Viewing Thread:
"Intranet Website Message Board"

Ok, you all know what's best round these parts :-)

I've sort of taken the responsibility to setup a website at work on one of our servers, at the moment it's just plain HTML with a few links but it needs alot of work doing to it.

I wanted to add a message board so that people in our company can login from any terminal and access, put their views across about issues within the company etc etc. I also would like it so that users can post on the website annonymously if discussions about events or issues are of a sensitive nature ;-)

So can anyone suggest a message board to use, it needs to be fairly easy to setup, maintain and not grow to an unbelivable size. Will be hosted on an NT server or maybe a 2k server depends on what's best.

Cheers for any advice :D

cjh wrote:
> Where could I get this 'phpBB'???

Goto www.phpbb.com and download the program, it's only 600k and is absolutely amazing, done that now at work and have a forum on our Intranet setup ready for use! :D

We're also considering putting up a link on our company website to a forum for our customers to visit etc etc you never know you maybe talking to me on there one day :-)

Fog wrote:
> I definatly want to try making a forum though, soon...

Same here, I've started it in fact :o)

Isn't as hard as I thought it would be, you've just got to get the method of how you store the data right :o)

Where could I get this 'phpBB'??? I always find looking at how someone else does their script helps.

Thanks for the advice and I can see what you mean about the anonymous posting problems Tyla, might have to change that to all employees have to log on as themselves.

Just of note, we've got about 500 employees with approx 250 PC's so it could be quite a large forum depending on how well it's implemented. Not really done any scripting before......errr...actually I've done none so it would be easier to have something downloaded that's already done. :D

Think I might download them both and try them out for a while and see what's best.

heh, cool, forums are usually only about 6 pages anyway, well phpBB is, i'd love to write something like that but even reading the script would take a few hours :)

I definatly want to try making a forum though, soon...

Fog wrote:
> :p when you say "a little PHP / ASP "you obviously mean
> "quite a bit" unless you just gota news/diary/guestbook
> *shudders* script and called that a forum, he he.

Nope.. about 6 pages, a handfull of PHP and viola, a fully functional discussion board built from scratch with no "dodgy 3rd party script".

Tyla wrote:
> Fog wrote:
> Tyla wrote:
> why not build your own using some form submits and a little PHP/ASP?
>
> ..have you actually tried that? :/
>
> Actually.... yes!

:p when you say "a little PHP / ASP "you obviously mean "quite a bit" unless you just gota news/diary/guestbook *shudders* script and called that a forum, he he.

Fog wrote:
> Tyla wrote:
> why not build your own using some form submits and a little PHP/ASP?
>
> ..have you actually tried that? :/

Actually.... yes!

Tyla wrote:
why not build your own using some form submits and a little PHP/ASP?

..have you actually tried that? :/
XMB is anonymous..apart from some links at the bottom of each page but so what, they're free.

PhpBB is the way to go. By the sounds of it, you'll need MySql v1 on the server as v2 has some problems with these forums.

phpBB is really good, though if your after anonnymous, why not build your own using some form submits and a little PHP/ASP? If your going with NT I'd use ASP.

We have something similar at my office for the whole company on the inranet, a kind of bulitin board and sale section, though recently we have been told that it is about to be scrapped due to a small employment legislation about bullying and anonymous messaging!

It is a sackable offence to post/send or use an anonymouse message, weather email, post, messageboard or ansaphone generated. This allows companies to dismiss their staff imediately, and instant dissmissal isn't pretty, I've witnessed it!

Be careful before going ahead with the anonymous side of the message board, as if someone take offence, you could start loosing staff all over the place!

Try http://ikonboard.com if you want certain topics to require a password. They also allow private messaging. Or you can try xsorbit. http://xsorbit.com
They allow just the same as Ikonboard except with a few more ways to change the font.

Hope that helps