I desperately need help in designing a full-blown message board forum!

[Alhadis]

Heya, guys! My name's Alhadis, and I'm new to this board! :) I'm pleased to meet all of you!

I came to this forum hoping that you guys would give me step-by-step help in helping me to design a message board forum! I know it might be a pretty big thing, but I really need your help! So if a patient user could be so generous as to help me out, I'd be very much appreciative! :)

Okay! Well, I'm using 1st Page 2000 (since I'm pretty much an amateur when it comes to web-page designing!) and I'm eager to design a proper, laid-out message board forum for our site! (The exact type of forum I'm looking at is mentioned at http://boards.wizards.com (boards.wizard.com)! You know... accounts, avatars, smilies... that sort of thing!) I'm not after the basic type of forum... I'm after something just like this one! :)

Can anybody please help me? Thanks in advance! :D Much appreciated!

- Alhadis!

[Vladdy]

...if you give me one good reason for reinventing the wheel...;)

[Alhadis]

Errr... what do you mean?

Could you please be a little more elaborative?

[Vladdy]

There are quite a few forums available for free for both ASP and PHP, why write your own???

[Alhadis]

Really?! For free?! Do you think you could give me a link?! Money's such a major problem for us... could you please give me some links?! Please?!

Thanks for that! :D

- Alhadis!:eek:

[Vladdy]

These (http://forum.snitz.com/) guys have a pretty good ASP forum and are confident enough in their product to post a list of their competitors (http://forum.snitz.com/competition.asp).
Even the full blown forum software is priced under $300 which is still much less than it would cost you to design your own.

[pyro]

Some PHP alternatives that I have used and liked:

http://www.invisionboard.com/
http://www.phpbb.com/

[russ801]

http://www.twinhelix.com/

look at the beta page

[netsonic]

www.webwizguide.com (http://www.webwizguide.com)

http://www.phpnuke.com