I've rolled a homegrown msgboard app!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I decided I wanted to replace the “sign the Guestbook” function attached to this personal web page here with a message board where people could read threads they are interested in, reply (with or without quotes), and so forth, and perhaps most importantly not require me to create static web pages for each posting submitted.

Of course shelling out for vBulletin was out of the question. And although there are free php based bulletin boards you can create and deploy, I decided that since in my other online presence I do purport to be a database geek, I really ought to write my own.

Therefore:

FmBoard

It is, for the moment, hosted for free, putting me in the beggars-should-be-choosy position of accepting their security structure, which precludes providing logon-free guest access, as I’d originally intended. So for read-only no-posting-privs access, Account is “FmGuest” and password “guest”. (Then click FmBoard on the next screen)
Things not implemented yet but shall be:

• Search function. For this, at least, I should be able to outdo vBulletin, or at least the SDMB’s incarnation thereof. It won’t be true boolean search language but it should at least support phrases, concurrent search terms, omit terms, wild cards, etc…

• Edit post function.

•Info about the poster/user, next to their posts. Including home pages, email, IM, etc

• text formatting like italics, bold, etc.
Things not implemented and probably never will be:

• Smilies. At least not unless FileMaker 9.5 or 10.0 rolls out with support for calculation field of result type “container” that let you concatenate text with graphic elements. There sure isn’t any elegant way to do it now.
I think it’s pretty close to usable and servicable for a low-volume deployment like what I’ve got in mind. All the material from the original “Sign the Guestbook” has been redeployed as the “Main Board”. I added two other forums but they don’t really have any content to speak of yet.

Anyway, I’m feeling rather pleased with myself in an insufferably geeky way… :wink:

2

Yo, I got lots of free bandwidth. PM me if you need a hosted home; I am already hosting this fellow and he’s not hurting my bandwidth (yet). Just need an obligatory hosted by xxx.

3

You do FileMaker hosting, i.e., you’re running FileMaker Server Advanced on a dedicated machine?

This thing contains nary so much as a single <HTML> in it.

That’s very kind of you, btw, I deeply appeciate the offier!

4

Search is implemented now. Text formatting for posts and titles is implemented now.

5

It doesn’t look to be coded in PHP going by the “cgi” in the URL, but in case that assumption is wrong, I can share my code for a BBS Script for bolding and smilies and all that fun stuff.

also developed a bulletin board software system recently

6

Thanks… I don’t have to write the cgi at all, FmServer generates the equiv (and all the HTML and CSS etc) on-the-fly. All I have to do is write the FileMaker scripting and design the FileMaker layouts. It is its own front end.

7

Ouch, I thought you meant you done it in PHP.

8

OK, progress has been made.

Search works.

Basic text formatting markup is now supported (vBulletin, HTML, and Setext markup codes are all recognized), although you have to insert the codes manually.

And guest access is a straight click without logon. (Registered users have to enter account and password)

To read the board as a guest, click here. Guests can read but cannot post.

To log on as a registered member, click here. After entering your Account Name and Password, click “FmBoard” on the next screen to enter.

To request an account with posting privileges, [click here](mailto:ahunter3@earthlink.net?Subject=guestbook acct request&Body=Hello, I would like posting privileges on the guestbook / message board. To indicate that I’m probably not a bot, I have corrected info in the following sentence. Today is 9/3/2008 and the account name I would like is ‘username’ and I would like my password to be ‘password’ and the email address that should be associated with this account is the one that this email is being sent from.)

9

Info about poster is now implemented, sort of (homepage URL, Skype, email all work; I have not gotten AIM to work as a clickable link).

Edit posts is now implemented, up until the post being edited is no longer the last post in the thread, after which point it is locked to editing.

Avatars are sort of implemented (you have to email me the image, there’s no way you can upload it or link to it; but once that is done it would appear next to all of your posts).

Next up: I am thinking of implementing a quickie “register and get set up with account and password w/o user intervention” system, with a homegrown alternative to “capcha” to weed out bots, with no lag-time waiting for me to approve the new account. I am thinking the very very sparse traffic does not make me a target for bots anyhow, so why not?

And: hey dammit not a single Doper has been sufficiently curious to give it a try! MOST annoyed, I am! C’mon! Be a beta tester and register and post a comment or two, willya?

10

•Inventeed a homerolled equiv of “capcha” and having done so…
• enabled instant no-intervention creation of accounts with full posting privs