I used to run a guest book on

http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/

which is devoted to a local train line. I found I got a lot of posts to
it. But since I never forced a registration (I felt it would reduce the
information passed from those inside the railway industry), I had my
fair share of idiots too.

I then switched to forums

http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/phpBB2/

based on phpBB. But I found many reasonably computer literate people had
struggle with that. Some thought icons were buttons, but they did
nothing when they pushed them. After going to a forums, the number of
posts/day dropped dramatically.

I reduced the number of forums to just one, but that has not really
helped. I'm wondering if something with a simpler human interface might
solve it.

Suggestions?

--
Dave K

http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form: month-year@domain. Hitting reply will work
for a couple of months only. Later set it manually. The month is
always written in 3 letters (e.g. Jan, not January etc)

<uk.net.web.authoring , Dave (from the UK) , see-my-
signature@southminster-branch-line.org.uk>
<43e6d730@212.67.96.135>
<Mon, 06 Feb 2006 04:57:19 +0000>

www.whatforum.co.uk click the links and have a surf at the demos .


--
(c) The Amazing Krustov

dOn Mon, 06 Feb 2006 04:57:19 +0000, "Dave (from the UK)"
<see-my-signature@southminster-branch-line.org.uk> wrote:

Phorum 5. Couldn't be better. http://www.phorum.org

I have it installed at many places, but amongst them
http://www.yorkshirelupus.org.uk/forum

Krustov wrote:
Thank you - there is a good selection there.

I'm almost tempted to code my own in C, so avoiding php with its
security hassles. Or perhaps write a guest book that has the ability to
delete messages.

I got hacked yesterday via an expliot in phpSurveyor. It seems that if
it's not a problem with php, it is with what bolts on it. I note all the
forums whcih will run on UNIX use php.

Thanks anyway, I'll take a look at them all.

--
Dave K

http://www.southminster-branch-line.org.uk/

Please note my email address changes periodically to avoid spam.
It is always of the form: month-year@domain. Hitting reply will work
for a couple of months only. Later set it manually. The month is
always written in 3 letters (e.g. Jan, not January etc)

Dave (from the UK) <see-my-signature@southminster-branch-line.org.uk>
wrote:

http://www.greywyvern.com/orca#foru

Seems Grey is no longer supporting these, but that shouldn't make a
difference - they are incredibly straightforward.

--
William Tasso

On 6/2/06 4:57 am, in article 43e6d730@212.67.96.135, "Dave (from the UK)"
<see-my-signature@southminster-branch-line.org.uk> wrote:

MiniBB is quite nice. It's a little restrictive on functionality from an
admin point of view though.

Andy

Dave (from the UK) wrote:
Writing your own could be a good experience if you're up for that. Do
you have a host where you can build binaries and execute as cgi on your
site?

IMHO the problem is the gentle learning curve. It's very easy to build
an application before you have a handle on the security issues and
nothing in PHP enforces rigor.

OTOH a lot of times the problem is that bugs have been long fixed but
old versions (of php and software) haven't been updated.

No, not all. There are forums that run on python, perl, ruby, zope
(plone of course has discussions built in a-la slashdot).

Try doing a search on sf.net along the lines of "perl forum"
substituting perl for your favourite language.