How would I do different forum sections for my forum software in the making?

Miles111

I'm currently in the design stage of making my own forum software, having been inspired by invision board I already have an understanding of how I'll do the posts, how I'll allow members to register, and all the basic such as those. But, I was wondering how I'd do different forum sections, similair to how this forum has different sections for Database, Newbies, etc. I quickly found a solution on how to do it, but that would mean hardcoding links into the script, useful for a forum only I'd use for my site, but not for public forum software. Other ideas I had were to have different sections premade and have their names changed through variables, but what if a user of my software only wanted a certain number of sections, or more?

Short, and summary: I need a way of having my forum software in the making have different forum sections, that a user of my software can choose.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Piranha

First I have to ask why you are doing a new forum? There are tons of free forums that doesn't require much effort to set up, and they are tested and secure. Making a forum yourself seems to be a waste of time, effort and a risk of security problems.

Anyway, how do your database design look like at the moment? It is easier (and you will learn more) if we start with your layout and change that a tad.

Miles111

Well, I'm making a new forum for the challenge, and the learning experiance, and the pride of knowing that what I created may be used by others, and myself.

I have so far not got a database layout, but I can quickly do one if you wish.

Piranha

Ok, it seems like you have a pretty big trouble.

When designing something big (a forums is big) you should always design everything before starting to code. That way you don't have to code everything 2-5 times, which will be the result otherwise. So design the database, the GUI and the middle layer before writing even one row of code. I am only interested in the database design to help you out with your problem, but the other designs will come in use as well.

Miles111

What I've done so far is make that which is not going to require much recoding, like the registration form (but not php to enter details into a database) and other things, like the post form (again without php).