Php poll script

DIY (Do-It-Yourself) is one of the most important things we cover at ET. But DIY is not limited to just building computers. For example, you can build an online community yourself. The key to having a community, rather than just a web site, is to engage people in discussion. If you run your own site, you've probably considered adding a message board at some point.

But picking the right forum software for your forum is not always easy. In this review we'll take a close look at the new release of Beehive, a free and open source forum package. You can use Beehive without paying a cent, and you can customize the code until your heart's content.

Beehive requires PHP 4.1.0 and MySQL 3.5 or above to run. This is all included in the readme.txt installation instructions. Users simply need a web browser to participate in a Beehive forum. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Mozilla all work fine with Beehive.

Why Bother with an Online Community? Before we get into the meat of the Beehive review, it's helpful to note why online communities in the form of message boards are important to a site's well being, traffic, and business model. Here are a couple of reasons why you might want to add an online community to your site:

• Stickiness & Loyalty—Well-run forums have the potential to be quite "sticky." They bring users back again and again and again—even if the site's regular content hasn't been updated for a while. Posting in a site's forum never stops so there's always new content for users to read.

Forums also have the potential to create & inspire loyalty among a site's users. They can have a powerful impact through "word of mouth" when users mention the site to others that they know offline, in email, and in other forums on other sites. Referrals to others from loyal forum members can have an important impact on a site's traffic and reputation.

• Ad Revenue—Forums also have the potential to generate advertising or even subscription revenue for a site. If a forum is not moderated, then this potential is lessened since most advertisers don't want to run ads on sites with lots of flames, profanities, etc.

With these thoughts in mind, let's take a look at Beehive. Continued...

Beehive was started by a group of people who had a community on the Delphi message board system. Part of the attraction for these folks was Delphi's frames-based interface and powerful forum features.

Delphi at one point decided to charge for their software, and the folks that had their community on the Delphi system looked for existing alternatives to move their community to—unfortunately they couldn't find anything suitable. So they decided that it was time to create their own forum software. Thus Beehive was born and released to the world as a free and open source product under the GPL license.

To date, Beehive has been overshadowed by phpBB and other forum software packages. We believe that time is now coming to a close as more people have become aware of the powerful feature sets and tools that Beehive has to offer.

What's New in .5 Beehive has lots of new features in this release. Here's a quick breakdown of some of them:

Built-in emoticons, as well as an emoticon preview pane Multiple forums running on the same server Reply as a private message Personal word filter HTML toolbar in signature Revised user controls Users can move their own threads, ignore threads, etc. Thread options can be accessed via the small dot to the left of the thread title in the thread frame. Private message auto-pruning Tabular polls Spoiler tag to hide text that otherwise might give away stuff in messages about movies, books, TV, etc. English language dictionary and built-in spell-check for messages Advanced ignore functionality

There are a host of new features added to Beehive, more than we can list here. To see the full list, be sure to read the release.txt file that comes with Beehive. Overall, this release is really packed with great features, and we'll be taking a closer look at some of them below. Continued...

Beehive requires web hosting that provides PHP 4.1.0 or above, as well as MySQL 3.5 or above. It also helps to have phpMyAdmin if you need to edit the database later for some reason. Check with your web hosting company to make sure you have all the requirements before you attempt to install Beehive.

This release also provides an easy to use install/upgrade script. Just follow the instructions in the readme.txt file that comes with Beehive. Even if you've never installed a piece of software like Beehive, you should be able to get it up and running with relative ease as long as you have the requirements listed above.

The script runs in your browser. You just need to upload the Beehive files to your directory on the server and follow the install instructions in the readme.txt file.

The Beehive Interface Beehive, like its closed source cousin Prospero, uses a frames-based interface. This has the virtue of eliminating the constant back-and-forth navigation between the thread listing and messages that plague other kinds of message board software such as phpBB and vBulletin. It's very fast to move between threads and "quick-click" through messages in a section.

The left frame is where you navigate between sections and between threads. The title of each section can be clicked to open a longer list of threads. At the very top of the left frame you can click links to access your private messaging inbox, create a poll, or start a new discussion. You can also start new threads by clicking the "Post New" link inside the thread list for that section, or you can click the total number of threads at the top of each section to see a longer list.

The drop down menu at the top of the left frame lets you choose the way you want to view threads in the left frame. For example, you can choose to view threads from the following options:

All Discussions Unread Discussions Unread To Me Today's Discussions Unread Today 2 Days Back 7 Days Back High Interest Unread High Interest I've recently seen I've ignored By ignored users I've subscribed to Started by friend Unread started by friend Polls Sticky threads Continued...

One extremely important feature found in the left frame is the minus link that appears to the right of the section's title. By clicking on the "-"link, a forum member can choose to ignore an entire section of the forum. It will become minimized at the bottom of the thread list until the member decides to click the "+" link to open it up again. For high-traffic forums, this is a huge help since all members can customize sections they see so that the left frame isn't flooded with messages from sections that members aren't interested in reading.

You can also click the small dot to the left of a thread's title to pull up the Thread Options screen in the message frame. This lets you move messages, change the title, etc. More on that in the admin options section below.

The top frame contains navigation links to the forum's Start page (where you usually begin when coming into the forum), a link to easily reload or access Messages, the forum's Links page, your Private Messaging Inbox, a link to the My Controls page, a link to the My Forums page, and a login/logout link. You can also easily reload the forum by clicking on the graphic in the top frame as well (assuming that the forum admin has set it up that way and most do).

The right frame is where you actually view messages. One of the great things about Beehive is that messages are linked (or threaded) to one another. So if you don't know why someone is saying something to somebody else, you can click the message number in the right hand corner and hop back to the original message. Unlike Beehive, quite a lot of forum software packages (such as InstantASP Forum, Invision Powerboard, phpBB, etc.) lack real threading and it's a shame. It makes it very difficult to know who is saying what to whom without a bunch of quote backs cluttering up people's messages.

In each message you'll see a reply link as well as an email icon, printer icon, unread icon, and a relationship icon. The relationship icon puts the power of customizing who you interact with in your hands. Just click it to manage your relationship with another forum member. If you don't like someone you can choose to ignore them and/or ignore their signature. You can also mark them with a friend icon or globally ignore all signatures in the forum.