Agreed, but I would still remove the extra link, which only you will use, as, (and this is only my opinion) it could tempt people into trying to "guess the password" and make unauthorised changes

As ever, the website has already outgrown itself and now requires a way for certain people to communicate, possibly like a forum. The difference is, it doesn't need to be a full forum like phpBB.

I just want people to be able to create a discussion topic, add a name and message, and post it. Others would then be able to reply to the topic. There would be no need for registrations, logins or permissions whatsoever.

Are there any such packages out there, or am I best building it from scratch with a database?

Thanks,

Peter.

I would advise over-doing it...You only need some spambot to to see such a thing and you could find yourself having to do a lot of regular weeding!

I would really prefer not to have users register and log in with usernames and passwords if at all possible. Could I not just do an image verification for each post, like what a lot of blogs do?

Peter.

Aye, probably!

Any ideas if there is some software like what I want?

Peter.

Peter I'd suggest wordpress is what you are looking for.

http://wordpress.org/

Its free

Thanks Alun, but I'm not sure that's quite what I was looking for. Maybe I didn't explain myself too well. I basically want a forum, but it needs to be very simple.

When a user loads the page, they will see a "New topic" button as well as a list of topics. If they click on the "New topic" button, they will input their name, a topic title and a message, which will immediately appear in the list of topics. If they click on one of the topics in the list, they will see the message and a "Reply" button.

Does that make any sense?

Peter.

Yes it makes sense just not sure I've ever seen such a basic one. only thought would be to see what functionality you can switch off in software.

I suppose I could just modify phpBB by editing the page codes, which I've done in the past.

Peter.

I set up a little mini forum thing a few years ago as a test, and within a couple of weeks it was being inundated by spam-porn-bots. I could imagine that having to verify an image every time you want to post a comment could get tiresome. Just my thoughts. Make of them what you will...

Good point, John. I was thinking of setting up a form to add a new post, but trying to make it difficult for spam bots.

Possibly having three user-viewable fields for their name, subject and message, however calling these completely random field names. Then, I would create three user-hidden fields called "Name", "Subject" and "Message, which the spam bots would think are the real fields. Using a bit of simple code, I would then reject any new posts where these hidden fields have been filled in.

Does that sound like a good idea?

Peter.

Honestly? It seems a lot more complicated than getting people to sign up, and there is the advantage that if you have a "remember me" feature, they won't have to repeatedly log in but it would remove any doubts regarding the porn-spam-bots

You can cut out a lot of spam with a .htaccess file.

How are people going to access this website? If you know that they are not going to follow a link to the site, or they are going to come from a specific location, then you can easily block most spam by blocking referrers. After-all, the spam-bots are going to find you by following a link. Of course, whether they include a referrer or not is questionable, but most do.

If you know, for example, that this site will only be accessed through a link from one of say three sites, then you can just block all referrers except from those sites.