kcmartz,
It is true that it will be extremely difficult to create a forum with no PHP knowledge, but nothing is IMPOSSIBLE!
Let's face it, most if not all of us on this forum, have learned all the programming languages by just getting out there and doing it, trail and error, and doing tons of searches on forums like webmaster-talk.
If we can do it so can you.
If you are serious about creating a forum, I would recommend not starting by creating every line of code yourself but rather use a PHP framework that can help you along the way. Yes you will still have to do a ton of reading and searching but at the end of the day you will be learning how to produce code faster and take advantage of what the framework has to offer (being speed, support, and modularization).
Just to give you a little background, a PHP framework is a system where you can organize your business logic (Controllers), database/data storage (Models), and presentation (Views) elements for your application in a structured way and then let the framework do the hard part and display the end result to your users. (I am obviously over-simplifying it).
Here are just a few suggestions of PHP frameworks that you can look into to create your forum:
1)
The Zend Framework - fantastic support, video tutorials
2)
The Symfony Framework - Haven't used yet, but on my list to give a try
3)
CakePHP Framework - has a few tutorials to create wiki's & cookbooks (step-by-step)
4)
Kohana Framework - personally what I use and really enjoy, good for large applications
There are other like codeIgnighter (supports PHP4) which in my opinion is a bit on the heavier side due to the PHP4 support. But I am sure other people on this forum will chip in with their opinions.
Good luck with your forum, and remember nothing is impossible. Take a look at this
article from Inc magazine on a guy who decided to hand code a dating website just so he could learn how to do it.
