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Coding a Forum from scracth

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Jul 31.2012

Hello,
I am a web Developer working with a game development team, in the last few months the game has gained a huge audience and currently a huge release of a kick stater the website I have been making will go online. Which means I have 4 weeks to get the entire site completed, one of the requests that they have. Is a Forum, which needs to be fully kit’ed out. Usually I’d go with the pre-built forum, such as Php-BB, but I think it is high time I learn php, also the theme and css in pre-built forums can be tedious to use, with the add extra that it will look better on the game if everything was made from scratch.

Now I have novice php coding skills, since I have never needed to actually write it, as I have always used pre made php. I know how to use it and all about php, but not how to make it from scratch, I’ve searched the internet and found a few tutorials. Although they do not fill the criteria needed for the forum. So my question is, does anyone know were a tutorial that fills the needs listed below or will be willing to teach me how to do this. I would watch php tutorials online or read a book on php, but with the restricted deadline and also the fact that I learn better on the job. This seems the best way, so if anyone can give any advise or help. It would be deeply appreciated.

Thank you.

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3 Comments(s) ↴

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@George88Jul 31.2012 — You're not going to be able to write a forum in 4-weeks if you're a novice. You state that you've never even written PHP and all your code so far has been generated code—in which case forget trying to write a forum.

It may sound like an easy task but once you begin to encounter problems you'll soon realise what an escalating task it will be.

Go with a pre-built forum such as phpBB; you'll thank yourself later. Not that you shouldn't ever attempt to write your own projects, but if you've truly never written any PHP before, you really should go back to basics and learn to code before trying to take on large projects. A basic, functional message board could be knocked up over the course of a day, but even then you'd at least need to be experienced. A fully functional, "kitted out" forum is probably miles out of your depth.
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@rtretheweyAug 01.2012 — I have to agree with George88. At this stage, you can't begin to appreciate all of the security issues when dealing with any kind of script that depends on user-generated content, let alone message threading, membership handling, administrative controls, etc.

Whatever shortcomings you might see in scripts like phpBB, they're tested and mature. They come with a large support community and will give you a reliable foundation right out of the box.
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@evenstar7139Aug 01.2012 — I once made a forum, with PHP, from scratch. It was an involved process and I would [I]never[/I] have been able to do it had I been a novice. And even if I had somehow pulled it off, it would have sucked. I cringe at the bugs and security holes that would have been all over the place. Some troll probably would have hacked it in no time, lol.

Save yourself a lot of frustration and code stuff more suited for a beginner, like a simple login script or something. Or heck, just something that displays "Hello World!" on the screen would be a great start!

If you want to buy a book, I thought this one was pretty easy to understand:

http://www.amazon.com/PHP-MySQL-Programming-Absolute-Beginner/dp/1598637983/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1343795528&sr=8-3&keywords=php+absolute+beginner ***Note that it assumes you already have a good grasp on HTML and CSS. If you don't know these, learn them before attempting PHP.

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