Need some serious help, I think...

[therlinger]

I've just taken over a forum.  The old admin no longer has the time or desire and heas agreed to hand it over to me and another member.  We have made the switch and we now own the domain name as well.  Here's my issue:  I've never run a forum like this before.  I am the admin of my own forum but it is free and doesn't provide me with the same features/options/abilities that this new forum does.  We are starting to grow and get more members and I like the direction everything is heading.  However, I really have no idea what I'm doing.  I need to learn and learn fast what everything is.  The old admin just handed it over without much in the way of explanation.  I haven't the slightest idea what mysql is or how to really operate this board successfully.  Can somone point me in the right direction?  I do have some understanding of computers and am a fast learner.  I just need something to learn from!  Anyway, any suggestions on how to get learning so I can make the forum a bigger, better place for all?  We've been neglected for so long!  Thanks in advance.  Tina

[GamingJunkys.com]

Hello Tina,

First I would like to congratulate you on the transfer of the new forum to you and your friend.  Not to sound abrupt, however, before willing to take on the responsibility of taking over the forum and managing it prosperously you should have looked into what is involed in running a forum.

Some things you should research for yourself to have a general knowledge of how a forum and site operate and how to enhance a forum would be:

1) What is a web server (HTTP)? (apache, zeus, IIS etc)
2) MySQL (SQL)
3) PHP
4) CSS/XML/HTML
5) Bandwidth

Of course, there are many people who don't have that great of a knowledge of the information above and they are able to run a succesfull forum.

Some links you may want to consider reading up on to sharpen your knowledge would be:

hxxp:www.howstuffworks.com/web-server.htm [nonactive]

hxxp:dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/what-is-mysql.html [nonactive]

hxxp:php.net/ [nonactive]


These three topics do require some true reading and I will leave the others for you to research. 

As for bandwidth since it doesn't really require indepth information you can think of it as the data transfer or the amount of data that can be carried from one host (point) to another host.  Also, most hosts have a limit on bandwidth so this is something you will need to monitor if the site continues to grow.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask .  I would try to go into details about mysql, php, web servers etc but it's best if you read about these subjects on your own and if you're not clear about something feel free to ask here again.

Kind Regards,

Matt

[therlinger]

Thank you!  I usually do like to research something before I jump into it, but circumstances required me to step up on this one.  We are functional at the moment which affords me some time for learning.  The information you have provided will certainly get me going in the right direction!  Thanks again and I'm sure I'll be back at some point (after a lot of reading) with some more questions.  Thanks again!

[Dragooon]

Also for help with SMF, have a look at http://docs.simplemachines.org too.
And searching may help you as well