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forum making

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 4:32 pm
by method_man
i am making a forum and i am wondering what fields i would need for the table in my database.
would i just need:
users
password
posts?
or would i need anything else

thanks,

matt

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 4:44 pm
by John Cartwright
I did

users
id
name
password
email
access

posts
id
threadid
text

thread
id
title
category_id
status (open, locked)

category
id
title
description
access

Thats fairly simple

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 4:48 pm
by method_man
thanks :D
also,
whats "access" under user and category?
and
whats the difference between title and id?

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:18 pm
by John Cartwright
I use access to block users from posting in categories they arn't supposed to..
1 Thing I forgot to add in a permission table. Its to allow you to distinguish admins from normal users.. or even banned users.

title - the thread's title (text)
id - the thread's id (int)(auto incremented)

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:42 pm
by method_man
i still dont get it lol
what about date posted?

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 6:00 pm
by Chris Corbyn
What I suggest doing is firstly spending a good while thinking about EVERYTHING you want to have included in the forum... (account types, show email, msn yahoo aim etc, different boards, ip tracking, etc etc etc). Then you'll need to decide exactly what needs storing to do that. Finally you'll have to normailize that to at least 3NF (according to Codd's Rules -> Google it).

If you read up on database normalization this task will not seem quite so overwhelming ;)

You're gonna end up with quite a lot of tables if you're looking for an efficient and highly functional forum...

I'd *possibly* help you set the database up (not in the next few days mind-you) but then you'll need to understand how to join everything back up when you retreive the data....

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2005 11:09 pm
by Ambush Commander
Of course, you could always download an already programmed forum, install it, and take a look at their tables for some ideas.

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 2:55 am
by method_man
where would i download a forum?

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2005 6:39 am
by Chris Corbyn
method_man wrote:where would i download a forum?
Well your on phpBB right now... it's free and open source and available at http://www.phpbb.com/ (linked to in the page footer) ;)

Other common ones are Invision Board and vBulletin...