This maybe one for the site administer/ mods here(as you use it yourselves), but any other offers of info greatly accepted...

Basically i've just been asked to join a media department at work, and i mentioned about the use of a discussion forum, kinda like this but obviously a lot tighter restrictions and also intranet based, anyway to cut a long story short...

What sort of set-up time is required to get started with VBulletin, and just how much moderating would you expect within a corporate (uni staff only)location (ie all persons within forum known).I do have web design background aswell as DB experience if that helps.

Be grateful for any ideas or guidance on this (i have a meeting regarding it next week).

Thank you all in advance,

Lee

Setup time, assuming you have a server suitable, less than 30 mins. If not, then apachetriad is your friend 80meg download, install go >

Add say 5 mins per forum you want, to create and assign moderators.

What takes time is the customisation of the look and feel, but again the default is actually okay and for an intranet with just a logo change.

Vbulletin costs a little, but worth it, espcially with v3.5 on the way, but phpbb does not.

Db, both mysql. Other than that php on iis or apache (better).

Perhaps consider some workplace style tools, to enable doc sharing / project type things, dotproject or tutos for example, although that extends your orginal brief.

As to moderation, depends, what your rules are and how many people you will be servicing, I'd bank on 30 mins a day/ moding as you read.

Hope that helps.

Yeah that helps a greast deal actually. Am sure that i maybe back for more info as when the software is purchased.

We'd rather use a tried and tested piece of software to create our forum than a freebie and the cost of VBulletin i seem to remember is peanuts in the grand scale of things.

Oh and it will be Unix based server - so apache( will be in discussion with our unix server admin shortly).

Would you bother with the skins that are available again i suppose this would cut down on design time (apart from corporate specific images i guess)

Thx again,

Lee

phpBB is fairly well tried & tested (and there are others )

For a company point of view, vBulletin is probably your best bet as you should be able to get it customised a little easier, and there are some features still missing from phpBB (standard, anyway).

I use phpBB Plus (from http://www.phpbb2.de ) which has a bunch of extra junk in it.