Bump; Hows about a PHP powered Forum

A forum might be an unnecessary track because there are so many platforms out there, both free and paid, that are really great. I cannot see why anyone would want to make a custom forum.

But I totally agree that a course about login, accounts, session/cookie handling, etc would be great! Nearly every app I've made in php has required some sort of login or session, so I'd love to see this.

I agree with Jeff, sometimes you don't always need a large complex forum, just a simple thread reply. it can also be good to learn about handling user permissions on different levels. most packaged forums come with all the bells and whistles which you might not want or need, one project I am having issues with is the email function of sending notifications of new threads/ replies to large amounts of people.

Christian, I understand what you're staying, but almost every example code on here has a free and paid alternative. That's like saying why bother learning to build websites from scratch when there's Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.? Why learn to build WP themes when you can just buy one? I think you get what I'm saying. While I agree that a forum might not be necessary to learn, lots of web applications that were built from the ground up include native forums, rather than, say, merging the database with phpbb for example. Even the forums here are relatively simple compared to something like Vbulletin, and I can see a definite value of learning how to implement one with just about any member site.