I’ve searched through the forum but cant find anything like this (although I’m sure its a really generic question)!
I’ve come a long way since signing up here (mainly thanks to Pullo who is a genius!)
My next step is introducing a forum to my site.
I can easily build a forum using one of the generic builders but is this the best way?
Apologies abot the newbie questions:
A – If I use a builder does this count towards my sites web traffic?
B – Can I make the login to my forum generic across the site (I’d like to have a news section where people can post)
C – Can I (I’m sure I can) linke sections of the forum to my website… IE: like an RSS feed?
I have reporters who work for my site and other users who visit. Both will provide match reports/ articles but I want to ensure the articles from my reporters are acknowledged and don’t blend in to the rest of the site.
I’d like to post both posts from my reporters (Text/ video/ images) and posts from the forum on the homepage.
Is the best way to do this by using a Blog & a forum or a one instead of the other. If I was to use a forum I think I could seperate the forum into different section and only show the relevant sections on my homepage, I’m worried however that my reporters wouldn’t get the shine and would blend in to be just another forum member
Hi kimbo_king. Is your current site running on any kind of CMS? For example, if it’s a WordPress site, there are add-ons for a forum etc. that make all the aspects of the site integrated. Either way, you can certainly add a blog to your site and a forum. These often come ready made, and it’s fine to add them to your site, and any traffic to them is traffic to your site / domain.
However, if these parts of the site are not specifically designed to work together, you’ll either have to accept that they are separate parts of the site, or do a little programming to integrate them. So preferably, I’d be looking for a CMS that integrates all the features you want into one package. As I said, WordPress has this option, but so do plenty of other systems, like Drupal, ExpressionEngine etc.
phpBB is free and pretty easy to add. Anything it doesn’t have there is either a mod for or you can mod it yourself. Your host will probably have a one click install for it too.
My site is currently made up of HTML (Which I have learn with the aid of the sitepoint books and forum) with CSS and a tiny bit of javascript.
I have a web hosting package (IPage) and have the begginings of a forum via PHPbb (By beginnings I mean I have activated it but not populated it)
One thing I am worried about with a blog is whether I’ll need multiple
My website will document news from various football leagues. The html for the leagues will be 90% the same so when I have one finished Its just a case of copy and pasting. HOWEVER the news from each league will be different. Can I do this via one blog (and direct articles based on tags or some other way) or would I need a separate blog for each?
I will be covering around 12 league to start off so this could get tricky
Really appreciate your help
PS Ralph - More than happy to do some programming if needs be I’m enjoying learning and want to get it right first time rather than a work around
You can do all of this quite easily in one blog. This is easy to do with something like WordPress or ExpressionEngine. You can divide your content up into sections, categories, tags etc. And you can have a forum integrated with all this too.
It may not be what you want to hear, but I highly recommend you choose a CMS to work with, and start building your whole site within this. Yu won’t regret it down the track. It’s really important to plan for the future at the beginning, so that you can serve up your content in the best way possible.
As well as the blog side I will also be showing other things which I think require HTML so think I’ll need to include my blog into my html (Not 100% sure though )
Really appreciate your help, will have a play with wordpress this evening then. Presume you mean wordpress support forums too (not had chance to look as at work) so will try that rather than the PHPbb… Is it as customisable as PHPbb?
Everything on the web (basically) is HTML. Blogs, forums etc. are just web pages, built with HTML, CSS etc., and maybe organised on the server with a bit of PHP etc.
Presume you mean wordpress support forums too (not had chance to look as at work) so will try that rather than the PHPbb… Is it as customisable as PHPbb?
Yes, you can add forums and all kinds of other things to WordPress, and it is fully customisable.
Remember that WP really is a blog out of the box, so just use WP’s native blog functionality. You can either make the blog part the home page or have a different home page. But you can certainly integrate your design/layout with WP.
If you have WP-specific questions, it might be best to post them in the CMS forum.
I’m enjoying learning and want to get it right first time rather than a work around