How hard would building a forum be?

[bumcheekcity]

You should have got the gist of this by the title. Simple really, a forum with forums in it (like Programming, General, C+C, WI/HT and the like) and users can post in it. Is it that hard to do?

I'm not talking about having fancy avatars, smilies, or dancing elephants. Pretty basic stuff. Would I need loads of pages, and stuff? I was thinking of:

add.php?type=(topic/reply)&(topid/replyid)=$id
view.php?type=(forum/topic)&(forumid/topicid)=$id

You get the picture. I wdon't ant a lot more, maybe a profile system. But for now, dead simple. Is that hard?

[schorhr]

Well, you could allways get a free, no-advertising forum system (phpbb). But no, a simple forum system is not hard at all. Actually, its a great beginners project, especialy but not only with PHP.
Also you should use a mysql database, since its far less work then textfiles once you got the hang of it.

[Amish]

Not hard at all

You need a forum.php page with liek forum.php?id=1

That chooses which forum shows

then a topic page or view page

view.php?id=topicnumber

Also you may need liek page one but you know

and then you need a reply

post.php?id=topicID

Easy

[bumcheekcity]

At 8/20/04 04:22 PM, schorhr wrote: Also you should use a mysql database, since its far less work then textfiles once you got the hang of it.

How could you do it using textfiles?

[bumcheekcity]

Sorry to double post, but liljim, what are these forums built with? Just PHP and mySQL? I just wondered what people used once bigger amounts of traffic were flowing...

[Amish]

You could but it would be very difficult.

It would be easier to use mySQl www.freesql.org *but trhats only for learnign puroses* but we are learnign.

Any ways. In mySQL you could just set a few colums and entyer the data.

In a text file it would be much harder.

[schorhr]

Well Databases are efficient and easy to work with.

You want the latest posts?

Mysql is pretty easy

SELECT topics,date FROM poststable WHERE forum='$board' ORDER BY date ASC

(or something like that).

for example.
Now with textfiles you would need to either use a folder structure or make static pages, or even more complicated, you would have to write a efficient storrage system.

I'dd recomend you look at some tutorial ( as an example: http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql/1 ) and you set up a local Apache Server with mysql and php, so you can try everything on your computer.

www.xampp.org ->english flag

A real easy to install local webserver!
Download.
Run setup file, it will set everything up depending on what folder you copied it to.
Then run the start file and the mysql start file...

Thats it.

[Pilot-Doofy]

Well I noticed no one else really offered any help, I just built mine less than a week ago. I'm still fresh on all the techniques. If you need help you know my AIM and email.

It isn't very hard once you plan it out. But with everything else in php it takes logic and that's about it lol.

[schorhr]

Well, i dont think that i did not help :-) I posted some usefull links, mentioned phpbb and advised using a database and xampp.

[White-Rhyno]

At 8/21/04 06:39 AM, bumcheekcity wrote: Sorry to double post, but liljim, what are these forums built with? Just PHP and mySQL? I just wondered what people used once bigger amounts of traffic were flowing...

I'm pretty sure these forums run on php and mySQL.

My University uses the Oracle Database system. I don't know how it compares with mySQL, but I've read about many database tests and the final two surviving DB systems without crashing were always mySQL and Oracle.

For some reason I remember hearing that Oracle was faster than mySQL, but I don't have any proof or anything. Oracle is also pretty fucking expensive.

[papaKLATZ]

Actually, try building a news system with comments, like the one on My Site
That's the basic idea of the way the posts work, then learn to use BBCode, and insert smileys which both use the str_replace() function. Theres a good tutorial about that on Dark-Street.com. Learn how to make a User system, maybe a profile system, learn some of this stuff at www.phpfreaks.com

[Amish]

Member system...

http://www.phpfreaks.com/print.php?cmd=tutorial&tut_id=40

This seem to be the best one i have seen including well everythign.

[TurnipClock]

At 8/21/04 06:37 AM, bumcheekcity wrote:

At 8/20/04 04:22 PM, schorhr wrote: Also you should use a mysql database, since its far less work then textfiles once you got the hang of it.

How could you do it using textfiles?

you dont do it with textfiles thats just cheap and nasty and fucking hard. use cgi for text files

[binaryflow]

At 8/22/04 05:51 AM, TurnipClock wrote:
you dont do it with textfiles thats just cheap and nasty and fucking hard. use cgi for text files

and insecure

[GoTwinks]

At 8/21/04 09:42 AM, Pilot-Doofy wrote: Well I noticed no one else really offered any help, I just built mine less than a week ago. I'm still fresh on all the techniques. If you need help you know my AIM and email.

It isn't very hard once you plan it out. But with everything else in php it takes logic and that's about it lol.

isnt very hard? i was browsing this forum and i see all these topics with how do i make qoutes how do i do reply blah blah i heard all the programming was gave to you

[Diki]

You'd be surprised how easy it can be, but how much of a pain in the ass errors can be.

I bult my forums in about 2 weeks (if my memory is correct).
The scripting wasn't too difficult, debugging was annoying, but in the end it's worth it.

As long as you have basic knowledge of PHP Date functions, MySQL queries, and variables (w00t?) then you should have no problem.

[schorhr]

Its really no big deal, its all logic.
Actually, creating dynamic web content such as forum is easier then programming a computer application, at least with some languages...

At 8/22/04 06:38 PM, BiNaryFlow wrote:

At 8/22/04 05:51 AM, TurnipClock wrote:
you dont do it with textfiles thats just cheap and nasty and fucking hard. use cgi for text files

and insecure

Only if you put it in a not-protected dir :)