Website message boards

[Heilandee]

I'm looking to add a wee message board to our website,just want something simple and straightforward,any sugestions/recomendations?

Edited to add ......and free!!

Edited August 11, 2009 by Heilandee

[CaleyD]

Plenty out there...but what you will need depends on what setup you're using on the site, what kind of hosting you have and whether you can set up a database and things.

[Scotty]

couple of options for you .......

SMF - what we used to have. reliable, stable and plenty of features. http://www.simplemachines.org/

phpBB - incredibly popular board can be integrated with many website systems. http://www.phpbb.com/

both of these require some overhead though - as Don mentioned - and also time effort and some knowledge to setup and tweak.

not sure what system your website is based on, but if you are using something like Joomla you could do worse than Agora which is one I used on aother design i did for a site - very basic, stable and although not as many features as the ones above, does have the main ones.

alternatively, if you dont have hosting or time to do the configuration and customisation you could get something like this one for free at http://invisionfree.com/ ... InvisionFree use IPB V1.3 so it is quite old (this is V2.3.6 and we are currently testing V3.0.2) but its commercial grade software so pretty decent.

[Heilandee]

Right this is where eh embarres myself as i dont even understand the questions never mind the answers!! When u ask what set up i'm using and what system its based on?? I use dreamweaver for setting up pages and cute FTP for uploading pages and these folk for hosting Web mania other than that I'm no sure.Was hopingthere would be a simple message board so lads could comunicate easily with minimal moderation or supervision.Cheers for yer help

website

[Scotty]

ok, heres how it looks ......

Your current website seems to be entirely html based. by that I mean, each page is an individual entity (as you said, created in dreamweaver and uploaded by FTP) rather than part of a content management system such as Joomla which we use for our main site. As such it probably doesnt use much if any of your hosting features other than storage space and bandwidth when people view the pages.

Looking at your hosting package, it certainly does seem to have the capability to run the two softwares mentioned (SMF / PHPBB) but if you havent dabbled with php/mysql and databases and stuff before it would be a very steep learning curve. I also wonder how many databases they allow you as the specs say "mySQL database" in the singular rather than specifying a quantity. Just for reference/comparison, this site uses 5 databases (site/forum/stats/tables/predictionleague) so that we dont have it all in one (and therefore slow the site down or suffer a complete meltdown if one part of the site goes down or a database becomes corrupted).

Looks like your fixture page just pulls in a copy of the SFL fixture list from their page so my recommendation initially might be to make use of something like invision-free and do the same. that way all your setup and configuration is done for you, and you would just need to do the back-end stuff

I am sure myself and/or Don can help you out with some of that if required.

[Heilandee]

Yer quite right Scotty re the whole site being set up using html,eh didnae know there was another way!! Anyway, I'll away and do some reading and check out these sites and try to get my head round whats needed,will get back in a few days.Thanks both for yer help.

PS took a few quid off Gordi at the golf in Nairn last week :P

[Heilandee]

Right! i set up the in vision one as that seemed easiest option, registered and set up all fine, link goes to it,went to admin CP and set up a few forums,mad sure they had "visible" in drop downs but when you log in, Nae Forums!! tried every option i can see but starting to get a wee bit of computer rage now as i keep going roond in circles,any ideas?

[Scotty]

i have no experience of 1.3 so the admin CP may be slightly different ..... on this one, you also create usergroups ... like Admin, Members, Banned etc and must set forum permissions for each usergroup too.

If you are struggling, send me a login ID that has admin access and I will take a look .... you can change it later so I dont get up to any mischief with you guys ...... :P

[Heilandee]

Good man Scotty,that was it,had to check boxes for forum permissions before the forums would show,i had assumed default would be to show but you have to allow groups the permissions :P

Feel free to register and have a wee test of it, cheers for yer help and good luck to ICT this season in all games apart fae the 4 obvious ones :D

[Scotty]

posting is allowed whether you register or not ..... not a good idea. you WILL get hit with spam, porn ads and all sorts of crap if you dont require a login to post .............

