Member Avatar for dj bill

possible?

I am starting up a wedding forum. I want to have a place where brides can log in and basically talk about their wedding day prep and planning. Kinda like a blog but a little different I guess.

Basically I want a forum area to be like a blog. Seperating the years (maybe months) for peoples wedding....they can start a thread to "call their own" and it can be their blog per say...

Is it possible? Would it work? Am I crazy? Will the Vikings ever make it to another Superbowl?

So many questions....thanks in advance for any feedback.

Peace,

DJ Bill

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Dani AI

Generated

This thread asks a solid, practical question: can a forum be used like a blog? started the idea; pointed out the main limitation (forums do not, by default, present a single-author chronological stream) and , and suggested useful workarounds. Below are clear, implementable paths and hands-on tips that fill gaps in those replies.

Two realistic patterns

  • Forum-first (least extra code): keep all content in your forum database and build a blog-style front end that selects and formats posts as "entries" for a user. Pros: single auth, unified moderation, comments out of the box. Cons: fewer blogging features unless you add them.
  • Blog-first with shared auth: run a dedicated blog system for entries and keep the forum for comments and discussion. Pros: full blog features and better URLs/RSS; cons: you must implement shared sessions or an SSO bridge.

Practical implementation example (forum-first)
Create a view that returns only posts that are authored by the topic starter (so each topic becomes a blog with entries written by its owner). Example SQL (MySQL-like):

CREATE VIEW user_blog_entries AS
SELECT p.post_id, p.topic_id, t.topic_title, p.poster_id, p.post_time, p.post_text
FROM posts p
JOIN topics t ON p.topic_id = t.topic_id
WHERE p.poster_id = t.topic_poster_id
  AND t.forum_id IN (/* id(s) for your "blogs" area */)
ORDER BY p.post_time DESC;

Render logic (template pseudocode):

if (post.poster_id == topic.poster_id) {
  render_as_blog_entry(post);
} else {
  render_as_comment(post);
}

Operational and UX tips

  • Provide per-user permalinks and RSS (cache feeds).
  • Add privacy controls (private, friends-only, public) — weddings often include sensitive info and photos.
  • Use moderation queues, image size limits, spam checks and rate limits.
  • Structure archives by year/month and enable export (JSON/XML) so users can keep their content.
  • Test templates so the author block is shown once for each entry page (avoid repeating the same author header on every entry).

Tying back: was right to flag authentication tradeoffs; and were right that mods/plugins can help. The SQL/view approach above gives a low-risk way to get a blog-like experience while keeping a single user base and forum moderation.

Recommended Answers

All 12 Replies

Member Avatar for Stewart

Sounds silly to me. With a multi-user blog you can typically have the option to select a specific person and all their entried appear. With a forum you can't control who posts at a specific thread level.

Member Avatar for dj bill

Silly huh? I guess I was hoping for a little better feedback then someone just calling it silly. It may not be possible in a forum setting...but that is why I am asking.

My goal may not be a standard BLOG setup but the concept has some merit. I agree that in a forum setting it may not be possible or the best implementation of such an idea but I felt maybe someone else would have integrated such a thing into a forum.

Example would be this site...from the looks of the way the BLOG section is setup it is using the forum engine to run it. Again, I ask because I do not know and am very interested in learning more.

Especially for the site I am developing...people love to talk about their life...that is why Blogs are so popular and what better life event then your wedding to chat about.

Peace,

DJ Bill

Member Avatar for Troy

What a stupid idea, dj bill! JUST KIDDING :) I think Stewart's point was, if you want something that works like a blog, why not just use a blog system? The open-source Wordpress is free, very easy to use, and supports multiple users.

Now, I too have considered creating a blog-like system from phpBB. There are reasons you may want to do something like this. For example, if you have a community site that has a forum, and you also want to give people blogs, you don't want two seperate systems or two seperate authentication databases. No, you want a single login for your whole system. Of course, there are ways to integrate logins between different systems, but it's always a messy hack.

I think you are correct--I think dani has heavily modified vBulletin to do some really cool stuff. For example, the daniweb blogs.

