Dear all,

I'm pretty sure the programming behind this forum is quite immense since it always seems to run smoothly..how many people does it take to program and manage such a forum?

The reason I ask is that I'd like to build one for Real Estate for "For Sale By Owners" where Top producing agents can answer posts from struggling sellers...I dont have a clue how to program except for a bit of dabbling with Visual Basic and Pascal...I don't think they are gonna cut it somehow.


I'm sure programming and running my own forum will forever remain a fantasy but I'm curious to know how the brains behind this particular system think..:-)...I think its remarkable and a darn good job..thank you for building it...you have saved my skin countless times and educated me many more.

Thanks
Darren

Hi,

Although you will not find answers to all your questions I expect the following two will be interesting:

try this one! and this one! (the last one is only interesting if you can read Dutch, which you can I think!

The forum software comes as a package, pretty much like any other application. There are both commercial verions, and some free versions. I agree though, the programming behind forums is amazing. As far as people that it takes to run, I think Grinler would tell you that when he first set up BC, he did it all on his own. As the membership has grown, he then added other staff to help run things, but he is still reponsible for everything that happens "behind the scenes".

At a minimum, you need somewhere to host the forum, and some type of forum software. You can either rent server space, or host it off your own Internet Connection (if you have cable or DSL, and do not expect too many users.)

There are quite a few different forum packages... these two are popular and common.
http://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.yabbforum.com/

That should get you started.

Also the forum portion is the "only" portion that is not hand coded by myself. The tutorial app, the glossary, resources, etc are all created by me in PHP. So there are a lot of different elements involved with the site. The forum software, though, is fairly easy to get set up and running. All you need is a server that supports PHP and a database of some sort. For the cheapest solution you can use a free forum software, but for a business I recommend either Invision Board or vbulletin. Also PHP and mysql are the most supported.