DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A WEB BASED DISCUSSION FORUM FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS

ABSTRACT
The world is fast becoming a global village due to the effect of globalization and rapid growth in technology. This has enabled information sharing among various people of the world, thereby solving basic societal problems and bringing about rapid development. The study designs and implements a web based forum where computer science and computer engineering students of a particular university, or various universities in Nigeria and the world at large can come together and interact online. Various rooms/categories such as programming, web development, networking, computer repairs/maintenance, android/IOS discussions, phone and technology in general can be integrated into this online forum. Faced with the challenges many computer sciences and engineering students face when trying to execute some of their projects, the researcher deem it fit to create a social platform where students can register, log in, ask IT questions and get quality answers from users and admin, create numerous computer and ICT related topics to inform others, and get others to read their thoughts and projects and reply or like their post. Concerning methodology, the system was created using PHP and MySQL. The aim of the system is to create a discussion forum where users can create various topics, reply topics and moderate topics by the administrator of the site or super moderators.