Creating a forum

[WM_Programmer_noob]

How would I go about creating a forum just like this one?

 

I'm very new to PHP... (just learned how to do functions)

 

Maybe you could link me to a thread, or a how-to website.

 

I'd really appreciate any help!

 

 

[PFMaBiSmAd]

Writing the software for a Forum application is a large undertaking, requiring several hundred hours of time and is not a beginner project. However, using an existing Forum application to make your own Forum can be done quite easily. This Forum uses SMF - http://www.simplemachines.org/ The code is open source so you can examine it to both see how you might write an application like it or use it for your own forum (it's not clear from your question which you want to do.)

[Daniel0]

Though one might see it as somewhat pedantic, I would not recommend using the SMF source code as the base of learning for a beginner. Generally, I would be very cautious using other people's code for learning purposes unless you have a lot of experience with programming. One of the downsides with PHP is that it's easy to write something in it, meaning it's also easy to write something that sucks (but still technically "works").

 

One of the things you absolutely must do is to read through Language Reference, Security and Features in the manual. These chapters take introduce important concept and constructs in PHP that you must know how to use. PHP's manual is really good, so don't be afraid to check it often. You can probably skip the OOP section for now though; OOP is much more than just syntax.

 

Nobody can really tell you how to create a "forum". It can be anything from a pretty simple script, to a very complex one. After you've read the 3 chapters I just mentioned, you'll have to sit down and identify the various components your forum will be comprised of.

 

As an example, you would likely want users to be able to register and log in. That is one "component". You can further break registering a user down: 1) Display form, 2) Read and validate input, 3) Insert user into database.

 

One of the key skills of any programmer is being able to break a large and complex problem into smaller problems. When you've solved one of the smaller and easier sub-problems, you have partially solved the complex main problem.

 

We have a number of tutorials that introduce important concepts in respect to programming in PHP. After you've read the aforementioned PHP manual chapters, you might want to read the following tutorials:

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/php-loops

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/php-security

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/php-basic-database-handling

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorial/sessions-and-cookies-adding-state-to-a-stateless-protocol

 

Also check out this blog post so you won't end up using a horrible practice that unfortunately is commonplace amongst many PHP programmers.

 

Good luck with your programming endeavors! One thing you must keep in mind is that programming is not easy. Writing code may be easy, but writing good code is difficult.