A Message Board January 31, 2008

A Message Board

By Guest Contributor
January 31, 2008

Unbrainwashed recently made a comment suggesting we ought to have a message board so that people who visit this site can carry on their own discussions. The upside to this is that the threads could last several days, as opposed to a blog posting, where discussions tend to be short-lived.

I don’t have enough knowledge about how to do this, but if anyone would like to shed some light on how it works, what software to use, costs, etc., please let me know! And if you’re willing to moderate it, that would be good to know as well 🙂

I’ll see if we can make this happen!


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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  • That’s a great idea! It would also help foster a community. I don’t know anything about setting those things up, although I’m sure one of your many smart readers does.

  • Jim

    I’d go with bbPress, personally. It’s built by the same folks who develop WordPress, and it’s just as easy to setup and install.

  • Kelley

    I’m not sure how you host your site but if you have access to a server and MySQL you can use phpBB, which is a board I’ve used in the past and is pretty easy to work with once you get it up and running. It’s free too, which is always nice and you can set the URL to anything you want.

    Another option to try might be Invision Power Board, which has free and paid versions. It’s a little more complicated to use and it’s remotely hosted but it works well from what I’ve seen of it. You can find pretty nice skins for both this one and phpBB.

    I’d be interested in helping or moderation if you need it.

  • Ben

    vBulletin seems pretty popular. That’s the extent of my knowledge, though.

  • Most phpbb is free and it can be set up in an hour or so on a sub-domain. I’d be willing to help in anyway that i can. I have set this application up dozens of times.

    I would also be willing to host and administrate the forum for you.

    Just give me the word!

  • Alphager

    The easiest to use would probably be phpbb, as your server allready has all prerequisites (apache, php, mysql). Your webguy should be able to install it without problems.

  • Jason C. Romero

    So interesting to see this. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to incorporate a blog with a message board, precisely for this reason.

    Right now I am leaning towards using WordPress (that’s what you’re using right?), bbPress, and bbSync.

  • I like tea

    I, for one, would love to see a forum on this site.

  • As an experiment, I just crated a forum as part of my blog. It was real easy. Just do the following steps:

    1. create a sub domain to friendlyatheist.com. For example, you could make it http://forum.friendlyatheist.com

    2. then install phpbb2 (or your forum software of choice) in the sub domain. If your hosting provider has fantastico, then it only takes a few mouse-clicks.

    3. then there is probably a bit of configuration necessary… I haven’t looked into that part.

    You can get a feeling of what the default installation of phpbb looks like by browsing to http://forum.religiouscomics.net

    Good luck!!!

  • cautious

    (thinks about pointing at former forum at otmatheist.com)

    (shuts up instead)

    (thinks better against shutting up completely, points at the formerly-used forum)

  • I have a defunct site, atheistsanonymous.org, which could host a forum. There are no ads or anything. It was supposed to be for atheist group organizers, but there are so few of those.

  • Kyle

    I can moderate if you need more people. I moderated a forum with 32K members before. However, it also depends on how much time you need for the moderators to fill. Let me know.

    Thanks.

    I do think that it would be worth it to open a donation and buy either vBulletin or IPB. I’ve moderated the latter, but the former is really good.