I haven't thought the whole process through yet, but at least with phpBB, I don't think it would really be that big a deal. You can already create threads that are locked to posts except from the moderator. That "moderator" could be the blog author. You'd probably want to modify the page that spits out a thread to remove the author's name from being displayed for every post since you know the entire blog is one person. I think you'd hack a system where you'd create a thread, assign a moderator account to it, and lock the thread so only the moderator can post. Then you assign a single thread as the "comment thread" to the blog thread. Definitely would take some hacking, but not rocket science for sure.

Maybe csgal will respond. She definitely has experience with this subject.

Member Avatar for aboyd

Hmm. I know of three phpBB mods that will turn your forum into a blog-like thing. There is phpbb_fetch_all, phpBB Blog, and another one you can find in the phpBB mod support forums. I don't remember the name of it.

Anyway, phpBB Blog is something I wrote. There are lots of people using it. I'm a little nervous to link to it here, as I see a few people who have done such linking caught the attention of the mods. But you can look in my profile, it has a link to my site, and there you'll find phpBB Blog. Of the three products, mine is the most blog-ish. It has trackbacks, RSS, optional podcasting, all the GEO-location stuff, and a simple, blogger-like design. However, big limitation: it was built just to turn a forum into a list of blog entries. It doesn't give each user their own blog, although if they post in a forum, that would appear on the blog.

phpbb_fetch_all can be found via Google search. It is really cool, but it requires a lot of technical work. It's not really a blog. It just provides a way to embed forum stuff pretty much anywhere -- include the most recent posts on your home page, or list out the top posters, or show who's online. There are no trackbacks, no podcasting, etc. However, it does keep the phpBB style, it follows the phpBB security settings, and it's very versatile.

The other blog product, the one you can hunt down in the official phpBB support forums, DOES give each member a blog. You don't post to a forum to do it. Instead, posts to the forum stay in the forum as normal. However, you can go into your profile page, and enter a blog there. Then anyone who views your profile will be able to read your blog entries. That stikes me as lame, but oh man does it have a lot of fans.

-Tony

commented: Thanks for posting, aboyd. Thanks for writing that mod, too. +1
Member Avatar for elliel

you could just assign different permissions to different users ie the blog authors and the comment writers.

give each blog author their own board/topic area for their blog and then there would be a blog thread and a comment thread in each one.

I don't think it would be a big job, they would just be assigned to different membership groups.

does that make sense?

Member Avatar for nicklanglie

Thanks alot for your post. It is really helpful. I am trying to add forum elements to my website and you set me off (for phpbb_fetch_all) in a new direction which I appreciate...Nick

Member Avatar for torrie

I am so confused I don't know quite where to start. I want to put a bulletin / message board on my site so that my customers, parents, can chat amongst themselves about ongoing topics. Is this possible? I have read about phpbb and vbulletins, but don't seem to understand how they work and what to do with them exactly. Is there any specific help guides for this?

Thanks in advance...
Torrie

ps: What is a thread? I heard someone getting bashed for using an old one.... ??

Member Avatar for guinanie

Thanks for the post and thank you for sharing

Member Avatar for Dani

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned already (I'm too lazy to read this entire thread) but vBulletin forum system is about to release add-on blogging software that integrates with their forums.

Member Avatar for Taffd

Oddly enough, I've been pondering on how to add blogging type software to my site. I've realised that I have unwittingly built a forum from scratch, although it is not called a forum and does not use the usual terms, posts, topics, threads etc. It also has around 25,000 categories, which, fortunately I did not have to insert one at a time.
I am at present researching building blogs to enable me to use trackback and pingback and various other bits of functionality that come supplied with wordpress, vbulletin etc. I will post again when I know what I'm talking about.
I think your site idea has merit and is along the lines of some of the things I intend to add to my site. Best of luck.

Member Avatar for wilson2

Blog can work nice if you've good community.

Member Avatar for PosterManiac

I am starting up a wedding forum. I want to have a place where brides can log in and basically talk about their wedding day prep and planning. Kinda like a blog but a little different I guess.

That is exactly what I was thinking about from couple of days for my next forums.

Have u completed it??

Clara

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