Bulletin boards

[pduggan]

Having put up with a very basic, free, externally hosted message board for fourteen months and considered a number of possible replacements, I'm finding myself swinging in favour of taking control and running a suitable script at my own site. So I've searched the web for ideas (taking a good look at http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Program...ssage_Systems/ in particular), but find myself little the wiser after discovering for the umpteenth time that you can get anyone to say anything about anything! My existing board (although public and open to all) is used mainly for arranging crew for yacht races and discussion among friends, so it's unlikely to see a huge amount of traffic. I'd prefer a free script, but one that's well-featured, user-friendly and customisable to match my site design. I've seen the recommendations in this forum for Discus (which looks attractively uncluttered, albeit framed by default) and YaBB. So what would anyone suggest?

Peter</p>

Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

[pduggan]

Having put up with a very basic, free, externally hosted message board for fourteen months and considered a number of possible replacements, I'm finding myself swinging in favour of taking control and running a suitable script at my own site. So I've searched the web for ideas (taking a good look at http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Program...ssage_Systems/ in particular), but find myself little the wiser after discovering for the umpteenth time that you can get anyone to say anything about anything! My existing board (although public and open to all) is used mainly for arranging crew for yacht races and discussion among friends, so it's unlikely to see a huge amount of traffic. I'd prefer a free script, but one that's well-featured, user-friendly and customisable to match my site design. I've seen the recommendations in this forum for Discus (which looks attractively uncluttered, albeit framed by default) and YaBB. So what would anyone suggest?

Peter</p>

Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

[michaelward]

I beleive that you an get a very good script, very much like this site, from Ikonboard at http://win.ikonboard.com/?home

if you want to see it in action then visit http://rugbys.hostdns.co.uk/ib/board.../ikonboard.cgi and take a look [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]



Michael Ward
http://www.metalandplastics.co.uk
http://www.leighcenturions.net

[pduggan]

So I've spent far too much time over the past few days following things up and testing boards, and what I'd really like is the new YaBB SE. It's good looking, functional, powered by PHP/MySQL (which looks like a sound way to go, even if my present needs are pretty modest) and, above all, comes with an HTML 4.01 compliant default template!

Now here's the rub: my present hosts don't provide MySQL at a price I'm prepared to pay, but I'd been thinking about leaving them anyway and I've discovered (and bookmarked) plenty that do. So what I'd really like to hear is what anyone's got to say (good/bad) about their own modestly priced PHP/MySQL hosts. (Personal recommendations only, please — I'm as capable as anyone of reading the sales pitches!)

Thanks



Peter</p>



Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

[stlewis]

Peter

I use http://www.nicnames.co.uk/.

They are reasonably priced, the site seems fast and downtime to be low.

However, I think they must be stuck for tech support staff - responses are patchy and you have to work things out for yourself!

Good luck!

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[pduggan]

Can't believe this...

Apart from my questions (quickly answered to my satisfaction) to the YaBB SE community, I posted a simple question about HTML compliance to two other bulletin board support forums. A straightforward, but serious, question ('can the templates be configured to produce valid HTML?') that mattered to me, but met with two vastly different responses:

1. <LI>An intelligent (and prompt!) answer from Matt at Teemz. (Yes, he agrees that software producing HTML should ideally be W3C compliant, yes, they'll try to improve compliance in subsequent versions, and thanks for the input.) So I thanked him, let him know what I'd decided to do and wished him well with Teemz.
   
   <LI>Complete silence for more than two days from Discus (during which other questions continued to be answered), after which I posted another message letting them know that I'd decided to look elsewhere and thanking anyone who'd thought about my question. Now both posts appear to have been deleted altogether from their boards (although my test posts are still up in their test forum), so it looks like they've either tried to cover up my question or just treated it as some kind of joke.

To which I can only add that now I wouldn't touch Discus with a bargepole!

Peter</p>

Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

[chuck]

Just chucking in my 2 cents...
I am using Yabb after a recomendation from someone on this forum, and it's the best one i've tried so far, haven't had any problems. I tried ikonboard, but it had a few bugs, and i tried discuss but didn't like it.
so there you go.

[pduggan]

So here it is, then:

http://www.petestack.com/flypaper/index.php

http://www.petestack.com/images/flypaper.png

<br clear="all">I'm still playing with some tweaks to the template and trying to sort a few little teething problems with the installation, but it's up and running and the HTML really does validate!

Peter</p>

Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>

PS Mustn't forget to thank Simon for responding to my query about suitable hosts! I did check out Nicnames, but I'm currently trying UK Secure Web. Their facilities, connectivity, backbone etc. looked absolutely first rate — and their support is both helpful and available till 9pm — but the jury's still out on whether some annoying timeouts at my board (at busy times?) are being caused by a busy server or busy internet connections...

[This message was edited by Peter Duggan on February 01, 2002 at 17:28.]

[Canapril]

Hi Peter,
I'm a little new to this board and have been reading your postings and wonder if you have truly found what you were looking for.
I have a question for you though, what is the difference between a bulletin board and a forum?

I have a forum with ezboards (free of course)that is fairly new and it can be customized to my liking, although I haven't had too much time to play around with all the changes that can be made to it's appearance. It does need something and it also needs more people posting to it as it seems to just be dying there, with only three out of nine registered users posting only once in awhile.
I would truly like to know the difference between a bulletin board as oppose to this one of mine called Handshakes. P.s. I still have to get the thingey to not get all the in my face ads appearing but I do have a ad killer program where I am not bothered by the ads at all on my own computer, whereas if another person wouldn't have it, they would see all the pop ups they have on the board.
I've taken a look at some of the boards made by members at ezboards.com and some of them are outstanding to say the least.
Here is the URL for Handshakes, feel free to take a peak and post something if you wish.
http://pub40.ezboard.com/bhandshakes

Canapril

[pduggan]

Hi Canapril

Sorry if I've been a little slow to respond...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I'm a little new to this board and have been reading your postings and wonder if you have truly found what you were looking for.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I hope so, but only time will tell!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I have a question for you though, what is the difference between a bulletin board and a forum?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Nowadays probably nothing...

Perhaps there was a clear distinction once ('forum' seems to imply more features), but most of the major players now come with more features than you can shake a stick at! I tend to call them all message boards, but most describe themselves as bulletin boards.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>I still have to get the thingey to not get all the in my face ads appearing but I do have a ad killer program where I am not bothered by the ads at all on my own computer, whereas if another person wouldn't have it, they would see all the pop ups they have on the board.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

There's probably not a lot you can do about it! Most externally hosted boards depend on advertising to pay for themselves unless you pay through the nose for the privilege of having them ad-free. Sparing my users from the annoyance certainly played a part in my decision to run my own board at my own URL.

Peter</p>

Peat Stack or Pete's Tack?</p>