Make you own forum

[scottyrob]

Hi folks
Was just wondeirng if anyone knows of any websites that help you MAKE you own forum from scratch? Possibly using SQL and PHP... I have a rough idea of how to do this but no entirley sure...

Please, i am NOT intrested in pre made forums!
Thanks!
Fet

[NogDog]

...
Please, i am NOT intrested in pre made forums!

While I applaud your initiative, just realize what you're getting into. Even if you want to "roll your own", you might want to download a copy of something like phpBB and start looking at the source code. That will give you a rough idea of what you're getting into: a web forum is not a trivial program that you throw together in a week of evenings - unless you really skimp on features and security issues.

You need to handle things like:
- User registration
- User login
- User permissions
- Inputting new threads
- Adding messages to existing threads
- Viewing threads
- Admin functions (deleting/moving threads, user admin, etc.)
- Search functions

All that requires a database of some complexity.

Good luck!

[scottyrob]

I was planning on making the very basics.... front page has a list of forums, click on that it opens up a list of topics, click on the topic you see the posts... anyone can reply to it and it shows the replies... after i had that i was going to progress to the rest of the features. i barley have any experience and i though this would be a good way to learn (but i do have an idea of how do to what i described above...)

[NogDog]

My suggestion would be to start with the database design. My experience is that if you spend the time up front to develop the right set of data tables and columns, then the rest follows more-or-less naturally with less likelihood of having to do re-designs and other wastes of time.

[scottyrob]

Ill try that then thanks! Well just a quick question... I would be using tables on the php page... so how would i output my data into a table.. then if new data is added it adds another row etc... any tutorials online on how to do that?

[NogDog]

See the examples on pages like http://www.php.net/mysql_query or http://www.php.net/mysql_fetch_assoc which show examples of outputting query results into HTML tables. Or use the PHP Class for MySQL in my sig below, which includes a method for outputting results in a table.

[kevinmcqueen]

Hi,

I've built my own forum from scratch within my web site

www.racewall.net - you must be a member though in order to get access to the forum.

Its nothing fancy, but it does the trick