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Setting Up A Invision Forum


smallbore

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I guess I need some information, that I'm hoping you can supply. I suggested internally that it would be good to have something like this forum setup for a group of users to use internally. Now, guess what, they want me to investigate further. So here's my questions (and I'm hoping you can answer):

 

1. How much does the forum software cost?

2. Is it difficult to implement? (We have an IT dept handling about 2000 users, intranet, internet, Oracle databases, SQL server etc already)

3. Is there a lot of routine maintenance needed?

4. What sort of support software do I need in place?

 

I hope you can give me the information, thus help budget for an implementation. I have 25 years of IT behind me, so don't hesitate to talk a little technical.

 

Best regards and thanks in advance

 

Bob M

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It's written in PHP (scripting language) and uses MySQL database. Both are readily available and can be run on a number of different platforms. You also need a webserver with PHP plugins, Apache is the the most common.

 

Typically, you run the whole lot on a Linux box, most distributions include MySQL, Apache and PHP, it's a very common combination, so much so it's known as: LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP). Failing that, I've used XAMPP, which bundles Apache MySQL PHP for MacOS and Windows as well as Linux - it's pretty idiot proof to install and is all preconfigured (otherwise it can be fiddly to get all 3 to get to talk to each other).

 

i can't comment on Invision, a quick google produced:

http://community.ipslink.com/board/

 

I imagine it's easy to set up... Neil???

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Hi Bob,

 

There are several incarnations of forum software out there to be honest.

Among the best known are this one (www.invisionboard.com), vBulletin (www.vbulletin.com) and phpBB (www.phpbb.com)

 

This forum used to be phpBB until I upgrade to Invision v1 a couple of years ago (which was also free back then). Now both Invision and vBulletin are commercial products but they do provide greater control, especially from an Admin point of view.

 

To expand on what Marfulee has said:

Invision can run under pretty much any web serving engine (Apache, IIS etc as long as it supports PHP)

The standard price includes the MySQL driver but you can also now purchase MSSQL or Oracle for an additional $50 I think.

 

You've got fairly granular control over user & group permissions and how you manage the forum to be honest. You can make it is open and simple as possible, or as tied down and complex as you wish.

 

1) $200-300 (or look into one of the freebies)

2) Nothing that anyone with a bit of technical savvy will struggle with

3) Not really. To keep the integrity of this forum, registered user's have

to be manually approved before their account is active. You can setup

auto-archiving of the database etc if you want.

4) A web server of some kind supporting PHP, and a database server such as MySQL (MSSQL or Oracle also possible with some of the systems)

 

Cheers

Neil

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  • 8 months later...

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