BLB Message Board Software

BLB Message Board Software

BLB is an open source, text based, tree formatted message board. It requires Java, MySQL, and a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat. A production instance of the software can be seen at http://www.biglawboard.com. Feel free to use, alter, or enhance BLB in any way you see fit. If you do something cool with it, start a thread at the link above, or email biglawboard@gmail.com and let me know.

Install Prerequisites:

Java JDK 1.6: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp#jdk
Download and install the latest Java SE Development Kit (JDK).
MySQL Community Server: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
Download and install MySQL Server 5.1 or later. Start the server.
MySQL Tools: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/#mysql-tools/
Download and install the GUI tools. Make sure you can connect to the server you installed.
Tomcat 6: http://tomcat.apache.org/download-60.cgi
Download and install the latest binary distribution. Start Tomcat and make sure you can hit http://localhost:8080/ in a browser.

Configure and Run BLB:

Download BLB Database Skeleton: http://www.biglawboard.com/code/dbskeleton.dat
Right click on the above and save it to c:\temp\blb\dbskeleton.dat
Database Setup:
1) Open MySQL Administrator
2) Go to 'Catalogs', right click in the bottom left box, and select 'Create New Schema'. Enter 'tlb' and click OK.
3) Go to 'User Admin", click 'Add New User', enter a username and password. Select the Schema tab, and give the user all roles in the 'tlb' database. Click 'Apply Changes' to create the user.
4) From a command prompt, cd to c:\temp\blb
5) Run: mysql --user=root --password=XXX tlb < dbskeleton.dat
6) Open MySQL Query Browser and log in with the new user you created. Validate that you can see objects in the 'tlb' schema.
Tomcat Setup:
1) Download the MySQL JDBC Driver: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/5.1.html
2) Unzip the download file and move the mysql-connector-java-5.X.X-bin.jar file to TOMCAT_HOME\common\lib

3) Edit TOMCAT_HOME\conf\context.xml - add the below before the closing </Context> tag. Replace the user/pass with the database user you set up earlier.
```
<Resource name="jdbc/tlbDS" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource"
	username="XXXXX"
	password="XXXXX"
	driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
	url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/tlb?autoReconnect=true"
	validationQuery="Select 1" />
		
```
Download & Deploy BLB WAR File: blb.war
Save the above to TOMCAT_HOME\webapps
Start Tomcat, Test BLB, Create an Admin User:
1) Stop and start Tomcat.
2) Point a brower at: http://localhost:8080/blb/
3) If there are problems, look for errors in: TOMCAT_HOME\logs\catalina.*.log
4) Assuming it works, create a new user and give that user admin rights by running the following in MySQL Query Browser:
```
update poster set userlevelid = 1 where username = 'YOUR_NAME';
		
```

(Optional) Build and Develop BLB:
Only do this if you want to customize, extend, or enhance BLB.

Install ANT: http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi
Download BLB Java Source: BigBoardSource-v1.0.rar
Extract it to c:\data\java\BigBoard.
Build BLB:
From a command prompt, run 'ant' in the directory where you unpacked it. It should produce a ./dist/blb.war file.