, number of callers in various categories,
bulletin/conference/door usage, etc. There are several utilities
which provide this capability. This is the one I use.
            
            6. PCBMSG, PCBMFIX - allows you to recover a damaged
message base. PCBMFIX also allows you to edit portions of a
message. Since I wrote PCBMSG I'm a bit partial to it.
            
            7. PCBMT - selectively copies portions of a message
base (based on message number, subject, protection, etc.) to an
ASCII text file. Includes a utility to summarize all of the
message subjects. Written by, ahem, myself. I use it to create
files out of some of the more interesting message threads.
            

            8. File transfer doors - there are several utilities
around which allow callers to transfer files using protocols not
currently supported by PCBoard (e.g. Kermit, Zmodem, etc.).
          
          This doesn't begin to touch the surface. There are
utilities around for viewing messages and callers logs, creating
databases of your user's directory info, summarizing your
questionnaires, doors for playing games, etc. It seems that many
of the PCBoard SYSOPs are also programmers and it doesn't take
much for them to generate new utilities based on real or
perceived needs.

RBBS has comparable files to assist the Sysop.

          11  Where to go from here
          
          If, after all this, you're still convinced you want to
start a BBS, I'd suggest you first decide which BBS system you'd
like to run. If you don't know, then dial into a number of your
local boards and decide which of these is easiest for you, as a
user, to navigate. Whichever is easiest to use will probably also
be easiest to operate. Performance is also of crucial importance.
It's no fun to pay long-distance charges to use a slow board. The
meter keeps on running, whether or not you're doing anything
useful.
          
          Once you've settled on a system, establish contact with
one of the larger boards in your area of that system. If the
board is public domain or shareware, you'll probably be able to
download it from there. Make sure the SYSOP understands what
you're doing so that he or she will be more forgiving of the
large amount of downloading you're about to do. PCBoard has a
demo version available if you wish to check it out before
shelling out your money. You may find it helpful to experiment
with that (but it's really not suitable for operating an actual
BBS).
          
          Now it's up to you! Just remember that a BBS without
callers isn't very worthwhile. Be nice to them -- you'll reap
dividends in the long run. It's up to you to provide an
interesting and entertaining forum for people to visit. The files
and messages are for their benefit, not for yours. Also keep in
mind that every BBS started somewhere - you'll make mistakes,
but if you work at it, you'll end up with an operation you can be
proud of.
          
          Finally, keep in mind that there are hundreds
(thousands?) of other SYSOPs who have already gone through the
hassle you've set out to deal with. The vast majority of these
people will be happy, even eager, to help you along. Feel free to
ask them how they've dealt with the problem with which you're
struggling. You'll be amazed at just how helpful we can be.

