Walkthrough 3 - How to Build an Online Forum: the database

Completed reading Walkthrough 3. Very interesting on how it uses all those tables for forumsections, members, posts and replies. I have an idea of whats going on in here.

Minor problems with the html pages on the CD:
<table border="1" align="center" cellpadding="5">
<tr>
<th> Files </th>
<th> Missing Closing Header1 html tag &lt;/h1&gt;
</th>
<th> Other </th>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> php16p1.html </td>
<td rowspan="6" align="center"> All </td>
<td align="center"> - </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> php16p2.html </td>
<td align="center"> - </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> php16p3.html </td>
<td> Missing opening angular bracket of the opening html tag &#40;html&gt;&#41; </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> php16p4.html </td>
<td align="center"> - </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> php16p5.html </td>
<td align="center"> - </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> php16p6.html </td>
<td> The table at the end of the page is positioned too far to the right </td>
</tr>
</table>

I've noticed that there are a few spelling errors through out the entire tutorial!

Completed this walkthrough - REALLY REALLY glad that I studied a bit of database design before undertaking this course!

When I went through this walkthrough, I was really impressed that I was going to learn how to build a forum

I know there's a lot of free forums that one can use, but to build something like this your own is awesome.

I got this error message:

error
error 2
Notice: Undefined offset: 3 in /home/user1/tmp/forum/forumTest.php on line 123
Notice: Undefined offset: 3 in /home/user1/tmp/forum/forumTest.php on line 124

I fixed this problem, I 1st thought it was the for loop's i variable (nope), then the tables that were empty sets (phreplies, vbposts, vbreplies, wdposts, wdreplies) (nope).

The Visual Basic .NET is not displaying a zero for the posts and replies because the xlposts and xlreplies database tables from dbforum do not exist. So I checked the structure of posts and replies tables and created the xlposts and xlreplies table.

Language: SQL
CREATE TABLE xlposts
(
threadID VARCHAR(8) NOT NULL DEFAULT ';';,
memberID VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT ';';,
threadTopic VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL DEFAULT ';';,
threadText mediumtext NOT NULL DEFAULT ';';,
datePosted DATE NOT NULL DEFAULT ';0000-00-00';,
PRIMARY KEY(threadID)
);

Language: SQL
CREATE TABLE xlreplies
(
ID tinyint(6) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
threadID VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT ';';,
memberID VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT ';';,
reply mediumtext NOT NULL,
dateReplied DATE NOT NULL DEFAULT ';0000-00-00';,
PRIMARY KEY(ID)
);

i have created a new folder on the server www and renamed it as forum then i coped the folder database from the course files. I typed this 127.0.0.1/forum/forumTest.php on address bar to check if is working, but it gave me an error.

What error?

The webpage "localhost" cannot be foundDNS error occurred. Server cannot be found. The link may be broken.

Hi Edias,

1. Are you trying to access your wampserver from a different PC than where wamp server is actually installed ?
2. Are you able to view other websites from your PC ?

I haven't experienced this problem, but you should probably stop any processes on PORT 80 (eg: IIS,Skype), make sure wamp serve is running.

Helpful Links
DNS error- Server cannot be found
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/896012-dns-error-occurred-server-cannot.html

Recommend trying this link first:
DNS error occurred. Server cannot be found. The link may be broken appears each time I open my site

I dont think its a wampp issue, you can also try to flush the DNS by going to... Start > run > cmd...which will open a dos window.

Type:
ipconfig /flushdns

Is the same PC. according to the tut i must do this" This Forum, however, is not intended to be an application that you can simply upload to your own site, and get working straight away. It is purely for teaching purposes. All the files for this section can be found in the forum folder you downloaded. Before you start, it's a good idea to make a copy of this folder. That way, you won't be changing any of the original files. Copy the entire forum folder to the www directory on your server. You should then have the forum folder inside of your www folder:"
the tut say i must copy forum folder and save it inside www folder but if i can click my cd starting from resources folder it will give like this phpfiles to coursefiles to database images scripts to addressbook dbforum login memberstest surveytest. So i don't know which one am i suppose to copy and save it inside www folder. there is no forum folder i only get this folder when i click scripts folder. last time i coped database folder and save inside www folder and it was giving me that error message.

Hi Edias,

The dbforum folder is the database you need to copy this to your MySQL folder:

Location of the MySQL folder in xampp:

your_xampp_location/mysql/data/

Location of the MySQL folder in wamp:

C:\wamp\bin\mysql\mysql5.5.8\data

That's the location I have my wamp server(I use xampp but I also have wamp both works well).

You just copy and paste the dbforum folder in the data folder of either your xampp or wamp mysql installation.

Then once you go to phpMyAdmin, it will pickup the new dbforum database.

Then in your courseFiles/scripts folder there's a folder called forum copy that forum folder and paste it in your www folder then

Try:

http://127.0.0.1/forum

Hope this helps !

Finished working through the database design.
It is a bit more complicated than the previous examples, but I do understand how it fits together.
Moving on to the code for the forum.

thax is ok now.

Completed Walkthrough 3! Everything is starting to sink in and make more as I'm exposed to code & see how it all fits together.

Completed walkthrough 3.
Vert excited to learn to make my own forum

Section Completed and understood.

Found this very strait forward and simple.

Database design is easy Mac gave the design BLUE PRINT.....