Forum design

[james00harper]

I want to design a forum to go on a webite that I've been asked to create. I'm obviously going to need to use a databse a server technology lie asp. I know that in a forum there are categories and within those categories there are threads and each thread may have many responses.

Does anybody have any good tips or forum design or where I can go? What data do I need in my database - I think i'll probably need around 3 tables (user, thread and post)?

I could probably work it out for myself, but it would be interesting to see what the rest of you have to say!

Thank you in advance :thumbsup:

[Nightfire]

Why not use a forum already created? Or if you really want to code your own, download a forum (or forums) and see how they've been put together and get some ideas from that.

[IAMTHEEVILBEAN]

www.phpbb.com

[gsnedders]

I would recommend seeing how miniBB (http://www.minibb.net) is put together, it is by far the simplist of good forums, so it would be a good starting point for reference.

[DsgnrsTLZAdmin]

I wrote my forum, pretty simple - 4,000 lines of php but I havnt had the time to get around to PMs. PHP is the best for a forum.

[Len Whistler]

QUOTE from DsgnrsTLZAdmin......I wrote my forum, pretty simple

No you didn't. Code like:

<!--
***************************
*START TOP CODING*
*START TOP CODING*
***************************
-->

Is a dead give away that a template or something was used.

Leonard Whistler
http://www.stubby.ca

[DsgnrsTLZAdmin]

My ***, I made every bit of my site with notepad.

[DsgnrsTLZAdmin]

There called comments, when each page is over 500 lines good experienced coders use them.

[ionsurge]

Comments are generally not a good thing - when they are visible to the end user. I prefer commenting in php (then throw out the template section from an external template source), so I know what is going on. But the user has no idea how the page was formed.

It makes it that much harder for people who are trying to rip off your site to understand what you are doing, and how you are managing to do it.

:)

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by ionsurge
[B]Comments are generally not a good thing /B]

Especially when you need some job security. :D :D