I want to create a forum on my website!

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I want to create a forum on my website!

Im not sure if this is the right place, but wasnt sure else to post.

Anyway, ive been doing a bit of web design over the last 6 months for my boss, and have now began to set up my own site just to fill in some spare time and help me learn more stuff. Anyway im using Dreamweaver 8 on OSX 10.4.8 but now want to add a discussion forum onto my site.

Now my boss uses a program, but this does not run on Mac and i cannot find a mac version, so does anyone know of an appilcation that will allow me to host my own forum on my mac?

If this isnt the right place to find out anyone got any suggestions as to which forum i should be in?

macbook, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Apr 7, 2007 5:19 PM

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Answer 1

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Tom Gewecke

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115,946 points

Apr 7, 2007 5:42 PM in response to smitherz

If you are serving your website from your own machine and want to add forums to your server, this might be one option:

http://www.phpbb.com/

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Answer 2

smitherz Author

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Apr 7, 2007 6:09 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

OK, so that looks like what i am looking for, but as yet i do not have a database application. It has a few suggestions with it, but i was wondering what you would suggest as being the easiest to use and set up, as i am not really familiar with these programs yet.

Do you suggest that i find someone who knows what they are doing to go through it with me, or does anyone have a detailed step by step guide to setting up a forum on a website?

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Answer 3

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,946 points

Apr 7, 2007 6:33 PM in response to smitherz

i was wondering what you
would suggest as being the easiest to use and set up,
as i am not really familiar with these programs yet.

I'm not either, but Apple has info on installing two of them:

http://developer.apple.com/internet/opensource/osdb.html

http://developer.apple.com/internet/opensource/postgres.html

Do you suggest that i find someone who knows what
they are doing to go through it with me, or does
anyone have a detailed step by step guide to setting
up a forum on a website?

Perhaps someone will come forward with a good reference. Most people who want forums probably use ready made ones available from various hosts and just link to them from their site.

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Answer 4

smitherz Author

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Apr 7, 2007 6:45 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

OK great, thanks for your help, im sure il figure something out. I did look into linking to a ready built forum, but it just doesnt look as good as your own, customised and self hosted forum, and doing it myself now will give me that extra knowledge for the future.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

115,946 points

Apr 7, 2007 7:11 PM in response to smitherz

doing it
myself now will give me that extra knowledge for the
future.

Understood. Definitely a skill worth having, I think.

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Answer 6

Apr 8, 2007 3:34 AM in response to smitherz

You didn't mentioned if you are serving from your machine or not. If you are you can download and install mySQL, which is probably what they are recommending. In this case you will also need to enable PHP (look in this forums and you will find several threads on how to do this).
If you have your site located on some rented space somewhere, then the company already has mySQL installed and PHP enabled (unless they are using Windows Server, in which case you are out of luck with PHPBB).

PowerMac G5 1.8 Mac OS X (10.4.9) MacMini (10.4.9 Server), MacBook 2.0, 2nd internal HD, FW 500GB, FW 80GB

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Answer 7

Apr 8, 2007 8:12 AM in response to smitherz

To tell you the truth, forums are ugly, slow and and attract spammers. The smart websites are using Wiki software. With Wiki you can also have discussion pages, but you create and edit pages collaboratively. See my site http://Gnarlodious.com/ for an example, it is based on the Moinmoin wiki which runs nicely in OSX. Moin is Python powered, which means it is way faster than PHP and SQL based software.

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