Writing forums in PHP.

Jim02

Hello,

I'm currently preparing to start on a brand new website. I have been thinking heavily on what I want to do and how I plan to achieve it. I haven't done PHP in awhile, but when I was doing it I was pretty good, if I may say so myself. It will be a struggle to get back into it, but I'll hopefully catch back on.

One of the features I plan to have on the site is forums, and I do not want to have to write the whole site around VBulletin or any other forum softwares databases. I think I'll write my own.

Now my question: can anyone give me suggestions on how I can show updated threads and new posts since their last visit? My original intention was to set a cookie or update a row in a database with their last visit, but I'm not too sure when I can update it because I'll need to know their last visit when they're still on the forums (so I can continue showing them recently updated threads).

I'm not sure if that makes sense. I'm even having trouble understanding it. Can you please just explain how you'd go about showing update threads and new posts since their last visit?

lol. Sorry if it makes no sense.

Thanks in advance.

rrijnders

You really should look into the various free forum systems that are out there already. I don't know what you mean when you say you don't want to have to build your site around the forum software. Most of the DBMS schema make perfect sense and shouldn't interfere with your other tables; leave them in a seperate database if you want. They all pretty much use an included "header" and "footer" file, so you can wrap your own site right around them (you already use a header and footer file, right?).

That said, if you are determined to write your own (look at how long the free ones have been in development to get them to their current state before you decide!) you can download the code of the free packages and see how they handle the very problems you are talking about.

Thora_Fan

I agree with rrijnders. Most of the good forum software out there that's been in development for a while has evolved to a state where you can quite easily customize it for your own needs/site. To build a really good board will take time, and it might not be time you have that you can invest in doing so.

Just my two cents.

Jim02

I appreciate your advice; however, I was really looking for an answer to my original question.

rrijnders

Every time they conduct an inquiry their session timestamp is updated. Anything posted after that is "new". That's only half the problem though; most boards keep track of stuff you have read or not read. For that, you will have to keep a DB table of "read" posts or just "read" threads.