Thanks for the encouraging words about RF Cafe -
it's a lot of work.
I just located this forum,
and it is entirely free. Go here to download it:
http://www.phpbb.com/You need
to have access to a database on your web hosting
server. Mine uses mySQL (also an Open Source item).
I followed the installation and setup instructions
provided with the program
and it worked the
first time! I believe that you can submit
problems to the PHP website and they'll try to help.
There is also a very extensive forum on the site.
There are an incredible number of options and controls
you can set as the administrator.
The new
counter I added is also in PHP code. Although you'd
think it would be even easier than installing a
sophisticated forum, the darn thing gave me fits
while trying to configure it to count every page
on the site while not needing to put duplicate code
in every folder. I actually had to hunt around and
learn a little PHP coding to finally get it working.
The best part of all this is, as mentioned in
the original post, is that now I'm entirely free
of the FrontPage Extensions, which have been a pain
from day one. The forum function provided by Front
page would not recognize a line feed, and its proprietary
coding was easily buggered if you happened to dink
with the wrong file, and it was easy to accidentally
publish an empty file over top of the one on the
remote server with all the messages. If you've been
following RF Cafe for many years, then you know
how many times the forum has appeared and then disappeared.
It was a nightmare. Good riddance.
Since
finding the PHP forum, I've recognized many websites
that use it, including some very heavily trafficked
commercial sites.
Well, that's a lot more
than you asked for, but it shows how glad I am to
free of FrontPage! Good luck in setting yours up.
