How does one go about making a forum website?

I decided to create one for my town so I can create a huge amounts of leads and learn more about my town than the public officials. It will cover everything from restaurants to politics to things to see and do.

I assume by forum, you mean discussion boards. Find a hoster that provides you with some php apps, a discussion board being one of those. Install and configure it, that simple. In addition, you'll likely want an intro page that allows users to link to various sections of your overall site.

Be warned however that discussion boards are time consuming. They require constant monitoring to uphold the rules that need to be in place.

A nice touch to any such site is a mapping function from either Google or Yahoo. Added to that could be an advertising section for local businesses, offering specials to your viewers. Both of these functions are database driven, which then ties nicely into a bulk mailer so you can keep in touch with those that like your site and opt in to recieve emails from you, which of course include specials from your business partners.

I want to do a discussion board type forum like this one but all about my town. I was thinking the front page would be my agent website but maybe I should create a separate one so that it could grow as its own independent site.

Im looking at Go Daddy and they offer 200GB disk space and 2,000GB of Bandwidth. Is this enough Bandwidth for a forum?

Plenty

I run a board for a publication I own at http://www.famosomagazine.com/forum. You can see how I have it set up there and I used PhpBB which is a FREE message board but if you are not skilled at php coding or atleast know basic website design and coding I would go for Vbulletin or Proboards

Most php hosting companies have free software that you can use to set up a forum like this one. Ask the company if they have Fantastico. This is a free package of software that is easy to install and use.

I am currently using bluehost to host my site. They have fantastico which includes forum scripts. I have not used the forum script but have installed others. Fantastico is definitly the easiest way to go if you are not experienced with php