Non-server based forum...possible?

[si1728]

Hi all,

First post so be gentle!

Right, here goes, i work for a global IT company and in our section there are 16 people who would like out own Intranet.

Basically i have a few pages, news, work stuff etc etc and would like to have somekind of forum/message board that is non-server based.

The reason for this is we simply do not have sufficient access so it needs to be basic, yet functional, don't panic, it's all work-ethical!

We use IE 6 (company standard), and HTML and Javascript work fine.

Can't use PHP as i have no-where to 'run it from'.

Any advise or am i wasting my time?

Any input gratefully received!

Many Thanks

[oracleguy]

Well where are the few pages you have being hosted on then?

[Pennimus]

Wait, you work for a global IT company and you

a) don't already have an Intranet?
and
b) can't afford to buy some server space somewhere with PHP etc...?

You do need a server of some description otherwise you have nowhere to host it.

[si1728]

Yes but it's just for our section.

The company intranet is worldwide and hosting for out team would be a no no i think.

They're just webpages using CSS and HTML for the moment just stored on our sections network drive, simply accessed by a desktop icon...nothing fancy!

[Pennimus]

You might be able to do something locally with Xamp (or whatever it's called, local PHP environment) but for all the hassle it would be you and your team might as well buy some web space yourself. There are 16 of you... it will be literally pennies per month.

[si1728]

I see what you're getting at but internet access is limited to one hour a day :( - so something internatl (and working offline) is preferable...

[oracleguy]

If your company is that big, they won't or can't give you a web server? For what you are doing you wouldn't need to dedicate an entire machine to your one intranet site. Regardless if they are running Apache or IIS, both support virtual hosts so you can have multiple sites on one server.

Pretty much you need server side processing to have a forum. You could maybe do it with some serious hack-ish client side scripting given that you are all on the same LAN but it'd be painfully slow and you'd have to write it all yourself because I don't think anyone has written one.

If you can't get your IT department to give you what you need, what good are they? I mean it isn't like this is going to cost any money except one person's time to configure the web server software. At worse you could, like previously suggested, Xamp on one of your workstations.

[si1728]

Thanks for the replies folks, seems i may have to do a bit of sweet-talking to our IT department!

Wish me luck!