message board question (help, please)

orchestral · #1 11-15-2006, 01:22 AM

so i own this website, that's technically affiliated with my job. essentially, it lets our students keep in touch with staff, in a moderated and safe way. the way we're currently doing it, is that they email their messages to an address. i then read all the messages (to make sure they're appropriate) and then copy them into a word document, and then paste them into Yahoo Site Builder.

The problem is that the volume of emails is getting too high to manage, and that i end up editing more than 90% of them, for content or formatting (mostly formatting).

i can't deal with this anymore, and we need to move back to a message board situation. the problem is, all these kids are under 14 and can't legally register usernames for forums like VBullien that require you to have an account. I could set the preferences so they could all post as guests, but then when i have problems with kids who spam or are consistantly inappropriate i can't ban them.

so... can anyone think of a way around this?
our old shitty bravenet message board CONSTANTLY got hacked, and invaded with spam, porn, and child porn. which is NOT OKAY.

essentially i need a message board that i can buy/download that'll allow me to have to approve all posts. because it'd be easier for me to just click "approve" instead of posting every individual fucking message. and it needs to be relativley spam proof. but i'll still check it a couple times a day, and delete any spam/porn shit.

help.
please.

giveherthegun · #2 11-15-2006, 01:28 AM

a guestbook wouldn't be ideal?

orchestral · #3 11-15-2006, 01:31 AM

they overloaded the capacity of our last 2 guestbooks. granted both were crappy, and not under my controll, so i dont really know the details on that..

i also had a blog forum for a while, that allowed comments, but that attracted ALOT of spam.

Anti · #4 11-15-2006, 03:33 AM

you can try this http://www.phpbb.com/
it's open source and editable

ursulafudge · #5 11-15-2006, 10:07 AM

You could set up like a blog using WordPress, but not make it a traditional type blog. Only showing the comments for a post would be like a message board type setup and people don't have to register to leave comments and all comments can be moderated, so you can approve/delete comments quite easily.