I am developing a new PHP/MySQL based forum. I am hoping to make it extremely easy to customize, accessable for people with disabilities and expandable so that it can run not only forums, but whole sites.

I am hoping to release a commercial and freeware version.

Do you believe there is enough need for this?

I am not relying on it to provide a stable income and I am mainly creating it to see if I can, but I just wanted your opinions on this.

[The site can currently be found here: http://home.graffiti.net/spl1nter:graffiti.net/ This design is likely to change, just check the news page ]

Hello spl1nter,

I don't think like that... I don't normally worry about what's already available online. If I were you, I'd just keep at it and do my best. So, if you ask me, "Is there room?". My reply will forever be: "There's always room for one more!"

Good luck with it... it does look nice - and on a thttpd server, I might add!

__________________
J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

A thttpd server? What's one of them?

I've made the site standards compliant and accessible (well, there are still a few things to add but I'll get them when I debug before the PHP code comes in) so it should work in near any semi-modern browser.

A thttpd server is a funky little web server that's supposed to be extremely fast but not with a lot of features. I've only read about it, never tried it myself.

If I were you, I'd concentrate on optimising the scripts and getting the db stuff working working really well. The overall design after all, should be something that's easily modified since, as you say, it's meant to be easily customised?

__________________
J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™

Mmm. I've never heard of it before.

Anyway, I need to make the site look good to give a good impression

I do have a question. Since the design is all in the CSS that's going to produce a large file (currently about 15Kb but this is unoptimised). Each page has it's own section in this file. Should I create multiple CSS files that are used by each individual page? There would be one general CSS file and one for the forum's main page, one for the inbox etc. etc.

This would also make each CSS file less daunting to hand-edit for the users.