It depends, really.
From a technical standpoint, it may be a tad bit difficult at times, especially with forum upgrades and back ups, which tend to bug at times. Nothing a clean reinstall plus a roll back to an older back up can't save, though.
The rest is up to you and to the type of forum you're opening. If you start a console forum, you're certain that it would be harder to moderate than, say, a forum about a particular car.
You want to open a political forum, this may make your head hurt a bit, though...
And in the end it's really up to the person mentality. Some are more sensible than others, as you know, and it's really advised to be the detached type when you're moderating a "sensible" forum.
How do you start it if you are not web savvy?
Well, it won't be too hard to start if you're not too
LAMP allergic and you're willing to learn.
Putting together a forum is really not an adventure of epic proportions as long as you're tech-savvy. Most forum packages out there have simple step by step install systems.
I can install and config for you any boards you want, but it would be better if you learned the basic know-how yourself so you can fix quickly any potential issue that may appear.
I propose you to train yourself with a local AMP (Apache the web server, MySQL the database, PHP the programming language) server. That way, you won't have to deal with the slow and limited servers from free hosts, nor have to pay for a host right away.
There's a great French program (its translated in English alright, don't panic, sacrebleu) that installs and lets you config an AMP server easily.
http://www.easyphp.org/
Read the comprehensive FAQ that comes with it, it should adress any of the practical questions you may have. It's really easy to install, config and run, I don't think you'd have any issues with it.
Now, with your server up and running, you need a forum or board package. There are a ton of theses, some are free, other are sharewares, some have a lot of options and capabilities while others are really limited and bare, etc...
Personally, I'd recommand you, at least for a start, two free board packages, MyBB and phpBB.
Try MyBB first, given that it has
a lot more features than the more "streamlined" phpBB.
http://www.mybboard.com/
http://www.phpbb.com/
Both are as easy to install than each others, and you can obviously install the two forums (in two different folders) on your AMP server using the same database (MyBB and phpBB don't use the same prefix, so there won't be any issues) if you want to test both.
Both packages use simple step-by-step visual installation methods, just enter the asked info and click "next" until your forum is up and running.
Seeing that you'll have the Apache server running locally, you won't need to have a FTP client to upload your files (the board package in this case) to the server. But once you'll have a dedicated host, you'll need one. Here too, there are a lot of FTP clients to choose from, the best ones are sharewares (FlashFXP), but tons of freewares are more than enough for basic and casual operations.
I'd recommad you the freewares SmartFTP and Filezilla, in that order.
http://www.smartftp.com/
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
I won't explain how the basic interactions between FTP server <> FTP client work, because I suspect that you should know about that already. If you don't try reading the FAQ/Help file from the file, or just do ask in this thread, I'll try to explain it quickly, if somebody didn't already done just that, of course.
Once everything up and running, try to familiarise yourself with the administration tools. Simply put, try every functions of the panel just to see what in does in facts.
All in all, you can have your AMP server with your test board running on your PC in less than an hour if you are already silghtly web savvy, and in a few hours if you're learning from scratches. And you'd be ready to learn about the theme customisations and the forum hacks, in no time.
Of course, don't hesitate to ask, if you do encounter any problem with the various installs and tools.
Does it pay for itself with ads?
No.
Well, if you have a
really successful forum and if you have a low cost server, maybe...
