Need super simple message board...

[Dayne Dylan]

Warriors, I want to start a niche message board. I want to make it super simple. I like this message board and the free script...

Demo message board

But...I would like one like the one above where one can "pin" certain posts to stay at the very top, or to make them permanent. This way new viewers can read these pinned posts. It doesn't look like I can do that with this script.

Any suggestions?

[Janet Sawyer]

Dayne,

Take a look at the smf forum (Simple Machines Fourm)

It's a lot nicer than a bulletin board style. Who wants a long list of postings to scan through before they find what they were originally looking for.

SMF comes free with your webhosting if it has cpanel and fantastico.
(fantastico is the little blue smiley icon!)

It's easy to configure, easy to work with and you can even make it the most private membership site ever...... with a few tweaks.

You can sticky to your hearts content

And as much as google may try, it'll never ever be able to index anything posted on it..... NEAT!

Hope that helps

Janet

[Dayne Dylan]

Sounds good...but you are saying that the posts will NOT get indexed by Google, am I reading that right? I would like things to be indexed. This will help gain traffic if items get indexed in the SE's.

[Janet Sawyer]

You can choose to have them indexed or not.

SMF is cool in it's abilities to manage what you want it do and how you would like it to do it.

The reason I stated that you can have it not indexed was incase you were looking at hosting a private bulletin board.

Just google smf forums and see how many you get
Either way private or public smf works.

Hope that helps,

Janet

[Dayne Dylan]

Janet (or anyone)...

A couple questions...

1. Is there a place in admin I need to change to make sure the pages get indexed in Google?

2. Do any of you know how to make an "entry" page into a forum? What I want are for people to read a disclaimer and click accept before they can enter the forum to read or even become a member.

Ideas?

[Michael Mayhew]

Originally Posted by Dayne Dylan

Janet (or anyone)...

A couple questions...

1. Is there a place in admin I need to change to make sure the pages get indexed in Google?

2. Do any of you know how to make an "entry" page into a forum? What I want are for people to read a disclaimer and click accept before they can enter the forum to read or even become a member.

Ideas?

There's a place in Admin to choose search engine friendly urls.
Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software
Great seo mod at the site below.
SMF Mods/Plug-Ins
SMF Mod Site

[Dayne Dylan]

Great Michael, thank you! I will check out that plugin as well.

Lastly, anyone know how I can do my "entry" page idea? I want them to OK and ACCEPT a disclaimer since this will be a health related site. That is why I want to do it.

Thanks for the posts!

[Chuck Evans]

You can also check out BBPress, bbPress Home It's from the Wordpress folks, simple and plain just what you want! Once there check out the forum portion so see how it looks.

chuck

[Janet Sawyer]

Originally Posted by Dayne Dylan

Great Michael, thank you! I will check out that plugin as well.

Lastly, anyone know how I can do my "entry" page idea? I want them to OK and ACCEPT a disclaimer since this will be a health related site. That is why I want to do it.

Thanks for the posts!

Hi Dayne,

Still sticking with the SMF forum software, once you have installed the forum onto your server, you then go into the forum software as Admin.
There you choose the registration link from the menu.
You can edit the registration agreement to say what you would like.
Personally, I would just add to it rather than delete anything already there.
Make sure that you have ticked the box at the bottom that says, "show and require registration agreement letter when registering" and you'll be as they say, fit to go.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Janet