Forum Software

Discussion in 'Chit-Chat' started by ynexfan2003, Feb 27, 2005.

  1. ynexfan2003

    ynexfan2003 Regular Member

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    It's been such a long time since I posted here that I almost forgot my password.

    Anyway, I'm setting up a few forums - one specifially for badminton - and I'm considering which forum software to use. So far I've set up forums in phpBB (which I found very buggy) and SMF (which is sleek and fast, but at this stage pretty lacking in templates, which means in order to get anything original looking, I'd have to spend time editing the php styles).

    Any suggestions, Kwun or anyone else? How does Vbulletin compare to Open Source forum software? I notice that there is, cough, a license activated free trial available from the Vbulletin website.
     
  2. ynexfan2003

    ynexfan2003 Regular Member

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    ****************:cool:
     
  3. kwun

    kwun Administrator

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    vb is mostly stable. i haven't used the other ones for a long long time, so i am not able to make a comparison.

    depending on your budget. vb is as you said, costly and if you want to make a few forums, it may end up blowing a big hole in your wallet...
     
  4. ynexfan2003

    ynexfan2003 Regular Member

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    Cockburn centre website

    I decided to settle for SMF; installation was pretty easy it has a gui frontend in the form of a simple php install file which allows you to create the relevent tables in your MySQL database (unlike phpBB). It's quite slick and rich in features in comparison to a default installation of phpBB, but unlike phpBB it's very lacking in templates. I guess both have different advantages - you can always install mods for phpBB but your chances of breaking it (and the feature simply not working) are pretty high; whereas SMF has pretty much all you could need by default in respect of features, but you have to hack the template in order to use different forum styles. (It's coded in very simple php anyway, so I guess it's not difficult if you know what you're doing).

    Anyway, I'm working on a site for a badminton hall in Glasgow called the cockburn centre (this is where Dill spends most of his time sweating out his staple diet of pizzas and fish suppers); I hope to have it fully functional with online booking (both for courts and for Scottish coaches) within the next week or so. I installed an SMF forum here and asked some moron called Phil McBride to moderate and keep it updated. [​IMG]

    The navmenus are loading the same content in the main frame simply because I've yet to install online booking software and do the subpages. An idea I'm considering is to have a page listing Scottish coaches, a short description of their coaching experience, and a form allowing visitors to book prospective coaching sessions with them using an email to SMS service (or if it's agreeable to the coaches, an online schedule of their availability and a booking form for visitors).

    www.cockburncentre.com
     
  5. ynexfan2003

    ynexfan2003 Regular Member

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    I guess I should really post this info elsewhere, as I know other forum members play at the cockburn, but I don't want to seem as though I'm agressively advertising a site which might rival your traffic (...not). :p
     
  6. bigredlemon

    bigredlemon Regular Member

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    cockburn does not sound like a badminton site :eek:
     
  7. ynexfan2003

    ynexfan2003 Regular Member

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    Haha - you should have seen the difficulty I had asking the American registrar on the telephone for that domain name. When I spelt it out I thought he was going to slam the phone down on me; but it's pronounced co'burn. The "ck" is silent unless you've had relations with one of the female badminton players there :p
     
  8. Dill

    Dill Regular Member

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    Hoi............... ;)

    Anyway, the forum part of the site was pulled by the governing body, the reason being was that they did not want to be seen to be supporting discussion about the game and did not want the potential for anyone to air their anti-SBU views in public.

    So when it comes to promoting badminton in Scotland the governing body is not fulfilling it's own criteria for being a governing body. :eek:

    I hate to say it but that Moron who was the mod was so pissed off since most of the kids and adults he coaches were all booted off the site when it was closed down without any reason being given and no e-mail being sent out advising all of the site members of the desicion that he might just have gone out and registered a new domain name such as www.talkbadminton.com just so the forum can run again and we can all air our views in public where they need to be aired, along with our normal badminton discussion for the Scots.

    After that it is up to the governing body to listen or not but we are all members of the SBU and pay their affiliation fees so we should all have our views at the very least acknowleged.

    So back to the original topic.

    That Moron is quite computer illiterate and he was looking at forum software, he found the following:

    V bulletin
    PD9 Software
    Wow BB
    BB V2
    Simple machines

    does anyone have any views on the above for running a forum? The moron doesn't want it to be a clone of this site as it might look with the V bulletin option unless there is a way to change it enough so it is a mere shaddow and not a mirror image.

    How easy is it to operate a forum and can things like boards and colours be changed easily without programming knowledge?
     
  9. Cheung

    Cheung Moderator

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    The computer illiterate moron seems to be doing quite well so far. ;)
     
  10. Dill

    Dill Regular Member

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    Not really, I think he ( :rolleyes: ) is still trying to get the non discussion content in there and it seems to be taking him a while :eek: At this time he thinks he is just filling up the board with complete bumph.

    There are a few people working on the PR side of things and I think they will start advertising sometime soon :D

    So maybe a first non moderator post, who knows.
     

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