Can someone please help program a forum for us?

[Cammy]

Hello everyone. I will get straight to the point. We really need the help of someone who can program an IBrowse/AWeb-compatible forum for us. The forum is not intended to compete with or detract from Amiga.org or any other general Amiga forum, it will be focused entirely on game development for Amiga systems. A few years ago we had our Underground Arcade forum where many of us could come together and discuss our game ideas, help each other out, and we were actually making progress! Then suddenly the host for our site was gone, and we lost everything. Ever since, we have barely gotten any work done on these projects, and I feel that if we had a forum again that was open for all people interested in games development for Amiga, we would finally get back to work again!

My fellow Amiga game developers and enthusiasts agree, if we just have a place we can get our work done we'd see results so much sooner.

Please reply if you can help us, or if you support the idea of a site and forum dedicated to developing new games for Amigas. Please don't reply if you don't like the idea, we're going to do it whether you like it or not. There's no point trying to change my mind, there is no better option for us if we want more games on the Amiga, we must have a NEW forum, and it MUST be IBrowse/AWeb compatible, which means no CSS.

A new forum has the best chance of avoiding loyalty/bias issues some people might have with current forums.

Please, I don't want to have to endlessly reply to this topic having to explain all the reasons why we need this forum, we just do. If you don't understand why, please don't reply, just ignore the thread and move on. We just need someone who can program this forum and set it up for us to moderate, and you will be rewarded with new Amiga games to play made by a united world-wide Amiga community.

The forum will eventually be accompanied by a website filled with game development and programming resources and a front-end for people to visit and download the games we make.

[Cammy]

We have had offers from a few fellow Amiga users to host and register the domain for us, but I'm not sure if the offer still stands. In any case I think we could find someone to offer hosting for the site, and hopefully convince the current holder of the domain name to transfer it to the new site.

[Cammy]

Unfortunately our older forum wasn't IBrowse compatible, which was one of the problems with it to begin with.

So I guess which forum package we choose would depend on the server? I can't afford to pay for hosting myself so I have to rely on someone to provide a host for us to use.

I have checked the HivelyTracker forum and it does indeed work in IBrowse, but I was wondering if such features as avatars, attachments and more user information like location would be supported or could be added? Also, what would the host server require to run a forum like this?

It would be nice if the forum was attractive as well as functional, I'd especially like to be able to change table colours and backgrounds so when our website is designed, we can make the forum match the design.

Thanks for replying everyone!

[Cammy]

Unfortunately there's nothing left! The person who offered us hosting for the forum forgot about it and the whole site was wiped. The new forum will have to start fresh, but my head is still bursting with ideas to start discussing, and I'll post about our ongoing projects too.

[Cammy]

Thank you for the suggestions, guys! I have tested out these forums in IBrowse, and while they do seem to work, there is no colour anywhere because I guess the CSS would add that.

I hope you will forgive my unfamiliarity with forum software, I have had no experience with this kind of programming before, I only know basic HTML. I understand that starting a new forum isn't the most basic task, and I was hoping that someone who reads this and already knows how to program one might offer to help. Although I could probably take the time to learn PHP and those other things myself, it could take me months and to be honest I would prefer to continue to learn Amiga programming and hopefully rely on someone else to program the forum for us. I hope you don't think this is selfish, I'm not used to asking for help. I'm certainly not asking for help from anyone who doesn't have the time, or anyone who thinks I am a scab. I'm just hoping someone out there who can program a suitable forum and wants to help the entire Amiga community by setting one up for us might offer to do it for us so we can continue with our Amiga programming.

One of our fellow Amiga game developers registered the Underground Arcade domain and set up a basic website on it for us a couple of years ago. Unfortunately it doesn't display right on Amiga browsers, and we hoped to replace it with a new website that I would probably code myself from HTML for maximum compatibility if I ever got around to it. Hopefully if we can arange hosting for the new site and forum, we'll be able to transfer the domain name over, but as you can see there is no forum on the old site at the moment.

The forum we want needs to have avatar support and coloured tables that work in Amiga browsers. Here is a website forum which works perfectly in IBrowse and looks the same as it does through OWB/Opera/Firefox - http://totalchaoseng.dbv.pl
If we could get something like this set up, that's all we'd need! I emailed the webmaster a few months ago to ask if he was interested in helping out but never got a reply.

[Cammy]

Thank you for all the advice, everyone! Thankfully Yssing has stepped up to the challenge to make the forum for us, and currently we have some hosting provided which we'll be testing out to see if the PHP-Fusion package works on it.

Although the idea of a BBS is kinda cool in an oldschool way, I think a regular web forum might be more familiar for most people to use.

Johnklos, if the server we're using doesn't turn out to be sufficient, I'd love to take up your offer for hosting. Out of curiousity, could you tell us more about your server?

We're just working out the particular sections and settings the forum will need at the moment. If anyone has any suggestions for areas which an Amiga games development forum might require, let us know. We'll probably continue to fine-tune the forum once it's up, but it would be nice to have it laid out well for everyone to jump in and use straight away.

Ideally we will have both public and private sections of the forum, because there are still a few developers who like to keep their projects under wraps at least until they're happy with the direction it's going, and others might just have some ideas they'd like to keep a secret for a while first. So the private section would be for developers only, and the other sections will be accessible to all forum users and readable by guests.

As well as adding a section where people can ask for help with games, and maybe a section for our open-source game maker engine once it gets started, this is what I've come up with for the forum so far. Please feel free to suggest better names or organisation than this, I'd prefer keep the forum more grouped together, less redundant, and we don't need any off-topic area.

Underground Arcade Forum

News & Announcements
-New Releases
-Coming Soon
-Competitions and contests (Like the Christmas and Retro Remix contests I tried to run)

Development (This section would only be accessible by developers, not the general public)
-Current projects
-Coding help
-Sound and Music
-Graphics and Design
-Ideas and concepts

Discussion
-Game related
-General Amiga topics (Not sure about this, I just added it to fill space for now)
-Feedback, suggestions and ideas

Resources (This part is for links to free sound, music, graphics and source code, tutorials and guides)
-Programming
-Graphics
-Sound
-Other

That's what I've come up with so far anyway. Thanks again for all the help you guys!

[Cammy]

I'm not quite sure what's happening with the forum, but I've started pre-writing a bunch of posts for new threads I'm going to start once it's running. I've got years worth of game ideas in my head waiting to get out, and I'd really like to start discussing things like how to make the most of the chipset when making games, and talking about the limitations of each system.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see

[Cammy]

We have a bunch of programmers, graphic artists and musicians lined up and waiting to get into the forum, but we still need to find someone who can program it for us, remembering that it can't use CSS so that it's compatible with IBrowse.

[Cammy]

Hi Gunnar!

The Natami forum does indeed work perfectly in IBrowse, I read it on my A1200 every day, even if I haven't had much of a chance to post yet, sorry. I promise to introduce myself there soon.

I would be honoured if you could help us with our own forum. I was wondering if it would be possible to have avatars? I know they're not used on the Natami forum, but I'm not sure if that is by choice or a limitation of the forum software. I hope that we can have avatars on the Underground Arcade forum, I think they're cute and help me remember people.

We also seem to have lost our domain and old website, and I'm not sure if any of the offers to host and register our site for us still stand.

[Cammy]

Forget about this, we're not going to do it any more.

Stupid idea has been cursed for years.

[Cammy]

Yeah, crazy as it sounds, they specialise in Blitz Basic, AmigaE and things but no one knows PHP. Anyway we don't need an Amiga games development forum anymore so it doesn't matter.

[Cammy]

No, I just think it's time to lay the idea to rest and move on.