I am looking at setting up a forum to compliment my blog. I want to avoid using mySQL so that eliminates a lot of candidates. Two that SEEM to fit are myUPB and E-Blah.

Does E-Blah require database software or is it all text file data storage?

Does customization require a lot of user programming? I have programmed in Visual Basic, PHP and Clipper, but I have never tried my hand at Perl.

Am I likely to run into problems if I set up the forum on one host (my localhost) then FTP upload it to a hosting service (I use Siteground)?

Any advice or suggestions before I make my decision?

Thanks for any help!

Hi,

1. E-Blah has a plain text file database system, ready to go, no customisation/configuration is required.

2. Depends what you want to customise...

3. You'll have to re-configure the paths in Settings.pl, these paths will need to be changed to reflect the new server's document root, etc...

I'd think carefully about avoiding MySQL though, I'm sure you have excellent reasoning for this, but usually, people go for flat file because they don't have MySQL databases available to them.
You need to think about the practicle limitations of flat file databases, such as the extremely huge number of files you'll end up with when the forum has thousands of threads and posts. Difficult to backup, etc...
If you're sure flat file DB is the way to go, then I'm sure E-Blah is the best forum software ever written for this. Almost ten years development gone into this.