Personal site and forum dilema

I am making a personal site and need to include a forum on it. Howver the problem is I am selling web development skills on it.

I was going to write my own forum from scratch but then when I sat and though about the logic its too involved, not only do you need a way of displaying the message title, when you click on it it will go to the main message (this bit is easy to code) but then how do you reply to it?

The other problem is doing all the SQL put the records in order.

So I am thinking of just using one of the forums already out there such as Snitz but will this look bad that I can't program my own forum from scratch?

I just want some advice really. Thanks

Reply 1

happysunshine

amazingtrade

Please make a new UKL :tongue:

Seriously what will your forum be used for?

Reply 2

thefish_uk

I really wouldn't notice if someone was using phpBB or similiar, or had coded their own forum. In fact, I'd probably prefer using the professional-quality one because your own would probably be buggy and nowhere near as complex.

Reply 3

thefish_uk

happysunshine

Please make a new UKL :tongue:

Seriously what will your forum be used for?

That's a good point. They're pointless on personal sites.

If I wanted to play around with databases I'd make a posh content management system.

Reply 4

nikk

amazingtrade

A truely good web developer would realise (as you have) when it becomes to time consuming (and so costly for the customer) to write an entire piece of software when there are perfectly good ones out there available for free (such as vbulletin). Forums such as vbulletin are highly customisable so it makes much more sense to custom that rather than spend unnecessary time on creating your own.

As a customer I would be horrified if I got a huge bill for a forum you had created when you could have easily adapted some already created, free software.

So in short, I would say no it won't look bad. Having said that, you should ensure that the skin you use fits in with the general look of your website.

Reply 5

Nylex

Nah, not having coded your own forum won't look bad. There are plenty of good free forums out there, so why not use them. Not heard of Snitz myself, but phpbb is good.

Reply 6

nikk

happysunshine

Please make a new UKL :tongue:

Seriously what will your forum be used for?

Creating a site such as this would not take any more than 30mins to an hour at most. It's getting people using it that is the difficult bit.

Reply 7

AT82

Yeah you're probably right the only purpose the forum served was for sake of it. Although I want some interactive content.

What I will probably do is just have a reply to articles section where the users can make comments on articles I have written. This should be quite easy to code, its just a matter of writing an SQL script to puit the entries in order of date.

The the image library will be database controled and will make use of a technique called paging. (like this forum does where once it gets to a certain amounts of records a new page is created).

So it should be quite advanced without the forum. The problem I have is that my websites need to be commerical standard now as I am trying to convince employers that I can do a £20k a year job.

Reply 8

thefish_uk

Nylex

Nah, not having coded your own forum won't look bad. There are plenty of good free forums out there, so why not use them. Not heard of Snitz myself, but phpbb is good.

phpBB is good. He's an ASP freak though. Or a Microsoft bitch. Or whatever you call these people who love Microsoft.

Reply 9

AT82

thefish_uk

phpBB is good. He's an ASP freak though. Or a Microsoft bitch. Or whatever you call these people who love Microsoft.

I am not a Microsoft freak, its jsut we haven't been taught PHP yet, thats next semester, my web space (which is provided my uni) is run on a win2k3 server so it will support PHP as well as ASP but not sure how easy php BB will be to setup. It means probably having to create a MySql database etc.

Reply 10

Nylex

Damn, I knew there was something I forgot to mention, lol.

Oh and amazingtrade, the comments thing is definetly easy to code. Done it in PHP, surely can't be any more difficult in ASP.

Reply 11

thefish_uk

amazingtrade

phpBB is piss! It has a built-in setup script to install all the tables and everything!

I don't think you even need to make a database yourself, ok you can use WinMySQLAdmin and make one if you need to with 2 mouse clicks.

Reply 12

nikk

amazingtrade

From my experience, PHP is very simple to pick up. It certainly looks easier than ASP although I have never really encountered ASP on a developing level.

Reply 13

AT82

Nylex

Damn, I knew there was something I forgot to mention, lol.

Oh and amazingtrade, the comments thing is definetly easy to code. Done it in PHP, surely can't be any more difficult in ASP.

Yeah its very easy to do, you just use ADO statements to add a new record then use an SQL command to sort the records in order of date.

I will have a look at that PHP thing.

Thanks to the person who said about a good web developer would realise that there is no need to code your when good ones already exist for free, I use that line in an interview (if I ever get one).

Reply 14

loftx

Presonally I wouldn't put a forum on a personal site at all - it really won't get used and will make your site look less popular. That dosn't mean you shouldn't try to code on if you've got the time though, I made a start on one though never really got around to finishing it.

Instead you could always try and write a dynamic news system where people can add comments. It's pretty easy to do, easy to exapand, and actually useful. For example - my own news system in asp.

Reply 15

Sire