Forums, Copyrights and other questions

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

Ok...

A few people including me have been set to do a website for an organisation. I won't name anything but it isnt a business.

Quick meeting tonight to discuss a few things but there were as usual more questions than answers created. Here are a few items I need information for -

• Copyrighting music
• Forums and chat rooms

There is a flash intro in development. Nothing special but we have to cover our collective asses in the copyright department. It has been decided that some music should be playing but we want it composed by someone in the organisation. It means we have to cover ourselves in case either -

a) Someone lifts the musics off the web, copyrights it and then comes looking to us with a law suit.

and

b) We need the composer to hand over the Copyright to us as an organisation.

Soliciters will obviously have to be involved somewhere but I was wondering if anyone has any experience / advice?

Forums, Chat Rooms and Disclaimers relating to. I want a really good forum set up. No free Bravenet esque stuff but something like VBulletin but cheaper. Possibly ASP based if possible but does anyone know of other forum systems? A list would be great so we can compare them and determine suitability.

Chat rooms can be dodgy legally but we really want one for interaction. Is a written disclaimer all that is necessary to cover us for the goings on in the chat room if anything should happen?

[DaBeeeenster]

If you can get php onto the server, phpbb (www.phpbb.com) is superb. I prefer it to vBulletin, as I think it has a better community and more mods if you need them. It's licensed under the GPL so it's totally free to use and modify. It's also fairly easy to integrate with another site.

We (the company my mate and me started) have integrated the user login of our Java based CMS with phpbb and it works fine. Works perfectly.

Not sure about a chatroom. There are no doubt free java based ones about - check sourceforge.net...

Not sure about the legal side of things with regards to music copyright. We had a run in regarding intellectual property last year, and found an excellent UK site that outlined the basics of copyright - it might be worth googling for an hour or so, if you have no idea what the legal aspects are.

[Agent]

Originally posted by DaBeeeenster
If you can get php onto the server, phpbb (www.phpbb.com) is superb. I prefer it to vBulletin, as I think it has a better community and more mods if you need them. It's licensed under the GPL so it's totally free to use and modify. It's also fairly easy to integrate with another site.

We (the company my mate and me started) have integrated the user login of our Java based CMS with phpbb and it works fine. Works perfectly.

Couldn't agree more.
phpbb is a top notch forum, best Ive used.
Funnily enough Ive done the same with my mini CMS in PHP with users logging in. Really simply to do as the passwords are just MD5'ed
Also the official forums for phpBB are very good support wise, lots of people to help and some even write you mod's for free on request

[Shorty]

PHPBB is free and is probably the best freebie out there. Another vote here. Not quite a snap to edit around as VBulletin but it's getting there.

However, if you like VBulletin, it's worth the license. VB does have a big community, there are template and code hack sites which are huge resources.

[Paul Adams]

http://forum.snitz.com

ASP-based free forum software which interfaces with SQL Server, MySQL or a flat Access database.

Playing with it right now, it's pretty neat and much faster than the forum I created (which was my first ASP project ever LOL) - the only thing I think it misses is a "poll" feature.

System Requirements
IIS 4/IIS 5.x or PWS(Personal Web Server) on WIN95, WIN98, WIN ME, NT4, WIN2000 or WINXP, or an ASP Enabled Web Server on a Unix System (the forum has been tested on Chili!Asp), Microsoft Access 97/2000/2002 or SQL Server 6.5/7.0/2000 or MySql version 3.22 and 3.23

...

Snitz Forums 2000 is a free product that is governed by the GPL. You are free to download and use these forums without charge, under the condition that you don't charge for it either, and that you keep the copyrights intact.

Absolute snap to set up, just run setup.asp once after a couple of tweaks to config.asp (to determine the type of database used, and the path/login details).
It creates the tables in the database and a sample category, forum & topic, further tweaking of the settings is done through the forum itself via the admin account.


The other forum I looked at (and slightly preferred) was Invision Power Board - http://www.invisionboard.com - it's PHP-based but as far as I can tell it only runs on Apache (and I run IIS) and I couldn't be bothered to try transferring it to a Windows file structure.

[Shorty]

IVB is popular but something about it just never has sat right with me. I just can't put my finger on why I can't get on with it

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by Paul Adams
The other forum I looked at (and slightly preferred) was Invision Power Board - http://www.invisionboard.com - it's PHP-based but as far as I can tell it only runs on Apache (and I run IIS) and I couldn't be bothered to try transferring it to a Windows file structure.

You can run php in a windows environment, either using apache as the web server or with IIS via the ISAPI connector.

Or you could just chuck Windows altogether and run Linux

[Shorty]

Originally posted by DaBeeeenster
Or you could just chuck Windows altogether and run Linux

Recompile Apache, MySQL and PHP from source ...

./configure...
make
make install

It's the only way

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

Cheers I'll have a look at phpBB now.

I found this ASP based one and it seems excellent. Could a few of you guys have a quick look at it to gave it a once over?

Web Wiz Forums

All is pretty much automatic and has basically all the features I can see that you would need.

Then to Google it is, one of the guys on the project knows a soliciter so hopefully he can run off a disclaimer for nothing and genreally make sure we're covered.

[Shorty]

Originally posted by RoGuE|SaBeR
Cheers I'll have a look at phpBB now.

I found this ASP based one and it seems excellent. Could a few of you guys have a quick look at it to gave it a once over?

Web Wiz Forums

All is pretty much automatic and has basically all the features I can see that you would need.

Then to Google it is, one of the guys on the project knows a soliciter so hopefully he can run off a disclaimer for nothing and genreally make sure we're covered.

That's a very tidy looking board for an alpha release. Im closed-beta testing a new PHP one that isn't as defined as that alpha is!

It has a vbulletin/phpbb type feel to it and certainly seemed fast. Get a dummy IIS box up with MSDE (I believe that board will work with the basic MS SQL engine). Try it out, see how you feel.

[RoGuE|SaBeR]

Yea I've already had it running on my XP machine with IIS and I like it but I was just wondering how everyone got on with it.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Paul Adams]

Originally posted by DaBeeeenster
You can run php in a windows environment, either using apache as the web server or with IIS via the ISAPI connector.

Or you could just chuck Windows altogether and run Linux

Aye, I've tried installing PHP with the intention of teaching myself the language (currently running IIS with SQL 2000 on the same box) but I wanted to do it one step at a time, and code in PHP to interface with SQL Server, before looking at having MySQL on there.

The problem I found with the Invision Power Board is that the installation instructions were wittering on about chmod'ing this and try this value if that doesn't work, yada yada yada.
Should just have been a generic installation, bleh!

I also use my web server for Windows-based games - currently it runs a "bot" character in Asheron's Call 24x7, and I know noone has managed to port that to Linux anyway, so no chance of Linux in the near future

Plus, I'd have to start saving up for the SCO licence
(That was me being facetious, don't think it was serious btw )