I've been asked to do a website for a client for a business they want to showcase. The initial meeting did not go into much specifics, they outlined what pages they want (pretty basic, stuff I already know).

 

They did however, ask for a forum where people couldn't exchange ideas and converse. I told them I wasn't sure I could do that as I have no previous experience doing so but they're willing to stick with me. How can I create a forum for them without using an existing design?

 

They are also very keen on making money through the website by advertising/promoting other products, outside of something like Google AdSense what else is there?

 

I also know pretty much nothing about CMS (how to set it up, how it works etc.) other than what it is, would it come in handy with a site such as this?

 

As I said already I've never really tackled a site such as this before, help would be much appreciated!

I'd go with an off the shelf Forum and just skin it. Punbb is really easy to skin with just basic knowledge: http://punbb.informer.com/

 

There are tons of ad platforms out their, and quite a few sector specific ones.

 

Here are two quite popular ones:

 

http://buysellads.com/

 

http://federatedmedia.net/

 

There are alot of cms solutions out their, you need to decide what you need, and then find a package that closely matches those needs. Their are alot of cms solutions out their with thousands of features to overcomplicate matters for both you and the end user.

 

Some popular cmf/cms solutions with good user support that are open source & free

 

Wordpress

Modx

Concrete5

TextPattern

 

If you can afford to pay for a license on a commercial cms, then you will get far better support.

 

How much time do you have to get to grips with these solutions? Without any prior experience, you're a little out of your depth, but depending on the deadline you could probably learn what you need to get the job done.

 

Just my $0.02

To add to the forum point, don't even consider rolling your own. It'll take ages, be bug ridden, have security holes, lack of features, etc. Go with one of the many excellent free ones out there that have many people constantly working on and evaluating them. All of these provide theme abilities, so you can make it look however you want.

 

Also explain to them that they won't be making any kind of real money from ads until they have substantial traffic, and even then it wont be loads. To get that kind of traffic, a constantly updated live and happening website is required. If they just want a few static pages and then leave it to rot then forget it, they'd be better off without ads - it'd look better too. I'm talking news updates, articles, etc. This takes time, something a lot of people underestimate with a successful website. The above being the case, you'd definitely need to integrate it with a CMS. Again, no point reinventing the wheel, there are plenty of very good (and lots of very free) solutions out there.

 

You are out of your depth as bocaj said, but depending on your existing skillset a solid weekend or two should get you up to speed on one CMS and one piece of forum software. Go from there.

This is quite a hand little CMS, its not very powerfull, but its good when you learning http://grabaperch.com/

 

Maybe not on a clients work though ;/

just use a free one like SMF or PHP forum

 

really self explanatory to use and skin

Thanks very much for the wealth of info everyone, it will surely come in handy!

 

No deadline has been mentioned and I'm eager to learn the ropes, they never mentioned CMS but now is a good time to become familiarise myself with it (and if I know enough in good time I can offer them its services).

 

I forgot to mention the 2 sites they gave me as an example:

 

CADTutor

MAP Software

Wordpress also offer a forum which is as easy to install as wordpress...

 

http://bbpress.org/

 

I have installed it, but the site that I've tried it on isn't live so I've no idea if it's any good or not. If anyone on here has more experience with it, I'd be very interested in some feedback - good or bad.

I used bbpress before, decent forum

I used bbpress before, decent forum

 

If you want some help with either the blog or the CMS let me know. I'd be happy to get my hands dirty on this one to help you out.

Thanks so much guys! Sorry I took so long to reply but I didn't think there were any more posts (email notification doesn't work for some reason).

 

I had been experimenting with WP for the last while now and can't get it to do what I want.

 

I can set up an existing site to edit text in (on a single page, this was only to test WP out), but I can't assign my external CSS stylesheet to it.

 

Here's the page.

 

Despite my difficulties with WP I am going to stick it out as I'm sure it'll be a godsend for future projects (and that the solution is staring me in the face).

 

On a side note, I made a draft layout of the site in Photoshop that I plan to make into a working site in WP (like my unsuccessful test page mentioned above), will this come back to bite me in the proverbial i.e. should I be using a WP template instead?