1 Topic by akb

  • akb
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Topic: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

I am a computer teacher in a school and I also manage the school's computer network. I want the students to be able to create their own punBB forums for them. Can anyone advise me here on the best way to go about it? I will be really greatful. Having seperate installations and seperate databases doesn't seem to me the best idea. Different table names will solve the problem of too many databases but what to do with the forum files. The cache and avatar directory must be seperate as per my intelligence. Please advice.

Regards

Akash

  • Connorhd
  • Connorhd
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

Hi, i run mypunbb which is now nearly 400 forums all sharing the same set of files, i can help you if you want, i don't really have anything i can just send you atm since mypunbb has a much more complicated setup than you would need.

The main problems are as you say avatars and cache folders, the solution i came up with is that each forum has an id/name this in the case of mypunbb is the subdomain but it could be any part of the URL, cache files and avatar files are prefixed with id_ and the id is picked up from the url in config.php via regular expressions, the easiest solution is to point all the subdomains on a single domain to one directory, if you cannot do that you can also point all directorys within a directory to the forum directory (sorry about the wording of that) e.g.
domain.com/forum/user1/file.php would become domain.com/forum/file.php
OR
user1.domain.com/file.php becomes domain.com/forum/file.php
config.php would then detect the original URL and that the forum is "user1"
the table prefix would become "user1_"
the cache and avatars would all have user1_ before them

Hope thats some help,

FluxBB.
Connorhd.co.uk.

Connorhd's Website

3 Reply by akb

  • akb
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

ID detection is no problem for me and I can do that with any type of URL. I am well equiped with regex. Your suggession of prefixing or suffixing avatar and cache files is also very good but I have not yet looked into the codes. Will it be a very heavy task? How many files will be affected? By the way I couldn't get your line: " i can just send you atm".

Regards

Akash

  • Connorhd
  • Connorhd
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

i meant i don't have a premodded version of punbb to send you right now (which is the current version anyway), files are, cache.php, viewtopic.php, profile.php, common.php, functions.php, common_admin.php i think (there could be others), i do have a premodded version but its an older version (1.2.1 i think) so that should give you some clues i can email it to you if you want or i could make a list of changes i made for it using a comparison tool... whatevers best for you

FluxBB.
Connorhd.co.uk.

Connorhd's Website

5 Reply by akb

  • akb
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

You are being really helpful. Really thanks a lot. I will try to modify the current version as per school needs and if failed will surely take your help. Are there any big feature differences between the current version and the old version that you are having? Yes it will be of some help if you can mail that version to me.

Regards
Akash

6 Reply by akb

  • akb
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

Also, as you are running a forum service based on punBB, you might be having a idea how much DB space and bandwidth a bunch of 200 students will require with assuming 100 forums to be very active.

  • Connorhd
  • Connorhd
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

i have about 400 forums and i'm using 200mb space in MySQL, as for bandwidth i only recently turned on gzip but with gzip on 40,000 hits is about 250mb, so far this month i've had 883709 hits on the forum totalling 9.11 GB bandwidth although alot of that gzip was off and 40,000 hits was about 600mb

btw email sent

edit: http://www.mypunbb.com/forums.php theres the list of forums i host ( for an idea of the number of posts i host for 200mb of mysql )

FluxBB.
Connorhd.co.uk.

Connorhd's Website

8 Reply by akb

  • akb
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

Thanks for that information and the e-mail. I guess I won't require that much of resources though the school has plenty. In the meantime I tried registering for a forum on your site. In the administration panel DB size is shown as 26.43 MB. Whats that?

  • Connorhd
  • Connorhd
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Re: Multiple Forums... Best Way ??

thats the size of the database your in, i'm using 26 databases a,b,c,d,... to split up the tables a bit, probably not worth it if you are only expecting about 100 forums

FluxBB.
Connorhd.co.uk.

Connorhd's Website