Setting up a phpBB style message board on a website)

Hi.
I want to set up a message board similar to this one
just as a private board for our club website.
Does anyone know what would be involved?
Cheers,

Its not too tricky, but not trivial either (unless the installer has got a lot better!) www.phpbb.com/ has all you need.

yep just download phpbb, extract it to a folder. Upload the files to your website, run the install script that comes with it. The install script asks for the details for the database you wanna use. And that is that, the rest is just backend config, setting privs etc.

One thing you should do is set up CAPTCHA, that is an add on which ensures that people registering have to type in a sequence or code which is generated as an image on screen. It stops the spam robots registering. Always use the option which means the admin must confirm all registrations.

Just get the bb up and someone here will talk you through the more complex stuff like captcha. Hell frank i'll even set it all up for you if you run into trouble. Only takes half an hour.

Frank,

Well done on the sky at night winning pic (and this of course the montly IFAS photo competition winning pic).

As the lads have said, it is a case of installing the script and specifying your database, I have one set up for the Deise Astronomy Society at www.deiseastronomy.com .

I totally agree with Dave regarding CAPTCHA, (as we have had alot of Spammers registering on the boards, at DAS), in addition to setting the registration confirmation to Admin, rather than User, so that you have more control over who becomes active or not (prior to setting the activation to Admin, a few spammers managed to post some nasty messages, which were not very appropriate).

One thing you should do is set up CAPTCHA, that is an add on which ensures that people registering have to type in a sequence or code which is generated as an image on screen. It stops the spam robots registering. Always use the option which means the admin must confirm all registrations.

phpBB comes with that as standard, so Frank has nothing to worry about!

Frank, I set up my own boards on the site in my signature recently, with phpBB, and it was a doddle. There are loads of add-ons to improve the experience further for your guests and members which you will find from the 'Community' (forums) on phpbb.com. All software created under it is under the GNU License, which means it is open sourced, and free to use and modify as the intending user sees fit. There are other free versions of bulletin boards software on the web, but don't quite measure up to the frequency of use, level of support, or favouritism, of phpBB.

I have a very good book I read for getting started on the subject which I bought last year: "phpBB: A User Guide" by Stoyan Stefanov and Jeremy Rogers, printed by PACKT Publishing. Read it in less than 2 days and I was brimming with confidence when I set up my first board, which in itself was done within a day (even with all the add-ons, features, new templates, buttons, avatar ranks, smilies, etc). If you'd like the book I could loan it to you, send to you in the post?

Seanie.

phpBB comes with that as standard, so Frank has nothing to worry about!

I hope its improved what what it was like about a year ago. spambots had little trouble bypassing that.