Boards

I am working on a website. I added a forum last night to is and generated 25K hits in 6 hrs. I want to run a better board and I want to use one like this one. I have my own unlimited bandwidth hosting. I also have unlimited server space. Any help for me?

www.vbulletin.com is what you want for the boards then. Unfortunately not free.

Thanks Smulkin. We are sure the board will pay for itself in a day or two. WE have 172 (20% book marking the page) unique URLs and 36K hit in the first 5 days. We are expecting $2-4K per month off it. We want something we can modify a little better than what we already have. If I start buying morphs from Adam you know it's making me a little change!

there are some great free message board systems out there that will handle high volumes. phpBB is what I started with in the PHP realm of boards. There are many many PHP based systems that can be very successfull. There are also ones you pay for and sometimes that is the better route if you need consistant support. Within the last couple years I have switched over one of my big forums over to Invision Power Board and its just plain awesome and gets better with each release (www.invisionpower.com). You really just have to consider your needs and try out the different software to see what your most comfortable with. I learned alot more than I ever thought I would when I started my own webhosting, PHP and mySQL where only things I have heard of in the beggining and now I think they are the most powerfull backend components I work with today.

Most people see a forum here but there is so much more behind it, with a database and a combination of php and other languages driving it all.

I am learning PHP right now. I am editing the Terms of Agreement for our boards. I think I am going to go with one like this one here. I really wantsomething were people can upload pics and stuff. My board is a real success so far. I had to change the terms of it to limit it to older people. I have had threats to be killed, sued, beat up, and other stuff. They have even DOS attacked the site 3-5 times.

What is the forum subject (if you don't mind me asking and it is appropriate to post here :))? Just wondering ;)

It is an "ownage" site I was contracted to build and run. I don't think the URL would be appropriate here. If you would like it message me. That forum is for verbally spanking people.

In the years of webhosting I've never seen evidence of any successfull "attack" or breach of any kind on my servers. You may want to reconsider your host if you've been hit (thats not meant to be a plug)...or you may not have a secure forum. 9 times out 10 its "script kiddies" and if they get in its due to some low level vulnerability that could have been prevented with simply keeping up to date with patches and fixes. Its not possible to have that sort of control over tha though when your not running your own.

The attacks were DOS attacks. They looked for a page that wasn't there so to speak. My buddy knows more than I do. He is the guy who owns the server, he just didn't have the time to build it himself. He told me to get videos and make it happen. I did the whole page in under an hour! The forums took me longer, but I don;t mind I am learning PHP and a new editing tool out of it so its worth the work.

FYI DOS stands for Denial of Service...

NOT the old school DOS as in disk operating system...If the server was attacked through this DOS...well I'm not sure that's even feasible anymore ROFL

DoS v DOS
Funny you should mention that - I found an old DOS book laying on the floor in the bathroom and on asking around found our middle child had been reading it and wanted to learn it. He'd found the book in the stack of old computer books in the basement (buried with the Novell and Windows NT caca). He said he wanted to learn DOS or Linux - and for a 13 year old with no command line background I figure Linux can wait. Needless to say the DOS disks i used to have were long gone and it took me until last night to find a set for him. Heck I may have him cobble together another frankenstein box from leftovber components and let him build a box to mess around on DOS/Linux (off network of course)!

Forgive the derailing wednesday ramble, folks.

learning linux will be a bonus to him especially while he's young!

bwahahahaha

Yeah - truly it will - but one heck of a learning curve. Slackware anyone?

Your right, it was a DoS attack. My buddy takes care of that stuff I just code the pages for him and stuff.

You might be suprised about the learning curve...if he is into computers and really wants to learn it I bet he could do it. I've been trying off and on for a few years now to learn linux but its only on my own time which unfortunately usually isn't enough to get much past what I do know. I think windows has ruined some people...I in no way bash windows but I'm not one of those who will say that linux and mac os are worthless either. Its all in what you know and how fast you can learn it. I wish I had learned more linux when I was younger and rather than now since the world pretty much revolves around a point and click interface.

Find him a book smulkin, download a free flavor of linux...I've read from serveral different groups on the net that Mandrake linux (might be called something different now) is a fairly easy to learn starting point I played with the last linux install I did. At work we use some SUSE systems so i'm trying to get a handle on that but my job there doesn't force me to learn it as its someone elses job so i have "find" time to learn it...but my boss is pretty good about helping me open a few "doors". -pun intended.

I have aother question about this board. Does the gallery where I load pics comes with the purchase/lease of vbulletin, or is that an additional program or something? I am seriously thinking of buying the program for a few sites I am running.

VBadvanced Gallery - I am pretty sure it is a site-license - meaning, like vbulletin you'd need to buy one per site.

Now why would ANYONE want to learn Linux? Ick...

Thanks for the help again Smulkin.

what is linux anyway?

Linux is a very very very stable OS. It's used a bit in business and sometimes coding is worked on, on linux boxes. Linux is often used to run servers. It's also one of the few OS's that you can write code into and customize it. However, it requires a bit of specialized knowledge.

My friend's linux box only crashes when the power goes out :P