Forum DB design

pinehead18

Ok, i'm writing a small forum for my site and i have a question on what tables i should have.

Right now i know i need a

Frorum table.

Now my question is do i need a topic table? and a thread table? Or just a thread table?

Thank you
Anthony

planetsim

If you dont know how to design your database you shouldnt be creating a forum in my opinion.

Im not going to tell you the answer because there really isnt any.

What i am going to tell you is even though you want a small forum you should plan exactly what you want from there work out the database design modify it try and shows how tables and fields relate then start your coding.

Like i said there is no answer to this question. What you should try and take into consideration is future requirements. Will you add features to the database, how will that work out?

yelvington

Originally posted by pinehead18

Now my question is do i need a topic table? and a thread table? Or just a thread table?

You need a lot of definition before you start thinking about physical storage.

What is a forum? What is a message? What is a thread, and why would it be different from a topic? What is a user? How do they relate to one another?

There are many different discussion models -- read David Woolley's papers on computer conferencing:
http://www.thinkofit.com/drwool/

I prefer a linear discussion model, with discussions contained in arbitrarily nested folders. That's fairly simple to model. You can do it with three or four tables, including full user profiles and "last read message" support.