Community Bulletin Boards

[southernpoet]

I want to do a web site for my hometown...that has a community bulletin board
where I can ask questions, or others can ask questions and anyone can comment
or discuss. Is this possible using Front Page or do I have to use
PHP...which I know nothing about.

 

[JDR]

Although FrontPage has a discussion web, you will probably be better suited
using a more dynamic board written is .asp, asp.net or php.

Your first step would be to check with your hosting company to verify what
is supported with your hosting account.

You then could look for a dynamic board based on your hosts support.

If they support asp you'll find some great boards here that are free or at a
minimal cost: http://www.aspin.com/home/webapps/bbs

For .net forums there are several here:
http://www.411asp.net/home/webapps/forum

You would then incorporate the your forum into your FrontPage web.

 

[Andrew Murray]

There is a discussion board feature in FP, but it's very basic. It's in the
"templates" So start a new page, select from the list ont he right hand
side under "Templates" and then select "Discussion board".

You might want something more elaborate like phpbb or one of those products
on the web I've used "YABB" inthe past (YABB = "Yet Another Bulletin
Board").

It's quite easy to set up, although you'll need a Unix server as it uses
Perl/CGI; I'm not sure if they have an ASP or .NET version. They have in
depth instructions, so you shouldn't run into much trouble.

Otherwise if your expertise is not quite there yet, go for the FP feature,
and have a play around with some of the others that are around. (the two I
mentioned YABB and phpBB are two of the popular ones I've seen).

 

[clintonG]

Check out Community Server [1]. Microsoft is now bundling Community Server
and DotNetNuke with the Windows Hosting Program so you're going to start
seeing a lot more of both.

<%= Clinton Gallagher
METROmilwaukee (sm) "A Regional Information Service"
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL http://metromilwaukee.com/
URL http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/

[1] http://www.communityserver.org/

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

Community Server is just great!