Here is a tutorial that introduces you to an “out of the box” forum and message box solution (or bulletin board), should you, as a business, be heading that way.
Let’s see our tutorial stream of consciousness view of the Downloading, Install and overview of Administration of the Forum product called phpBB (via Apache webserver (“out of the box” install via EasyPHP on Windows) using PHP and MySql).
The tutorial shows the Administration area of the phpBB website. Often the term “backend” is applied to websites and this can variously be thought of as, in its narrow view, the database and its structure and design and maintenance, and in the wider view, this Administration section of an phpBB website, where it is maintained, and has that interface to the database and the “frontend” (the forum itself) presented to the web user. This Administration “backend” is never designed to be accessible by unregistered users nor your normal shopping user, and is maintained, normally, by users with administrative priviledges.
Link to Forum information via Wikipedia.
The phpBB product is a PHP/MySql product and you can compare and contrast it with other Forum products here at this domain. With the emphasis on PHP Forum above it does not mean that there are not excellent ASP.NET Forum in the marketplace.
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