Web-developing/Forums

[Dr3ded]

So I've been searching for a while for a way to get forums into your website without it linking to a service or having to purchase a service to install a "widget for Forums" but alas I can't find any. I've Pretty much got my website built but im missing a major function which is the Forums. Anyone have any experience with this or anything to point me in the right direction would be fantastic.

[n0cturnal]

http://www.phpbb.com/ it is free and great.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

http://www.phpbb.com/ it is free and great.

Seconded. It isn't as powerful as vBulletin, but then it is free and doesn't cost 200 bucks. We use phpbb3 for our guild site and it works really well. You can often get plugins for your front page CMS to allow you to write news posts on your forum and have them appear on the main page and make both use the same login (search for a CMS bridge in the plugin library for the webpage).

[Deleted]

I came expecting a suggestion to open web-development/programming sub forums, was slightly disappointed.

As other stated, phpbb is good but I can't help also recommend vanilla forums. Open source too and is just so much less, bulky then phpbb.

[Deleted]

I came expecting a suggestion to open web-development/programming sub forums, was slightly disappointed.

Same here, same here. I'd vouch for it but I doubt there's enough interest to make it worthwhile.

On the topic of CMS, I feel like I must recommend MODX whenever I possibly can. It's the only CMS I've tried that actually seperates content from presentation. Unlike most other CMS, you organize your website yourself. There's no predetermined way to add content. Instead, you have tools to structurize your content into categories.

Basiclly, you create chunks of HTML for pieces of markup that's reused throughout the site and simply call for chunks where you want it to be. Instead of mixing PHP with the markup you make all your PHP into snippets and call for them where you want them to be.

It's a very structurized and simple way to work, anything can be customized to infinity and - given you've done a good job - a client or co-worker can easily edit the content of your site.

Please excuse my rambling.

@Dr3ded: Integrating forums into your site can be a daunting task if you're picky about it. If you want the forums to follow your stylesheets, to be displayed and literally integrated to your sites layout and similar then you will need to spend quite some time doing it. If you're fine with linking to a forum seemlingly seperate from your site (and obviously change titles etc to your liking) then it's a far easier process.

[llDemonll]

I love MODx. I don't love Revolution though. I use 1.0.5 Evolution distribution (I see they're on 1.0.6 now)

[Deleted]

I love MODx. I don't love Revolution though. I use 1.0.5 Evolution distribution (I see they're on 1.0.6 now)

I didn't discover MODX until after Revolution, but I was under the impression Revolution was a complete re-write of Evolution which logically should've made it overall better software?

Or, seeing as Revolution provides tools to work with major-scale projects, does Evolution manage smaller websites better?

*ahemnotofftopicatall*

[llDemonll]

That's the way i see it. I don't make enough sites but I toyed with revolution once and was not nearly as user friendly as evolution and I didn't have the time to sit down and mess with it then

I'm sure revolution is better, I just haven't had the time or will to learn it yet

[Dr3ded]

So I've found a nice Forum Plugin for WorPress called Forums Version 1.4.2 | By Zingiri | How i simply installed them but I keep getting the error message in my WP Editor : Forums warning: PHP sessions are not properly configured on your server, the sessions save path is not writable. how would I fix this so i can then go in and Setup my Forums so I can get this website rollin. Thanks.

[lizon]

I use Drupal personally, the developer community there is just stellar. It has its own forum module and can integrate into both phpbb and smf if needed which is quite useful.

In all honestly while you can program your own forum from scratch to plug into your website the argument is, why bother when you can use an opensource solution instead?

There is no reason to not use an opensource solution. All that is required is some custom theme work on your part to make it fit in seamless with your current website and you will be set.

[Deleted]

I tried installing Revolution 2.2.4 but absolutely doesn't want to work with Chrome, either on the front end (which interestingly doesn't show anything on IE either), or the admin panel where just the menu bar shows and nothing else. It honestly sounded like exactly what i was looking for in the interest of remaking my site, but if Chrome refuses to display it properly, then i can't help but think that it's a problem with MODx (and specifically some sort of incompatibility with Chrome). I mean, Joomla backend has a few bugs with Chrome but nothing to the point of stopping me working with it. Perhaps evolution will work out better.

Sounds like something went wrong with the installation. Try wiping everything off the server and double check the installation instructions and server requirements (pretty much everything works, but there are a few PHP version number exceptions etc). I installed Revolution 2.2.4 yesterday on a fresh server and everything works fine in every browser as usual.

[llDemonll]

MODx also has a wiki. While it's not amazing, it helps to clear up some small issues you're having. If you installed the demo site you will have a lot of extra chunks and snippets in there also that may be useful

[Deleted]

Strange. I installed it via Softaculous from my host, tried it a few times but each time i got similar results.

Well, i've got Evolution installed now with no problems, and i must admit i'm VERY impressed, much to the point that i'm redesigning my site from scratch in Photoshop (i'm honest, this is something i've wanted to do but never had the real ability to due to CMS limitations or things being overly complicated).

Being able to do that and call it all my own work (instead of something created in Artisteer) is very appealing, and though it's gonna take some time to adjust to the admin panel from Joomla, the freedom that i appear to get with it is too much to pass up. Being able to hopefully get myself back into web design after all these years feels wonderful.

It is actually the sort of thing i've been looking for, for years, so i can't do much but thank you for initially recommending it.

This is exactly the revelation I had upon discovering Revolution. Assuming a job well done, a site in MODX is has complete control over PHP requests, caching, full security and dynamic content that far surpasses what most other CMS are capable of - yet still it's all hand-written by yourself meaning good semantic and clean code. Not to mention the complete control over design and behaviour.

edit: Oh and, if you manage to install Revolution instead I wouldn't mind giving you a few quick tips on how to get started.