I own a domain I purchased through GoDaddy, and I have a hosting and website through them. Bravenet says that if I copy some code to my website, I'll have a discussion group there, but Bravenet does NOT say this works with *any* website, and I am curious if it only works with Bravenet hosting and websites. Alternatively if the Bravenet premium hosting of a discussion group can include the essentials of a website, then maybe I won't have to use that Godaddy site and can leave it for something else, but I can't tell (because I don't find Bravenet very easy to navigate or very informative) whether the bravenet discussion group will allow me to upload files or not. So I don't know if I need the Godaddy website to have website features; or if the Bravenet discussion group premium without ads, will have what I need, and I can't tell where to find out. My discussion group is to discuss a multi-chapter book, and I want to upload a bunch of text files and image files to relate to each chapter; and have a part of the discussion relate to each chapter and be organized; and I don't know if a website is needed or not to keep things straight. Thanks, Brent

i might look at other forums if you want to use it for what you are saying here and things

you can put bravenet services on any sites pretty much if you have it here, there or anywhere

Bravenet don't say you can do that because it is a total "no brainer". Bravenet are primarily providers of a general toolset for webmasters. Hosting itself is a very recent addition to that toolset.

What am I missing? If you have a domain name and hosting with Godaddy, why are you here at all?

I looked at the Godaddy hosting plans, and even the Economy plan gives you all the language support you can stand (MySQL, PHP, perl, etc..). For your own forum use you can use Simple Machines Forum — SMF, which is offered as an add-on. I would guess that SMF on your web site would be far more configurable than anything that Bravenet might have to offer.

Bravenet designs their tools so that they can be used with almost any web hosting. Their tools are hosted on Bravenet's servers, so all you really get is a link to the service. If your pretty good a web page design, you can make it appear to be from your site, but it's always hosted on Bravenet servers.

I recommend that you explore the offerings on the service that you already pay for, before you start looking around at other alternatives.