After a company meeting this morning, where there was considerable bitching about information not being shared too well among employees, I told the boss that we should establish a bulletin board at work. Nothing as elaborate as the SDMB, just a place where people can post questions, relate successes and failures, etc.
Much to my surprise, the boss said something along the lines of “So what’s stopping you?”. Which means that as long as it doesn’t cost too much (anything up to and including free), he’ll support it.
Since I know approximately squat about BBS’s except how to post to them, I’m hoping for some input on good, easy to use BB software and just how much trouble I’ve asked for in offering to get one up and running.
if u don’t want to go through with the linux install just use one of these sites that offer to host a messageboard for you free of charge and its also easy to setup …
If you want something a bit more ambitious, and have access to a server with PHP and MySQL, consider Drupal. It’s a free, open-source content-management system that lets you write blogs, collaborative documents, hierarchical books, etc. The bulletin-board features are relatively rudimentary, but if your boss’s needs are more than just inter-office chatting, it might be an impressive rabbit to pull out of your hat.
I recently redid my entire site (see sig) with Drupal, so you can see what’s possible with it. A basic installation/setup can be done in an hour or two by someone familiar with the system.