Thinking about putting up a message board

[TurboTer]

I ran my own BBS from my house (called Knight's Realm) from 1994-1997, and it was a blast. Well, the internet killed BBS's, sad to say. Now message boards like this one seem to be the thing that reminds me of the good old days. My question is, how hard is it to put up and maintain? Which are the best boards to use? Is 10 megs of server space enough? This one seems great, but there's no way I'm paying over $100 to put a board up. How is phpBB? Seems ok (and it's free), but it's very complicated. How do I properly open .PHP files?

 

[Two Lane]

There are some excellent "WebSite-Ninjas" who routinely post here, so hopefully they will see your thread & your Qs.

Good luck, & let us know when you get it going!

 

[TurboTer]

Originally posted by Two Lane
There are some excellent "WebSite-Ninjas" who routinely post here, so hopefully they will see your thread & your Qs.

Good luck, & let us know when you get it going!

Hopefully. I will let everyone know when it goes up. It won't have a car theme, however. It will be pretty much general, with something like 20 topics (General BS, politics, cars, music, TV/Movies, sports, etc.). Just like Knight's Realm once was.

 

[TurboTer]

Originally posted by stevemon
I set up PHPBB at http://okbuicks.com/forum/ and like it. (Note that you must register to view all the forums)
The control panel is easy to use and well featured too. About the only glitch I've seen is it doesn't seem to be sending emails when posts are replied to. One of those things to fix when I get time along with some custom graphics, etc.

I can't understand it. I downloaded it, and unzipped and uploaded it to my ftp. Now, all was going fine until I tried to access install.php from the web. All I get is ascii when I should be getting a form to fill out. What do I need to download to view .php files? Also, I use SI Roadrunner which gives me a certain disk space. How much space is required on the average board?

 

[TurboTer]

Originally posted by stevemon
Did you look at http://phpbb.com/ ?
See also http://phpbb.com/news.php?id=13

Our board has 2,000 posts and the database size is under 2mb at the moment.

Yep, looked there. That's where I downloaded the board. Do I need some sort of network to run it right?

2,000 posts total? How much space would 500 posts per day take up?

 

[TurboTer]

Originally posted by stevemon
I couldn't tell you Ter. We've only been using this for the okbuicks club and now have just over 60 memebers registered.

Our board came free when we signed with the webhost for our Club site but I did notice that after installing the BB nothing happened until a couple of days later then it just appeared and started working.

I thought that was because the host didn't get it activated right away but I can't say. You might try emailing PHP's tech staff to see if you get an answer though.

Hmm. I use Road Runder. I wonder if it comes with a message board and I don't know about it. I'll look into it. In the meantime, anyone else familiar with putting up message boards?