Can someone please help program a forum for us?

[B00tDisk]

Why not just set up a telnet bbs with a "message door"?

[jkirk]

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.

i looked at the website and it looks like this is the package they used.
some themes for this package is here
also this is the hosting company i used. they host for free as long as you login to their forums every so often.

[Lurch]

Why not just set up a telnet bbs with a "message door"?

I like this idea, but then I'm biased as I run a telnet bbs d;) Easy to connect to now with flash connect through a browser or just using a telnet client i.e. syncterm.

[persia]

The problem is the CSS, I've had it drummed into my head for longer than I can remember that in-line code is BAD BAD BAD NAUGHTY EVIL and that we should always use CSS.  

Truth be told, it is far easier to write with CSS once you get the hang of it and I can't really think of how to do a proper CMS without it.  So you'd have to use old code and PHP 4 is dying.  Many servers are removing it.  I removed it from my servers a long time ago and I wasn't the first.

There really should be a retro CMS that sticks to the old rules, but I've never heard of one.

[Arkhan]

What is that one forum setup that uses newBB?

is that a part of Xoops?


There is an Amiga forum that uses that and works with IBrowse right?

[Amiga_Nut]

Is this forum any good for compatibility?

http://forums.bizhat.com/hosted-phpbb-forum-support/

Bizhat offer free forum hosting and it's really easy to admin/setup (did one last year)

If not, excuse my technical ignorance about what is/isn't useful

[jkirk]

What is that one forum setup that uses newBB?

is that a part of Xoops?

yea that is available for xoops. my site uses a variation of that package called cbb.
it is the theme used that might not show well.

the different forum packages are here

[Arkhan]

It seems like newBB would be a solid choice for minimal flair, maximum functionality.

[johnklos]

I'd be happy to provide hosting. Faceless commercial hosting companies just give you a poorly set up, lowest common denominator environment with limited flexibility, and most people who say they do hosting are reselling someone else's hosting or are using a "dedicated server". We, on the other hand, host our own machines in our own rack with our own allocation of IPs and a dedicated upstream gigabit connection, so we're 100% in control of everything that goes on. Very different.

I've been hosting since the mid 1990s, and some of the people who started then still have their same accounts now. You wouldn't have to worry about all your data mysteriously disappearing when the GNU/Linux box at that faceless hosting company gets rooted or when you forget to pay your bill for a month.

I'm a supporter of the Amiga community, too, so I'd be happy to help.

[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!

[fishy_fiz]

Any news on this ?  I'm pretty much constantly tinkering away making one classic game or another and this sort of forum would be quite useful.

[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

[Arkhan]

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

Whats the word!

still itching to hear about the cross platform platformer.

[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.

[biggun]

Hi Cammy,


The forum software used on http://www.NATAMI.net is relative simple but is works fine without CSS.
Its very slim, loads fast and and displays fully correct on any AMIGA browser too.

If the forum meets your needs we could certainly help you with it.

Cheers
Gunnar

[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.