J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

I suggested in a meeting the other week that it may be beneficial for the company to set up an internal project forum to avoid the email chains that do the rounds, miss people out and come to an abrupt halt if someone is off.

So, this idea was met with some enthusiasm and I have been asked various questions about setting one up, like, how long, how much and a lot of other how's.

I have suggested we purchase Vbulletin as its the first one I came across, seems ok and is dead cheap.

I suspect we can find a spare windows server or a server with spare capacity to house the forum, I am an Oracle/Sql Server DBA so the MySql back end should not be a problem (well I hope it isn't, I will look like a right tit if it is !), I am not averse to scripting in Perl or whatever else is required but from what I can see it looks quite self contained.

I am quite happy with web servers and the Apache bit shouldnt be an issue.


I said that once I was provided with the software and a server, I would need about 3 days to get it up and running with a basic configuration, a few categories and a few users.

I am also after any ideas that would add value to this, for example I thought including peoples photographs as an Avatar would be useful in a large organisation, i.e. names to faces.

Would it be possible to open certain categories up via the web to specific suppliers, i.e. open areas relevant to a specific project, i am sure its possible but how secure could this be made ?

So, any pointers on how best to do this, any shortcuts, gotcha's or stuff like that.

RichB

phpBB.com :: Creating Communities is another good FREE one.

I have it running on a windows IIS server with mysql - It won't take you 3 days either so do it now and have a long weekend! - See you Tuesday

Markus

VB is the forum software used by SN. Invision Power Board is another good one and InvisionFree/ZetaBoards uses it to provide a free forum, so you could pop over and see if IPB can be setup to do what you want.

However I'd go with Rich and say use phpBB. It's free and pretty darn easy to setup. I have it running on my iMac and it took me about and hour to initially install and configure. I'd suggest you also install webmin as I found it very handy when creating new mysql databases/users/permissions

As for opening up certain categories. I'm pretty sure you can do this. It should, in theory, be a matter of setting up a group and specifying via permissions what sections of the forum they have access to.

If you want, PM me and I'll give you the url for the test board I've got on here and you can have a play with it and see if it'll do what you want.

kernel

You could also look at SMF Simple Machines - Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software

Another php / mysql offering that doesn't break the bank

Markus

I'd forgot about SMF. I've tried it in the past and it is rather good Think I'll download a copy of it and have a play with the latest version.

KiwiGTI

SharePoint?