Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 What languages do I need to master to build a forum or "bulletin board" (such as this one)? Do replies and posts store in a database? Any help would be verrrry appreciated!Caitlin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thescientist Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Yes, you will need to learn server-side scripting language such as PHP and a way to interact with a database, such as with SQL.http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asphttp://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.aspKnowing how to create pages that provide the interface for handling typical forum features is also important too. (i.e. forms in HTML)http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.aspIt's a pretty daunting process, so feel free to look around in a bookstore for a good reference book that might cover PHP + SQL all in one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 Awesome! I am familiar with these scripts but have not practiced it much. Could you explain the exchange between the codes to me anybody? So say someone needs to make an account to post. The person is stored in one database table, then how do you store the posts? Just need some theoretical clarification so I can plan my code. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 "QUOTE (justsomeguy @ Nov 20 2009, 11:59 AM) *And just to be clear, if programming were "simple" then you'd see a lot more women and children doing it."I'm a woman and a digital media major (computer science minor)... and I think I'm smart enough to figure it out, buddy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 I believe so, I didn't say that women are incapable of programming. That was a reply to someone who kept asking for the "simple" way to do his complex tasks. There were several women in my computer science classes, but it would have been nice if there were more, hopefully in the future more women decide to go into the sciences.You may want to look into some open-source forums, like phpBB. You can examine some of those to see what type of database structure they use. The database structure is one of the most important parts of designing the application, a good or bad database design can make or break an application. Don't be too eager to get to the code, the database requires a lot of thought and planning. For something like a forum, I would expect to see one table to hold information about each individual forum (General, HTML, CSS, etc), another table to hold general information about each thread, and then another table for the posts in the thread. There would also be the tables to hold user information, settings, private messages, file uploads, etc. So it would probably be a good idea to take a look through some established forums and see what decisions they made for the database and some of the other considerations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 Thank you both for the advice!Any advice for a good first program to code with PHP and SQL for the practice? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobberBaron Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Sorry, didn't notice the above post, but just some tips,To make a forum, you will need to know in some language or other, how to:Work with cookiesUse a post methodSave and collect information from a database with SQL queriesUse a get methodUse arrays and a foreach functionSend forms to <?php $_SERVER['PHP_SELF']; ?>Anyhow... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 My first one was a basic photo gallery, where I could also learn about image manipulation. If you just want to learn some basics with PHP and SQL, maybe a basic guestbook type of commenting system would be good, that wouldn't require much other than PHP and SQL. There's also a thread here which talks about how to register and log in users, that may give you a starting point.http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=12509 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cofusion Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 are you creating a form script? just download one and upload/install to your server.this forum is already installed and uploaded to the server, it is a free service at invisionzone.com, many like it.here are my favorite free forum software-http://www.mybboard.net/http://www.phpbb.com/here are the best forum software that cost money, they can be pretty expensive-http://www.vbulletin.com/http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/if you want a hassle free install, subdomain, and simple free hosting try these-for ipb-http://ipbfree.com/home/http://www.invisionfree.com/for mybb-http://www.createmybb.com/for phpbb-http://www.forumotion.com/ (also includes 3 other scripts) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Synook Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Creating a simple blog is also good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 are you creating a form script? just download one and upload/install to your server.this forum is already installed and uploaded to the server, it is a free service at invisionzone.com, many like it.here are my favorite free forum software-http://www.mybboard.net/http://www.phpbb.com/here are the best forum software that cost money, they can be pretty expensive-http://www.vbulletin.com/http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/if you want a hassle free install, subdomain, and simple free hosting try these-for ipb-http://ipbfree.com/home/http://www.invisionfree.com/for mybb-http://www.createmybb.com/for phpbb-http://www.forumotion.com/ (also includes 3 other scripts)Thank you, but I would really like to learn for myself. Does anyone have a simple code for a blog that they can post here so I can analyze it? Thank you "someguy," I will be reading your topic on php forms later tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 My first one was a basic photo gallery, where I could also learn about image manipulation. If you just want to learn some basics with PHP and SQL, maybe a basic guestbook type of commenting system would be good, that wouldn't require much other than PHP and SQL. There's also a thread here which talks about how to register and log in users, that may give you a starting point.http://w3schools.invisionzone.com/index.php?showtopic=12509 Can you store images in a database as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cofusion Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Thank you, but I would really like to learn for myself. Does anyone have a simple code for a blog that they can post here so I can analyze it? Thank you "someguy," I will be reading your topic on php forms later tonight.i made a blog script a few weeks ago in php css and html, it was really simple, you just right the posts to a text file, upload to a folder, and a php file checks the folder for the next post to show. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 You can store any binary data in a database, the blob data type is for generic binary data. For an image file for example, you can use the file_get_contents function in PHP to read the file data, and store that string in the database in the blob table. To display the image again, you would send the correct mime type headers (e.g. image/jpeg, image/gif, etc), and then output the data from the field. However, as I found out with my photo gallery it can get pretty expensive if you store all of the images in the database, it's usually more efficient to just store the image as a file and store the filename in the database instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 16, 2009 Author Share Posted December 16, 2009 You can store any binary data in a database, the blob data type is for generic binary data. For an image file for example, you can use the file_get_contents function in PHP to read the file data, and store that string in the database in the blob table. To display the image again, you would send the correct mime type headers (e.g. image/jpeg, image/gif, etc), and then output the data from the field. However, as I found out with my photo gallery it can get pretty expensive if you store all of the images in the database, it's usually more efficient to just store the image as a file and store the filename in the database instead.Yeah, I didn't mean literally store the images on the database. Like the "<img src="blahblah">" string can be in the database? What do you mean by "blob" table? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 A blob field just holds generic binary data. Other field types are things like text, integer, date, etc. You can store HTML code in the database if you want, although it's generally better to only store the data (such as filenames) and leave the markup somewhere else, if you ever want to change the HTML markup it will be less convenient to have to find all of it in the database and update it.Here's the list of data types:http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/data-types.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thescientist Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 I wish there were more girls that liked computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justsomeguy Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 T'would be nice. Sorry though, wrong generation. Try back in a few. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roundcorners Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 just wanted to mention, I have been reading and using a book called PHP Solutions, dynamic Web Design made easy, by David Powers. It's been invaluable. Loads of examples, lots of exercises and and very comprehensive. It covers all the basics, stting up Apache, PHP, MySQL and then dives into how to use them together. Lots of ideas. You should come out the the other side with all the tools and knowledge you need to build a Forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caitlin-havener Posted December 18, 2009 Author Share Posted December 18, 2009 just wanted to mention, I have been reading and using a book called PHP Solutions, dynamic Web Design made easy, by David Powers. It's been invaluable. Loads of examples, lots of exercises and and very comprehensive. It covers all the basics, stting up Apache, PHP, MySQL and then dives into how to use them together. Lots of ideas. You should come out the the other side with all the tools and knowledge you need to build a Forum.Sweet, thanks. I will check that out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.