How do i add a forum to my website?

[nasirali]

I am using joomla and i dont know how to add a forum to my website. any help is appreciate.

[Noodles8]

You have 2 different routes to use a forum on your Joomla! website.

The first is to use a a forum like phpbb and other 3rd party forum systems. In this case, the website and the forum run independently from one another. This means 2 user accounts, and users having to log in twice when switching from the website to the forum.

A solution here is to use a bridge which connects the two together. Allowing for users to only have to create one account and sign in once. The bridge handles the rest.

The other route you can go, is use a forum that was made for joomla! specifically, and will run within joomla! itself. An example of that forum would be fireboard. Fireboard is installed like anything else with Joomla! by going to "Extensions" and then "Install/Uninstall" and doing what you usually do.

The pro and cons? The 3rd party forums sometimes can have a lot more features, where as the ones made for joomla!, what they have is what you got, and there's no way around it(unless you know how to program).

Either way, this is how you do it. If you want a no brainier install. Get fireboard. Its got a fairly good amount of features that is only growing. If you don't mind taking the time for a bridge, etc, get phpbb3.

If you need help dong the actual install, just let me know.

[balaji2u]

noodles post is very usefull..
try the fire board it may attract more users than the normal bulletin boards..
Or if you want to use dedicated forum with lots of features and without licensing problem go for phpbb this is the best i can say..
As Macaws said just go to your cpanel navigate to fantastico de luxe select phpbb under discussion boards. thats it you've got your forum

[nasirali]

Hi,

thank for the start, i finally got the site up and running with the forum. now how do i integrate into the joomla, without making it go to the forum directory how do i get it display right on the website without sending it to another link. i wanna keep the www.lootsmart.com/forum.

here is my website www.lootsmart.com
my forum www.lootsmart.com/forum

thanks for all the help you guys

[Noodles8]

I see you chose phpbb. Have you installed a bridge yet? Rocbridge works very well, and is easy to set up.


The problem with using phpbb and any other forum other than ones made for Joomla!, they don't integrate as easily. You could wrap the forum(possibly as I've never tried to). Where as Fireboard runs right within joomla! itself.

For sure though, you need to bridge the 2. As like I said in my first post, otherwise your registration will have to be done 2 per user. For both the main website and the forum. Also, users would need to log in to both in order to do anything that requires registered access.
Edit:
I did a little looking.

JFusion should be able to handle the user bridge. Theres also one called Mehdi's phpbb bridge. That seems to have the option of running your forum within your Joomla! website. But I'm a bit unsure as it was made for Joomla! 1.0.x and phpbb 2.x. You could give it a try though.