Demonstration Systems

In this final section of the chapter we will illustrate how you can set up an effective demonstration forum system and a chatroom.

A Demonstration Forum

To build the demonstration forum, you will need a server to host it. The following is a list of the hardware and software you will need:

• A spare, no longer used PC - obviously the bigger the better but I have made this work using a P166 with 64Mb of RAM and a 4Gb hard disk

• A downloaded version of Linux - whatever flavor you require, RedHat, SuSE, or whatever. Or if your Internet pipe is going to be tied up for too long, you can buy a copy. http://redhat.com

• The latest Apache HTTP server for Linux from http://www.apache.org. Your Linux install will probably have it already, so check first

• The latest MySQL database for Linux from http://www.mysql.com

• PHP scripting language from http://www.php.net

• phpBB - a free bulletin board - software set available from http://www.phpbb.com. To see this in action visit the web site and log into the community section

Install the software in this order:

• Linux, following the instructions with the product you've chosen. You will need to give the PC a fixed IP address and enter the name into the DNS your company uses. Dynamic setting of the IP address will not work.

• Check the version of Apache you've been supplied with as part of Linux - you may or may not need to upgrade to the latest version.

• Load MySQL - the instructions are on the MySQL site.

• Load PHP - the instructions are on the PHP site.

• Check that PHP works - the instructions are in the downloadable manual.

• Load phpBB - as you'd expect the instructions come from the site.

Configure and set up a test forum. Populate it with test or semi-real data - enough to show that you understand the scope of the requirement. Don't forget to set up a forum like 'The Bar" mentioned earlier, where employees can have informal conversations. Let your friends use it and comment upon it. You then have the basis of something you can present.

You're not going to get it just as you want it first time, so play around with it and see how the forum postings work. The recommendation is for PHP here as it is a small download and you can control it on a small system. All this has the benefit of being without cost, assuming that you have a spare PC.

Setting up a Chatroom System

For this there are a whole host of free software system that you can host on your own server. But in order to illustrate an external service I suggest that you use a Java applet-based chatroom, as the conversation is only seen in its complete form within the Java applet on each client PC that's in the chatroom. No permanent record is stored anywhere which makes it more secure. See http://www.bravenet.com/samples/chat.php.

You will need to put a link to the chatroom you create on your intranet site where it can be found, but that's really all there is to it.