A forum of your own to keep the stress down?

Discussions about personal psychology for the individual trader.
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Sir G
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A forum of your own to keep the stress down?

Post by Sir G »

As the more efficient we are, the easier things flow.. it makes sense to try to be more efficient.

Setting up a forum like this one for your personal consumption just might make things easier. I’m sure I’m like everyone else, the todo list keeps growing and growing and a few things fall through the cracks.

I have tried about every way possible to keep track of my thoughts, but in the end the process leaves something to be desired.

This forum always struck me as a great repository for thoughts and ideas. And it is almost set up perfectly to keep track of those thoughts and ideas. You can upload image files and also document files. You can have categories of Position Sizing, Portfolio Selection, Entries, Exits, Test Results, To do list… anything that you are currently thinking about. Then under each category, you write your thoughts and upload any files or images you might have… and down the road, even if you forgot about your idea, a visual scan of the forum will bring you right back to where you ended off.

While in the end, you get what you pay for, I was amazed to see how cheap webhosting has become (BUYER BEWARE!) .. in some instance only $3.00 per month. The forum software is open source and can be found at www.phpBB.com and search for hosting companies at

http://www.webhostingmall.com/
http://www.hostingchat.net/
http://www.talkhosting.com/
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/

If you aren’t into learning how to do the install yourself, pick a hosting company that will install phpBB for you.

The file attachments for uploading and downloading are a modification and will need to be done on top of the install. Again, speak to potential hosting companies BEFORE hiring them, about them doing the installs.
Link to attach MOD: http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=74505

And you will need to learn a few simple admin controls. Beyond that it will be as easy as you find this forum for viewing and posting.

Thought I would share.

Gordon
Sir G
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Post by Sir G »

I should also say that I have been told that the forum should be able to run on a local machine, so it isn't dependant upon a website..

One of these days, I'll give it a go on my local machine. But in the meantime, if any one else has tried it please let us know.

Gordon
redbullpeter
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Post by redbullpeter »

Gordon,

An alternative to phpbb is yabbforum [ www.yabbforum.com ]. If portability is important then you may want to use yabbforum over phpbb. PHPBB uses a MySQL database for managing the discussions which means porting it to another machine involves setting up two seperate applications and migrating data. Doing this across operating systems would be a pain, to put it politely. Yabbforum uses perl and ascii files to manage the whole board. It is possible to just zip up the whole discussion board directory and unpack it in the new location with minimal fuss.

I run a discussion board which uses yabbforum, I evaluated PHPBB as an option but decided against it due to it's more "complex" nature. I've had to move hosting services once and thank the heavens that moving the whole discussion forum took me about 15 minutes. I recently tried to move a guestbook which used PHP and MySQL and ended up having to request tech support to do it for me....

I don't mean to be critical, if my tone is a bit brisk. Just that like trading the concept is pretty straightforward but the devil is in the details.

Peter
Sir G
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Post by Sir G »

Hi RedBull-

Nothing beats experience to find the pros and cons of things.. thanks for the info.. I have personally set up the phpBB forum on a website, so I'm all taken care of.

I hope others will consider doing something like this as it (IMHO) is a wonderful way to organize your thoughts. And from what I have heard and have seen in myself... the older we get the more we tend forget!

Gordon
Jason Czech
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Free Web Hosting

Post by Jason Czech »

Gordon,

Maintaining your own forum for thoughts sounds like a good idea. Another advantage for those who travel is that you can access your 'thought forum' from anywhere in the world... And for those of us too cheap to shell out the $5 per month for web hosting, here's an offer for 3 years of FREE web hosting!

http://order.1and1.com

I haven't tried the service yet, but I intend to.

-Jason
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