To create a forum, think of a name for the forum. Something short - like RVTalk, for example. Create a subdirectory for it in your web tree.

You can customize the look of your forum using four files: a header, a footer, the posting form, and a redirect file. Generate these four files by copying our document source and modifying it:

The header contains all the introductory text and instructions for your chat group.

The form is where participants type in their comments. It asks them for name, email address, etc, and their comments.

The footer lets you put your favorite notes and navigation buttons at the bottom of your forums page.

The redirect lets you whang! your user to any URL you desire, after he posts. Usually, this is the URL of the forum page itself - to put him back in the conversation. This file is not html. It is simply a file containing a URL.

The forum page itself is simply a compendium of the header, people's postings, and the footer. You do not make it, the script makes it. Click here to see the whole forum, a sum of its parts. NEVER edit this file - it is automatically recreated everytime somebody posts to the forum. If you edit it, your edits will be lost when somebody posts. Don't edit the other temporary files you find in your forums directory either. Just work on your four.

When you edit any of your four files, post a new comment to your form and let the forums script rebuild your forums file. Reload it, and then you'll see your changes.

You can control the size of the forum on a daily basis. The forum script will cut out old postings to keep the size to the number you specify when you set up the forum.

Once you've got your files ready for testing, send email to support@opus1.com and tell us the directory you created for the forum, the forum name, and the number of messages you want to keep.

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Last updated: Feb 11, 1997/jlt