Whether they are called bulletin boards, message boards, discussion boards, forums, or something else, boards continue to be a popular Internet technology. They allow your customers to interact with one another, talk about your products, and provide answers to questions that may not be posted in your support areas. They are also a good way of getting return visitors to your site, since people tend to return to check for responses to their messages.

Message boards are implemented in a variety of ways depending on your needs. They are often built with PERL and CGI, but PHP message boards are also common. Some boards require a database application to be running on the server as well.

Although bulletin boards are popular, they do present some additional challenges for your system administrator. First and formost, you will need a moderator to monitor your boards. In addition, discussion forums consume significant processor time as well as disk space. That makes bulletin boards more expensive than a comparable web site without a board. You should also remember to back up your message base daily to avoid losing message data.

Some of the features we can build into your bulletin board(s) include:

• Private forums
• Graphical posting alerts
• Emoticons
• Notification of replies
• Additional adminstrative features:
• Administration and moderation options
• Statistic reporting
• Moderator viewing of user IP addresses
• Configure board right from your browser
• Ban users by email address or IP address
• Lock and unlock threads
• Make and delete announcements
• Send users private messages
• Delete posts manually or automatically
• Archive old posts
• Set a maximum size per message
• File upload

We would be happy to talk to you about bulletin boards as well as other web design issues.
Contact us for a free quote today.