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Overview :: 7. Advanced functions: PHP, mySQL, perl, ssh... :: CGI Options ::Article #9

How do I create a Forum for my website?

To create a Forum for your site, you must do the following:

1. Go to your configuration page, then click on 'homepage' -> 'CGI Scripts' -> 'Forum'. Here you should see a page like the following:
Forum 1

2. On this page you must place in the email address of the manager / administrator. Along with the name. Once you have placed these in click the 'continue' button to get to the following page:
Forum 2

3. On this page you must make some administrative decisions. These are:
i. If you wish the new entries to be passed through the manager or to be placed on the web directly.
ii. If you want the email to be a text-eMail or an html-eMail (if not sure, select text-eMail).
iii. If you wish to send the person an automatic response to the new entry.
iv. The next decision should be considered carefully, you must decide if you want html tags to be allowed in the comment field. If yes, then you are allowing customers to place different types of font (bold / italic etc.) or even to place pictures.

When you have decided what you want options you wish to have for your forum, click on 'continue' to get the following page.
Forum 3

4. On this page you simply must only decide to see what design you wish to have for your webpage. There are two designs, design A and design B. To view these pages, all you need to is to select the design. Then click on the 'edit' button at the bottom. Then click on the 'here' link in the Preview section.

Once this has been done, click on the 'continue' button to go to the next page, that should look like this:
Forum 4

5. This page requests the following things:
i. The URL for the 'Back' button. On the forum page, there would be a 'Back' button, here you must place the URL, the address of the site/page you wish to open when.
ii. The other options on the page are all colour /font related. You must select the back background colour, font colour and finally the font of the text.

Once all of these options have been selected, click on the 'continue' button to go to the following page:
Forum 5

6. Once again on this page you could choose different colours to format the page to the design you desire. The first option is simply a header option. Here you could write what you wish to come up at the top of the page. The rest of the options are simply colours for the text and background. To view the changes simply click on 'edit' then on 'here' in the Preview section.

Once this is done click on the 'continue' button to go to the page that should look like this:
Forum 6

7. This page is for the Form page (the page where data would be placed in the forum). On this page you could place in the heading of the page. Change the font and colour of text and background along with a reply text. This text will show up after the customer has placed a data in the forum.
8. Once this has finished, click the 'continue' button to view the confirmation page. Simply click the 'ok' button (don't worry if your not sure of something, you could change it later).

Forum 7

9. This final page gives you all the URLs you need. You need to place these URL into a link and place the links into your source code. For example

A link would look like this:
&lt;a href='the code goes here'>Forum&lt;/a>

i.e. &lt;a href='http://cgi04.oneandone.co.uk/cgi-bin/fo_shw?clsid=f814cd81a7138e3ae4dac0017a1c5898'>Forum&lt;/a>

http://cgi04.oneandone.co.uk/cgi-bin/fo_form?clsid=f814cd81a7138e3ae4dac0017a1c5898

http://cgi04.oneandone.co.uk/cgi-bin/fo?clsid=f814cd81a7138e3ae4dac0017a1c5898

http://cgi04.oneandone.co.uk/cgi-bin/fo?clsid=f814cd81a7138e3ae4dac0017a1c5898&amp;passwd=373355605