How To Make A Forum?

Well?
A friend of mine and myself want to make a forum.
But we don't have a clue how.
The programming langues we know (or at least one of us), and can work with, are:
C++
Visual Basic
Delphi
I guess php is used everywhere, but that is something we don't know (yet).

There are several ASP boards that use visual basic if you're comfortable with it. I'd still suggest a SQL database vs. an Access database and your host needs to support ASP. Here's a few to get you started. A Google search for free asp bulletin boards provides quite a few more.

I don's think Visual Basic will be used, but the sql part will be.
I might use delphi instead of VB, and i know how to work with sql in delphi.
The idea is to make our own forum (completely), and run it on our own server.

Well, I suspect that it would take a book to actually answer the question. I think what I would suggest is downloading a few free boards and studying the code. Although this one is coded with PHP, the SQL syntax should be roughly the same for any language. You'll be pretty amazed when you see the source code for this board. There's much more that went into this design than anyone realizes. No wonder it took a team of designers to do it.

At the very least, that should give you a feel for what goes into the making of a board such as this and may give you some ideas of how to do what you want with a language you are familiar with.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, you can write CGI applications in Delphi, of course then you're limited to a Windows server, and again, you're limited even more as you have to get a Windows hosting account that will actually let you upload your own precompiled CGI applications (many won't, and will only allow interpreted languages such as Perl, ASP, etc.)

Your best bet is going with PHP on a Linux box. You can install many forum scripts such as phpBB and YaBBSE without any actual knowledge of PHP code. Then, as you get used to the user-end of the software (the bit that actually shows up in the browser), you can start looking at little hacks & modifications to the code and start learning PHP that way.

Remember, you can reference any PHP command by going to...

http://www.php.net/<insert command name here>

Te uploading won't be a problem, because w'ill register a free site and link it throug to our own server, so we can decide what's on it and what's not.

But we might do it in linux anyway, and getting a speedcourse of php

Any idea's of a good linux version (mandrake, suse, slackware etc) that's good for running server?

What about a pure PHP forum that doesnt need SQL I've tryed looking everywhere but i cant find anything at all

I have searched Hotscripts.com
and planet-source-code.com
but i still aint found a thing
Zilch

You're either going to use a database or a text-file for storage, and a text-file would be a terrible way to go. Either that or you'd have to manually create and update multiple html files which would be even more complex of a program than simply using a database.

Excellent.

Since you already know a c language, php will be a breeze.
PHP version 5 (not out yet, still in beta) has an OO design with
protected/private class members, which is huge for the interpreted language sector. Add on top of that the speed of a preloaded apache module, extensive premade functions and classes, I don't see a reason to use anything else, especially if you want to keep your platform non-proprietary.

I highly recommend FreeBSD(not a linux),as it's what I use at home and at work. It is stable, and comes stripped down, so you only have to install what you need , from the ports tree: http://www.freebsd.org ,
which makes things simple.

FreeBSD and its cousins (OpenBSD, NetBSD) , have a base system engineered to work together , and designed with its other parts in mind,
which allows the system to run much more stable.
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/ra ... linux1.php

good luck

Text files are not scaleable. Before I learned SQL , I built a flat file based
database system for one of my sites. Databases have so many features
and have a very easy learning curve, it is well worth the time to install
and learn mysql ,it is really not that hard.

http://www.postgresql.org/
http://www.mysql.com/

*blinks* wow 'tis going to be hard to compete with the new php Wiz (btw feel free to introduce yourself: [Dead Link] )

You can make a simple simple simple forum in php with basic knowledge, plus some knowledge on security issues, such as javascript in posts, stripping php tags and so on.

To make something like this forum it's going to quite a stunt to pull off. phpBB2 is quite an extensive "script" full of a lot of security back ups and awesome features.

I'd recommend learning php and setting up a simple one to help you learn, then move on to phpbb2 once you have the basics down.

Good call !

i haven't even looked at any other forums yet ,lol

Well, to be short. . . . Study and learn.

I would start with a guest book. Learning the basics of reading and writing to your files, while outputting to the page.

Just start with a basic login, and then having users post to the guestbook.

Download a free guestbook, in any prefered language/scripting and then simply pic it apart.

I would learn the basics to php, and then use it when needed. PHP is the easiest web technology out there.

Your basic forum/guestbook or dynamic updated page will include the following basics:

Home page - where people will navigate subjects/links/ideas/register etc.
Topic pages - will be where people post ideas/thoughts/messages
Registration - only if you require someone to login.

Your home page can be a html file or a dynamic file like php,asp or the like. You will either never change it, change it manually, or want it to update concerning different events.

Depending on the sophistication of your forums/options/features, your topic pages can range from very bland and boring. . . .all the way up to something similar to the high quality of ozzu.com

If I were you, I would start with using a database for users, to hold there login, password, posts, id, etc. . . .

maybe try using folders as your topics, and just create a folder to hold your posts, or your text file for posts.

you should use a master file, this will hold the dates/times of posts along with the files for these posts.

or. . . .you could even use php to scan a file, hold all info as a string in a array, and then just append to that string. (when you append to the string, you will be adding to the post.) Then, you will output the string to a file ex: flash_forum.html. If you do this, you will have to have a code within your html file that will signal the end of the forum posts. This method would cut down on load time and server drag. Every forum page would be updated when the users submits his reply. You will have to be very savy to your file permissions, and will want to have your php page login to the server when reading/writing to your files.. . .

I am sorry, there are soooooooo many ways to handle this that you will just need to attempt by yourself. do you yahoo>?? IM might be use full for this in expressing ideas more clearly.

I know this may sound stupid and somewhat newbish (as always )
but why wouldn't you just use phpBB?

Using phpBB would not be CREATING your own forum. That is like using windows os instead of creating your own os. You just don't learn the fundamentals and complications that can later be used to solve problems with future programs/functions.

I suggested trying different methods to update a page. And then to build on those previous steps. Somewhat like math. . first you learn to add and subtract, then divide/multiple ect. . . .

You could use phpBB or any other forum software already scripted. You could use ardguest if you wanted. then build on that. Whatever the route, I felt that the goal was to LEARN how to create a forum. The process is not a single step, but a pyramid of steps that lead to the base of another pyramid.

Just keep programmin.