Message board web app

[Vic]

Not sure if this should be in the DB/XML sections but ...

 

I want to knit a lightweight message board (like this forum but trimmed down in functionality) into my site. I know I can get one off the shelf pretty cheap but for various reasons dont want to go down that road. My question is what is the best way of going about this? (how do people normally do it? if there is a normal way?)

 

I want users to be able to post messages hundreds of characters long and so my instinct tells me to persist their posts in separate files rather than in the DB (SQLserver) and reference the files from DB keys. And if using files, should they be individual text files, individual XML files, or grouped in XML files with schema?

 

Am I way off the mark here?

 

Any comments, pointers would be most appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Vic

[mutant]

Writing message boards is long work :). I recommend you download some already made. Try those message boards, free and completely written in ASP.NET:

http://www.asp.net/Forums/Download/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

[Vic]

FLipping heck that was quick!

And thanks will take another look

[Vic]

For the sake of anyone else who reads this, this was the outcome:

 

Went to site recommended, downloaded and installed ASP.NETForums ( had to turn off firewall to get good copy...)

 

THis is ready made and free from MS: whole app and db configuration to boot and creates new root on IIS.

 

The answer to my question though is found in the .sql script included to configure DB :

 

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Messages] (

[MessageId] [int] IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL ,

[Title] [nvarchar] (250) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL ,

[body] [nvarchar] (3000) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS NOT NULL

) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

 

So thats it. Just create large nvarchar field to store messagebody.

 

And we all lived happily ever after.

 

Thanks again to mutant

[wyrd]

A few comments on making your own;

 

- Thanks to ASP.NET, if you're actually well versed in a .NET language, programming a simplistic featureless message board as you describe is extremely easy and wouldn't take long at all.

- The best way to program an ASP.NET forum is to obviously use MSDE or MS SQL, whichever you have available.