Hey all.

I am about to get into a lot of work here, I am about to code my own forum, just for the hell of it. I see this project as a way to learn SQL/DB-structure and PHP better. I am just about to dive into the phpBB-code to see if they have anything to offer but would be great if someone could give me some pointers.

The first problem that arised in this was how to structure the DB. The idea of the forum is to end up as something like phpBB/vBB but not as advanced. It will be made with a tree structure.

I asume that there are a couple of good ways to attack this and just pulled up some sites about the Celko Nested Sets. Are there any other ways to do this or is his the best?

Hope to get some good pointers from you my friends. Links and reference material is also welcome and if you know of a public forum that is easier than phpBB to dive in to it would be great since they have A LOT of code, hard to understand it.

After some more use of Google i found a couple of useful links that had been kind enough to post their DB-structure that will give me a hint on how they did it.

Here they are.
http://newsboard.unclassified.de/devel/docs/database
http://punbb.informer.com/docs/dev.html#dbtables

Also if anyone else is interested here is some info about Celko Nested Sets.
http://www.developersdex.com/gurus/articles/112.asp
And an article about storing hirerarchial data in a database
http://www.sitepoint.com/article/hie...data-database/

Oh i can build this out with one more question relating to the first post.

Are there any benefits of storing forum data in a XML-file instead of a database? If so what are the pros and cons on doing it that way? I often read that XML is like some kind of gift from god but i have never heard of anyone actually using it, everyone is still talking about DBs to store data.

XML is great because you can easily use it across different platforms and on different sites. Its great for affiliate programs like what Amazon has because it supplies the information and you can easily manipulate it.

For a forum I don't see any advantage to using XML, if anything I would see it as less secure.

Your question is pretty broad, can you refine it a bit more. This is a bit like going to a professor and saying you dont understand, they want to know what you don't understand .

Just a suggestion since this thread hasnt had much of a response yet. It is a great topic though and it looks like you are heading in the right direction.

XML is fine for configuration files on forums, but as the datastore? Far, far to slow and unwieldy