Be Excellent To Each Other

I've been asked to help set up a mysterious secret forum* and having been impressed with all the activity around this one I thought I'd ask here first.

It needs a site / front page thing for news and articles, a wiki, and a forum (preferably phpbb3 like this). I'm looking for a nice easy to set up and administrate solution like that, whether it's an all in one package or seperate bits. As I say the wordpress site is looking splendid with all the integration and clever stuff, but I don't really want to do any coding behind this, I'm sure we don't need to do anything all that custom or clever.

Also, what sort of level of hosting is needed for this type of thing (probably less users than here but it needs to be fast)? would a 50 quid a year package do the job or is it more severe?

Thankee! (look, I used an icon!)

* it's not stoptalkingaboutgames.com or anything, it's for a commercial / hobbist use.

Two choices really. One is to pick seperate bits - phpbb, Mediawiki, and Wordpress, perhaps. The integration work will get hairy. UTJ and Beex are much more loosely coupled than I would.

Another would be to use one thing for the entire site. I'd recommend Drupal for this, which I use for eggwan.com. Go take a look and see what you think. Feel free to sign up, post in the forum, whatever you want.

As for the hosting, most cheap hosting packages will be fine. As long as you get mysql databases with it as standard, you'll be fine.

I'm only really familiar with Joomla as an all-in-one job (I very briefly installed a load of them and stuck with the one that impressed me the most) and while I recommend it, I won't deny there's a bit of work involved in its set-up. My site uses Fireboard rather than phpbb3 though and it's not bad though doesn't have all the little niceties that phpbb has.

Thanks for that!
I really like the idea of everything being integrated so that the login and search works across all the bits.

However, I've had a quick play with Drupal and I can't help get the feeling that it does everything but not very well. The forum in particular seems very restrictive compared to phpbb

I'll try out Joomla next.

I'd say you should avoid PHPBB - the integration just isn't there with things like Joomla or Wordpress (trust me).
Try and use an all-in-one package if you can, it'll make your life much easier in the long (and short) run.

Joomla (AFAIK) doens't have a forum.

I suppose one option would be to install phpbb3 and build around that like some sites do (one of fruit machine emulation sites was like this I think?) with add-ons. However, sites centred around a forum do tend to all look the same.

Indeed. It does have third-party forums and bridges to other forum software but nothing out of the box. Not that it comes in a box.

It's not as powerful, not, but you definitely get much better integration in return. It's a trade-off.

http://gallery.menalto.com are the largest Drupal-based forum install I know of.

OK, I think I may have got carried away with the "integrate everything" vibe

Actually nobody needs to touch the "site" part of it or log in there - there's no "content" as such, it'll just be a simple page with introduction and links to the forum and wiki... and it looks as if mediawiki can use phpbb's user database so that would solve the main problem of having people logging into multiple things, if it works.

Search on the two things will be separate of course, but I don't think that's actually a problem.

I know there's loads of cool extra things you can do with drupal at the click of a mouse, but to be perfectly honest I don't see them getting used anyway - or if they are useful it's something you can just as well do with a forum post.

So I'll start with the forum and wiki and make the front page by hand or with a simple CMS of some kind.

You could probably use MediaWiki for the front page?

Yeah, nice idea.

It's a train spotters' forum, isn't it?

Can't they all come here?

No, IT'S SECRET

I will be poaching people from here though obviously

Actually, as Mr Chris nearly guessed, it's for quite a dull technical subject.

Well, you'll get Gaywood then.

Well, obviously. It's to be expected.

I'm totally there dude.

See?

Don't make me post links to the Ferret APC thread where you summarized all the different models by engine size, chassis layout, and wheelbase.

Table-top gaming?

Jesus dude, not that dull.