Confused - Portal ?

[AndrewJameson]

Problem Description:
Hi,
I've been looking around for a while now at forum support software ... and I've got a problem ...

My site is in need of forum support and I also need to replace a Bloxsom supported page that is currently CGI/Perl driven. I don't have a lot of PHP experience and to be honest I've not got the time to devote to it either ...

So at the moment, I'm really lost and need someone to point me in the right direction ...

Can YaBB provide me with the necessary support to meet this requirement : ?

http://www.softspotsoftware.com/Puzzles

Essentially a puzzle-a-day page with comments.

Other forums have told me that I need to use a portal ... which is really useful as I don't know what that means !

Many thanks

Andrew Jameson

[meo]

www.lunabyte.com

[Grudge]

Well... You can just have a board that you create a new topic off each day and post the puzzle into. I believe that using the SSI functionality in YaBBSE you could then "include" the most recent topic off the board and display it on, say, your site homepage. You may want to check out SMF (www.simplemachines.org), as although it is still beta it has much better SSI functionality that you could use.

Example of SSI is here:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/ssi_examples.php

SSI basically allows you to stick information contained in a forum to anywhere you would like. If you look at that example page and look at the example for "Board News Function" it shows a way you could have a board where you post all your puzzles and then include it in your home page. This would allow people to see the most recent puzzle each day, and then comment on it using the forum software.

I'm sorry if this answer is somewhat confusing but hopefully you get the gist of what I am saying. The reason I point you to SMF is YaBBSE will be closing very shortly and SMF has much better functionality - especially in this area.

Cheers,
Grudge

[AndrewJameson]

Many thanks for your advice ...

Andrew