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Showing posts with label free. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free. Show all posts

Get your forum created and hosted for free

Have you ever dreamed of having your own forum just like your blog without any cost.In this post I will be comparing a lot of OpenSource php fourms and different free hosts.In todays internet world which is more tilted towarsds social networking forums are gaining more popularity.
An Internet forum, or message board, is a
bulletin board system in the form of a discussion site.he members submit topics for discussion (known as threads) and communicate with each other using publicly visible messages (referred to as posts) or private messaging.Take a look at the sample forum if you are new to the concept
www.android.dailyforum.net

You find a lot of forums written in php(pre hypertext processor) language,but there are some asp.net alternatives also available.The most famous and widely used among the php forum's are phpbb and vbulletin board.

PHPBB3:

Since its creation in 2000, phpBB™ has become the most widely used Open Source forum solution. Like its predecessors, phpBB™ 3.0 “Olympus” has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes.

With a large and highly customisable set of key features coupled with a standards compliant interface, phpBB™ will grow with, and complement your website. With millions of installations worldwide, it is no wonder phpBB™ is one of the most popular ways to create and support a community.

The current stable release of phbb is 3.02 version which is availble for download in their homepage.The administrator panel looks like this

PUNBB:

PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive as compared to other discussion boards. PunBB has fewer features than similar software, but is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML and CSS compliant pages.
Currently, PunBB runs on a number of
operating systems that are able to support the PHP scripting language. To store its data, PunBB relies on either MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite.

click here to visit punbb homepage

list of available alternatives written in php and their comparison of features
list of availble alternatives written in ASP and their comparison

List of universities offering free courses (online)

There are a lot of free education resources available on the internet ranging from languages to life development.Here is a comprehensive list of sites that you must take look.OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high quality university-level educational materials, often including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments and exams. Open educational resources are based on the notion that knowledge and education are common goods that must be supported by a defined community.


MIT-open courseware:
Massachussets university of technology offers free courses in various fields.Some of the lectures are available in audio and video format through their youtube channel.There are total 1800 courses.More than a million use the tutorials virtually from every country.

Stanford University:
Stanford univesity offers a wide range of related audio and video courses via apple's itunes store.You need to have apple i tunes to access them.Courses Offered - Human-Computer Interaction, The Future Of The Internet, Straight Talk About Stem Cells, Anatomy of Movement, Global Geopolitics, Convex Optimization, Introduction to Robotics etc.

University of california:
The University of California, Irvine has a long history of social engagement. As a leading public research University, an important part of its mission is to showcase and disseminate the research and scholarship of the University to the public.There is a e-marketing course available here.

Delft Univesity of Technology:The Delft University of Technology offers a number of free technology courses. Most of Delft's courses cover advanced topics that would be of interest to students in engineering or related fields. New courses are constantly being added to the site

University of California,Berkeley:
It also provides valuable courses thorugh itunes just like the stanford university.Self-learners can gain access to a wide range of technology courses, lectures and events. Additional courses can be found though webcast.berkeley.edu.
Tufts University: A great university constantly expands its reach, working across traditional boundaries to grasp and meet the global community's most critical needsThrough OpenCourseWare.
Tufts aims to share its expertise broadly and to
empower others throughout the world,
so they may reach their full potential."

President Lawrence Bacow
Utah state university: A famous statement by the president of the university" In the tradition of land grant universities, Utah State University OpenCourseWare assures that no individual who is prepared and who desires the opportunity to advance his or her education is turned away. USU OCW provides an unprecedented degree of free and open access to the knowledge and expertise of our faculty for the benefit of every citizen of the state of Utah and every person in the world. As we enter the 21st century, services like OpenCourseWare will enable land grant institutions to more fully accomplish their missions.USU offers its students a number of opportunities to obtain college credit for what they have learned in nontraditional ways - like using USU OpenCourseWare! If you are interested in earning credit for USU courses without taking the courses, you have a variety of "credit by examination" options available. These include:


What is open courseware?

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.Goals of the consortium:
  • Extend the reach and impact of opencourseware by encouraging the adoption and adaptation of open educational materials around the world.
  • Foster the development of additional opencourseware projects.
  • Ensure the long-term sustainability of opencourseware projects by identifying ways to improve effectiveness and reduce costs.
Here is a comprehensive list of all 200 universities available
http://www.ocwconsortium.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=17&Itemid=32
There are other consortium's like chinese CORE—China Open Resource for Education and japanese open courseware consortium as a part of ocw.One thing I feel very bad is that no Indian university is involved in the project, though I don't know why but I feel it will be helpful for Indian students if some of the top universities like IIT's and BITS joins.