Open for Discussion
By Ahmad Abualsamid
Many Web sites offer message and discussion boards to attract and retain visitors. Boards have been used for everything from dating services to stock advice. They often play an important part in marketing strategies because they provide answers to pre- and post-sale questions. They are also popular on company intranets. Web developers have responded to the popularity of discussion boards, and they labor at designing their own boards from scratch.
They might as well be reinventing the wheel.
Web developers should save themselves this unnecessary effort, and take advantage of the technology that will let them create discussion boards more efficiently. One Open Source tool lets Web developers create discussion boards using PHP and MySQL. The package, called NeoBoard, is available from the NeoQuest Web site (see "
Online"). The package works well and supports messages with multiple topic threads. Unfortunately, the documentation is not stellar and there are some minor problems with the program itself. The user interface is clean and simple, but obscure error reporting makes error recognition problematic.
I'll provide you with information that will let you create a PHP-based message board using NeoBoard or plain PHP. Then you can make a discussion board on your own either by using the NeoBoard package without modifications, or by following some of my suggestions to customize the NeoBoard package to suit your individual needs.<>
