Ernest Burden III Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 If I wanted to set up a forum like this one and so many others, what's involved? Nothing overly fancy, just the usual functions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kippu Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 domain name , webspace , free forum software(phpbb) and some time to tinker with the settings Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted February 26, 2007 Author Share Posted February 26, 2007 that's it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
demo38 Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Yup. Just download phpbb, extract the files, name the folder and copy everything to your web site to that you would have http://www.yoursite.com/forumname. Once you get the files online, you run the install script through your browser and enter the info it requests, the rest is happy modding! Download: http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php Support Forum: http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mtutaj Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 phpbb is very custumizable as well, I know that jeff is using vBulletin - http://www.vbulletin.com/ but they all pretty much install the same way. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mskin Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Ernest, What for? I set one up at work for our office. Kind of like a clearing house for code, construction and office issues. Installed Internet Information Services on my machine, Installed MySql, Installed PHP server, installed PHPBBS, and then tinkered with it. once IIS, PHP, MySQl are installed and semi understood, the rest was a breeze. --- I guess the key components are... 1. a domain, 2. a host running PHP and some sort of database app, 3. web app (PHPbb) feel free to email me if you have any questions.... mf@digitalvisualstudio.net. im definately not a pro at it, but i have done it succesfuly for 10$. good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mskin Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Ernest, What for? I set one up at work for our office. Kind of like a clearing house for code, construction and office issues. Installed Internet Information Services on my machine, Installed MySql, Installed PHP server, installed PHPBBS, and then tinkered with it. once IIS, PHP, MySQl are installed and semi understood, the rest was a breeze. --- I guess the key components are... 1. a domain, 2. a host running PHP and some sort of database app, 3. web app (PHPbb) not all web hosts offer the php and mysql support, especially the cheapos. feel free to email me if you have any questions.... mf@digitalvisualstudio.net. good luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted February 26, 2007 Author Share Posted February 26, 2007 Ernest, What for? How's the NPRarchitect Forum sound? I've had enough of all you photo-copying louts! Just kidding. I want to advise an organization I work with sometimes. They thought it would be costly to set up an on-line forum, so I just wonder what would be involved. the key components are... 1. a domain, 2. a host running PHP and some sort of database app, 3. web app (PHPbb) not all web hosts offer the php and mysql support, especially the cheapos. The organization has a domain already, I just don't know if the host is already set up to run the PHP stuff. I guess that was really my big question--if any site can run a forum, or if you have to do something special on the server side. I know the host for my own websites, Earthlink, offers the PHP hosting by default now. If its that easy I may set up a forum under one of my domains to test it all out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mskin Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 nice. i was curious if it was in house or out... I would guess that they do have the support. typically the lowest teirs of paid hosting services include the PHP and database support - sometimes only one database is available though. i just know that the cheapos that i use don't always include them. its simple enough to find out... if you know who thier host is you can just go review thier plans. Some webhosts have control panels that allow you to install a number of GNU liscense PHP apps without any FTP at all... very straight forward. If not, i have found the instructions included with most of the free PHP apps to be very thorough. good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vizwhiz Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Ernest, come on This is really a EBIII for (vice) President forum, right? you are just Trying To get some campaign donations To spend for NPR? National Public Radio??? Nice Pretty Renderings??? are you going To ban people and kick people out for NON-NPR? just wondering Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted February 26, 2007 Author Share Posted February 26, 2007 National Public Radio??? Nice Pretty Renderings??? are you going To ban people and kick people out for NON-NPR? Right! I will not allow anyone to use my forum unless they can come up with a unique idea of what NPR might stand for. A forum could be useful in-house, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 I would HIGHLY reccomend you not use PHPBB. It's the same one that is used on the Chaos website and it's horrible. Especially the search capabilities. I've done a TON of research on forums for MSSQL (Microsoft SQL server databases) and mySQL databases and I can tell you that vbulletin, the forum software I use and that CGtalk uses is THE best one out there. Hands down, plain and simple. Using anything else is nuts IMHO. Yes PHPBB is free, but it's contantly hacked, has a horrible UI and searching and no support, which for a corporation is a must. vBulletin is only about $150 a year to keep your update support and they have REALLY good support. Something you don't get when you use opensource applications. Granted you still have to use mySQL (also open source), but the vB guys have great support staff and forums if mySQL gives you any problem. I am running vB on a windows machine under IIS6, but it's best suited for Linux machines. Not that I've really had any problems with it. If you ask on the vBulletin forums there are hosts that can set up the vB forums and databases for you. You can also pay the vB guys to do it for a small fee as well. If your client is not technically savy I would not reccomend them trying to set up Linux/IIS, PHP, and mySQL as you need to know a fair bit about webservers. If they get shared hosting the latter comment is moot. Just get a host that sets this all up for them or pay the vB guys. my 2 cents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vizwhiz Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 Ernest, sorry for The attempted jokes i actually had an online Forum for a local Autocaddict User Group AzLUGnuts, but after not paying attention for 1 month i came back and it had been infiltrated by E. European hackers who were posting all kinds of etc promo information and viagra headings and etc b*llsh*t make sure That you can BAN people and LOCK out certain email or ISP addresses or else, you are just asking for Trouble i dont want anyone else To have To deal with what i have already been Thru i ended up having To shut The entire Forum To avoid The Non Professional Ridicule Nice Party, Really oops Jeffs Forum post just posted after i had saved my message yes i was using The PHP free forum and got in Trouble for using it Thanks Nice Painting, Randy (o no i cant say That, i just had To edit This last line) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 How good does it have to be? If it's just a small thing you could just use something like freebb.com, myfreeforum.org, groups.google.com, or one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_farms It would save considerable hassle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted February 27, 2007 Share Posted February 27, 2007 i agree that the software used on this board is superior to anything i have used on any other forum. for some reason i thought it was a couple of thousand a year. ....maybe the forum could be placed inside of a .htacess directory to prevent hacking. ...the only problem, the client would have to log in twice, but at least it would be private. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mskin Posted February 27, 2007 Share Posted February 27, 2007 It depends on what the board is used for. mine is intended for a closed intranet, accessible to under 100 employees... etc. Robust features are not required. I have heard many hacking stories with phpbb, but its never happened to me, because my board is not public. in my case - PHPBB works great. I most definately would not rely on PHPBB to build a public board, agreed... but i don't think it is completely void of worth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted February 27, 2007 Author Share Posted February 27, 2007 Thanks, everybody. You've helped me get my thoughts together on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAllusionisst Posted February 27, 2007 Share Posted February 27, 2007 Jeff is completely right about phpBB being hacked all the time, I personally switched to vBulletin after repeated hacks of my site and haven't been really hacked since. phpBB is free so every 'wanna be' hacker has access to the code and ways to figure out how to hack your site while vBulletin is commercial and protects their code. vBulletin is also much easier to customize. Just my two cents worth, it is actually a bit of work getting things set up and to have everything hacked and have to re-install is a real pain. FWIW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunGlare Posted March 2, 2007 Share Posted March 2, 2007 True. my Bulletin Board was shot down by my own hosting company. Someone started using it to send spam. Also if you dont want to spend hours finding way to cooperate with the raw code, to make your publishers life easier shop for hosting company that serves CPanel. Saves a lot of time. Also when shoppig for hositing find out what you're getting, sometimes you can get this forum for extra $2 per month. cPanel also can help you runnig other services: shopping carts, blogs, ... heres demo http://x3demob.cpx3demo.com:2082/frontend/x3/index.html use it just like it yours. Have fun! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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