By Angus Turnbull - http://www.twinhelix.com - updated 22 June 2004.
First of all, thank you for downloading this forum script -- I hope you find it useful! Features of this forum script include:
Before going further, make sure you have access to a webserver with Perl installed and available to run CGI scripts. Check with your web hosting company if you're unsure; this script requires "Perl 5" and the "CGI" module.
Now find the FORUM.PL file contained in this archive -- this is the main script file. Open it up in a text editor, make sure you read and understand the "Conditions of Use", and follow the instructions contained within. If your webserver is running a UNIX-like operating system, you may need to adjust the very first line in the file #!/usr/bin/perl to point to the Perl interpreter -- check with your webhost.
Once its settings are correct, upload "forum.pl" into your site's "cgi-bin" folder (or any other folder that allows Perl scripts to run). Also upload the "forum.css" file, which is required to format the display of the script's pages.
Next, you'll need to upload the "forumdata" folder to your webserver, and ensure that the correct path to the forum data folder has been specified in the "forum.pl" file. Once on the server, the "forumdata" folder must be readable and writeable by the forum script, so make sure you have set its permissions correctly in your FTP client. It must contain these two files:
You should now be able to type in the URL of the script into a browser and have it run. It will warn you at this stage if it cannot find either of those two files, so make sure you have the path correct!
Now the script is set up, create your first account, which is set to "Administrator" type by default. Then, open and edit the FORUMS.TXT file to customise your forum names/IDs, the FORUM.CSS file to customise colours and layout, and the TEMPLATE.PL file to customise the content of the forums. That's all there is to it... good luck!
Advanced users may want to install their own webserver and Perl interpreter. Most Unix-like systems come with Apache and Perl somewhere, under Windows you can use IIS if you're running NT4/2000/XP Pro or higher. Otherwise, all Windows users can download the Apache webserver, and you can get Perl for Windows from ActiveState, it's a free download. Once you've set these up, you can debug and tweak the script locally rather than on your webserver.
I've put a lot of time into developing, debugging and documenting this script. If you feel that you want to give something back, please consider making a donation to support its development.
If you do want to make one, it can be however much or little you feel the script is worth. Any support is definitely appreciated, and it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Once running, the script will automatically create data subfolders in its forum data folder, for each forum you want it to manage. These contain numbered text files, one for each topic, and an index file used to sort and list the forum contents.
If you want to delete or archive multiple topics, take note of the numbers (displayed in links to the topic or in the URL when you view its contents) and use an FTP client to delete or copy the text files in the appropriate forum folder. Once this is completed, you will need to trigger a forum reindex so it removes references to the old topics. The forum reindexes topics when you click a link to a non-existent topic, post something, or edit a post or topic.
The indexing routine is reliable in my experience, but if a forum's data becomes corrupted, delete the main INDEX.TXT file for that forum and click a link to list its content. This will cause it to reindex all topics from scratch, which may take a while (normally only new topics, and topics to which messages have been posted are rescanned on disk, for speed).
If you're stuck, feel free to hit the forums on my site for ideas or help.
Good luck - Angus.