table structure for creating a forum

hey guys,

I have written most the code for a basic forum, but i would like to introduce catagories into the forum and wondered someone could help me get my head around the mysql table structure needed.

Any help much appreciated....:thumbsup:

To my understanding so far i'm going to need three tables, these being:

-categories

-topics

-replies

right?

You could do it that way(I think phpBB does) or you could use a categories tables and a posts tables. Just set the category id, a "original post" field to true if it's the first post. Then with the replies you would set the original post's id in another field.