Group,

Is there anyone here that has a good understand on how or what makes Yahoo's Yahoo Groups tick?

I am wanting to start my own message board and mailing list that works exactly like yahoo groups but I dont know what they are using to actually make the setup work.

For those who dont know about yahoo groups its basically a web based message board that communicated with a mailing list, that when a message is posted to the web based message board it also sends that same message out through email to every member who is signed up to the mailing list and vise versa.

The closes thing I have found is a program called Mail 2 Forum and PHPBB but mail 2 forum has too many bugs to be worked out of it yet and they are still in Beta format. they also do not support attachments and attachments is a very important feature that I need.

I currently have H-Sphere installed into my server and it offers a mailing list in the email setup screen, I have tried this mailing list program and it supports attachments but i just dont know how to get it to communicate with the phpbb message board.

Can anyone help me out with this. Im willing to pay someone to do the work or show how to do it if neccessary, other wise im just looking for someone to help me with the information.

Yahoo Groups .... http://groups.yahoo.com
Mail 2 Forum .... http://m2f.sourceforge.net/index.php
PHPBB Message Board ... http://www.phpbb.com
H-Sphere Control Panel ... http://www.psoft.com

Thanks much

Doug

Well most forums will email people on specific messages etc. For example, WebWiz, I can sign up / subscribe to particular topic areas. So I will be sent a message everytime a new message is posted in that topic area. Or I can subscribe to the entire board.

Or are you wanting to offer a service similar to Yahoo groups for other people? If so, I think that most message boards state in their TOS that it is not for resale or for profit.

No it is not for profit.

It is strictly to try and offer the same features that yahoo groups does, but without all the restrictions that yahoo has.

Doug

Yahoo groups also offer apart from messageboards
free galleries, chats, file databases etc ... its difficult to offer the same features , that also for free

Some sites already allow anyone to have free phpbb based communities so may be you need to offer something extra or new ?

dcpaq2, if you want something like yahoo groups then you will have to code it or get it done by someone.

its gonna be a massive project and it will be very hard to promote it when you have competitors like yahoo and msn. but if you can come up with something different and nicer then the rest then ofcource you have a chance.