[Heilandee]

Hi Scotty,Cheers for yer info thus far regarding message board stuff.Think i'm just about there and have set up so folk must log in to post etc as you recomended.Wee prob if i go in through AOL ( i know you hate AOL) it says i'm logged in but returns to log in menu but with IE it works OK ,Any ideas why? Also not sure when you talk of SQL server based messageboards,what are the advantages of this? i take it this one i'm useing just now is hosted on their servers and others would be on my hosts servers?bit baffled by that side of it all.Any info appreciated,do you run night classes??

[SMEE]

posting is allowed whether you register or not ..... not a good idea. you WILL get hit with spam, porn ads and all sorts of crap if you dont require a login to post .............

This is very true. I visit the official site of the band James...and its a nightmare in there as anyone can post. And its full of vile and totally uncalled for posts. Totally ruins the site.

[Scotty]

posting is allowed whether you register or not ..... not a good idea. you WILL get hit with spam, porn ads and all sorts of crap if you dont require a login to post .............

This is very true. I visit the official site of the band James...and its a nightmare in there as anyone can post. And its full of vile and totally uncalled for posts. Totally ruins the site.

For us its not so much allowing "guests" to post and then finding that they post vile or uncalled for stuff, we could handle that if we wanted to .... its the automated spam/porn/ad bots that make a rigorous registration system a necessity.

We get hit more than a hundred times a day by spambots trying to login (and failing) and although we do ban known spammers IP addresses, names and email domains we cant ban them all as more and more have taken to using gmail addresses or other popular email services. They also piggyback on proxy banks that legitimate users might log in with and if we banned those IPs or email domains we would affect the proper users.

Fortunately, our registration process that requires you to answer a couple of manual questions and then the "re-captcha" question has kept succesful registrations of that type down to a minimum, the bots try to login or register, fail on the bits that need human interpretation or input and then move on

[Scotty]

Hi Scotty,Cheers for yer info thus far regarding message board stuff.Think i'm just about there and have set up so folk must log in to post etc as you recomended.Wee prob if i go in through AOL ( i know you hate AOL) it says i'm logged in but returns to log in menu but with IE it works OK ,Any ideas why?

Your login information is stored in a cookie on your machine and as it works with IE and not your other browser (Firefox?) I would check your cookie settings for that browser. I have a few add-ons on my firefox such as no-script or ad-block that make some sites play silly beggars because they automatically block scripts/cookies etc when I visit a site for the first time unless I allow them, so I would also check those too if you have them. Basically, set your browser to always allow cookies from that domain, and noscript to allow that domain and you should be good.

Also - not sure about the version of IPB you are using as we havent used that one, but on this version, there is an option in the admin to set what they call a "stronghold" cookie. A service like AO-Hell doesnt like this as it makes use of your IP address and as you are on a proxy bank with AOL your IP address can change on every single page view thus confusing it. So basically, if you have this setting somewhere in the back end, and have users accessing your site via AOL or any other provider who makes use of proxies, disable it.

Also not sure when you talk of SQL server based messageboards,what are the advantages of this? i take it this one i'm useing just now is hosted on their servers and others would be on my hosts servers?bit baffled by that side of it all.Any info appreciated,do you run night classes??

If that message board serves your needs then forget all about SQL and other stuff. The hosts for Invision Free take care of all that for you and you dont need to worry. All I was really saying is that your hosting package appears to give you the capability to run it from there if you want to or if you need to, but trust me, its a lot more work to keep it ticking over if you go down that route.

[Scotty]

I registered on your site and logged in. I can stay logged in without any hassles so a browser check is a good idea.

Also, you might want to check out this site as it may help you more than I can in terms of modifying or solving problems with that version of the board : http://if.invisionfree.com/index/

There are support sections and user manuals there that seem pretty comprehensive.

[Heilandee]

Superb Scotty,Cyber pint on it's way to you. Let me know next time home and i'll get you a real one,help much appreciated :022:

[Johnboy]

Yer quite right Scotty re the whole site being set up using html,eh didnae know there was another way!! Anyway, I'll away and do some reading and check out these sites and try to get my head round whats needed,will get back in a few days.Thanks both for yer help.

PS took a few quid off Gordi at the golf in Nairn last week

Were you playing cards with him, H/Dee?