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General discussion

Small website with user posting and commenting

Feb 7, 2007 6:55PM PST

I am interested in creating a website to which registered users in a community can post photos with some text dialogue. Other registered users would be able to comment, even vote on the post. I'd like users to go through email verification, and even the registration form to have CAPTCHAs. Image upload should probably have some kind of automatic resizing.

I've done some basic web stuff before - particularly comfortable with the design of pages however nothing "backend".

Software/open source code? Or would I be best contracting someone to come up with the code - where?! The budget is very limited. I could probably get access to some web developing software on some friends' work machines if that were to be helpful.

I'd really appreciate some pointers.

Discussion is locked

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Why not phpbbs?
Feb 7, 2007 11:00PM PST

Hint? Google.com

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Why not indeed
Feb 9, 2007 10:33PM PST

That's why sometimes only a good forum will do - for me I sometimes just need a starting point and this seems as good as any. It also explains much similarity in many forums around the web.

I do have to weigh up against finding someone who already has all the know-how and could set up and customise everything in much less time than I, bearing in mind a learning curve for dealing with php and databases and setting up a testing server. I may post on somewhere like elance.com to see what sort of money it might take.

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20 minutes.
Feb 9, 2007 11:33PM PST

I noted phpbbs to someone and they had it up and running in 20 minutes. Maybe they just clicked OK on each item but it seems to work.

Another person spent months in research and as far as I know are still in research mode.

Bob

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If that
Feb 11, 2007 8:08AM PST

I set aside a little time and installed phpdev and then tried out phpbb. Very straightforward and simple to implement.

Where I have a real void is images and databases - last time I was interested in the two together was in the last millenium, in the hands of Access! Any ideas of a good implementation for user to upload an image to the post as they're writing it? Ideally I would like [for the app] to resize and host on my server.

PHPBB is a good offering for its purpose. Also worth a look is PHPdev - a single installation PHP/MySQL/Apache solution for those not wishing to go through the separated processes of installing and configuring testing server, database, php etc.

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Discussions about that.
Feb 11, 2007 10:14AM PST
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good
Feb 12, 2007 12:47AM PST

Suggestion followed and coppermine discovered, which seems full featured - thanks for this tip.

I'm having a look at Drupal as well. Perhaps a steeper learning curve than PHPBB. Ultimately each offers some really good features and will depend upon one's needs.

Having previously mentioned phpdev, I have to mention easyPHP because drupal does not want to run on PHPdev - might be to do with PHP version req'd, I don't know).