is it worth the time to design my own messageboard or should i just download a free one? i know little in the way of cgi but i could pick it up if its not too complex.

I say: download a free PHP/MySQL one. Wasy to setup, working fine and well, takes less time :)

Good free ones are

phpBB (http://phpbb.com/)

XMB (http://www.xmbforum.com/index.php)

Hello,

I have to agree with HostAB.com. It would not be worth the effort (IMHO) to reinvent the wheel. A lot of time and effort has been put into those boards to optimize the schema and sql.

Frank

I'll make it unanimous. Download a free one, Your site's visitors won't have to suffer through your learning and debugging. Additionaly, the better programs have far more features than you would think of or be able to add for some time.

I spent a year (1998) looking at dozens of programs (over 100) looking for a good replacement fpr the one I was using at the time. The program I envisioned did not exist at that time and there were none that were even close at any price. I looked at everything from free ones to inhouse developed ones at a cost of over $100,000.

Back then, it might have made sense to write your own. However, the current spate of forum programs has advanced greatly in the past 3 years and the only reasons to write your own would be as a programming experience and lesson and eventually to duplicate the features of expensive, fully featured programs, substituting time for money as the cost.

free it is. im going to check out the two above thx again guys.

I have some information on my site about forum programs and building an online community with them. The links include one to David Woolley's excellent site on them wherein he lists most of the ones available (and defunct ones as well) and Deb Suran's site also.

The two types of programs are linear (or non-threaded) programs like this one and threaded, which has a tree like structure where discussions can branch off. Each has their strengths and applications and you may want to learn what they are before deciding on a speciic program.

If you need help with phpBB just send me a pm.

Frank

you may want to wait for ib3 to come out http://www.ikonboard.com it is almost finished and will have basically all the features vbulletin has

its crazy that if i could post 50 1 mb pics of gary coleman on tripod and i cant upload one 150 kb pic of a topless babe. god almighty.

There's also YaBB (http://yabb.xnull.com), which is a pretty nice Perl script.

You could also use BoardNation.com which offer free fast YaBB hosting with no banners. It can be setup within the minute and is fully customizable to fit into your site design! :beer: