How to create a forum as database design project? n00b here... Please help!!

[Black Death]

Hello guys! This is my first post and I am excited to be on the most famous forum site on internet...

Our Database Management Systems course instructor asked us what would we be creating for our semester project, and I replied here that I am interested in creating a forum that runs in our college intranet servers. The problem is I am a complete n00b in MySQL and PHP and have no idea about anything other than knowing that these two are used to create forums.

After a quick search in our forum to check if similar posts have been made before, I found out things like PHPBB and noticed people talking about some commercial systems like vB etc., but I can't use commercial things since it's a project and we have to design our forum. I am not sure whether I can use PHPBB - because I have to show her that I did some work related to databases, administration, and transaction sorts of things through my project - and I don't think there would be much database design etc. if I use something "ready made" like that.

I am also thinking of using JQuery in the forum for things like username checking while registration and search engine webcrawlers.

I want you experts out there to help me in this regard...

1. Is creating a forum on my own a bad idea?

I know HTML, CSS and JavaScript to some extent, so will I be able to create a nice forum(given a time of one month) with two teammates who are pretty much as dumb as I am?

2. Is the combination of PHP, MySQL, JQuery enough to create a perfect database working behind the forum or do we need to learn something else?

I don't think I can use content management systems like joomla or wordpress in my project as that would make the project look too shallow and it might get rejected.

3. How to start off creating a basic forum?

[r937]

1. no, it's not a bad idea, but it will be hard work

2. php, mysql, and jquery are sufficient

3. design the database tables first

[Black Death]

1. no, it's not a bad idea, but it will be hard work

2. php, mysql, and jquery are sufficient

3. design the database tables first

I must say that as I started to think about the complexities involved in a forum, it struck me that the thing is actually LOT more harder than it looks...

Now this makes me feel very bad about my decision... I don't want to screw up my first project itself...

Anyway, what good is a project if it weren't challenging enough...

BTW sir, I would like to ask you about selection of features in our basic forum... What features we can drop in our initial design to make project a little simpler?

I am thinking of dropping moderators on the forum and leaving everything to admins, would that be a good idea? (As we will be hosting it on our intranet servers I think we can leave some security holes unattended before the project submission (if it comes out to be that way) and about a thousand people might use our forum, at most...)

I might be asking many stupid and unnecessary questions out of enthusiasm, but I will be very happy if some one points me towards a nice web article or some tutorials on creating a forum from scratch, if they know something like that... Thanks!!

[Doug G]

There are open-source forums you could download and look at their table design. Forums get complicated, for example Simple Machines Forum (an open-source php/mysql forum) has some 63 tables.

[r937]

63?!! scare the kid off, why don'tcha

you probably need only 4 -- forums, threads, posts, and members

[Black Death]

Thanks for the help!!

I will ask again if there comes any trouble in the process.

[bzcastell]

Hello ! I believe this is the first time I might actually be able to help someone on this forum. @Black Death - I just did one as well. Not difficult at all if you can follow directions ! Here is the tutorial: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/ph...-from-scratch/

I use phpmyadmin which comes with CPANEL.

Good Luck

[bimalpoudel]

Also,
Check out the simplest forum - http://www.seo-board.com/ that they designed to cover many features a forum software should have.
Database is light weight. So, it can give clues in every files they have written.

Probably the simplest form of a forum software that uses database.

[Black Death]

Thanks guys! I was able to do it with all that help!!

There were finally 5 tables in it, and it was kinda simple and served the purpose... used JQuery for styling the forum!!

[r937]

congrats and thanks for coming back to update us on the project

which 5 tables did you end up with?

[Black Death]

ahh...

sections, posts, messages, threads, users...

the extra table was messages one, used for private messaging...

also, the users table also consisted a column for location of profile pic.

(which we added on the day of submission... it was pretty much last minute panic... but worked out pretty well... )


So,when we were demonstrating the whole thing, it was pretty newbie... but the forum was running okay... So, we were fine!