I want to put a departmental forum on our Intranet site, and company policy won't allow anything web based whatsoever.
I have very little building experience, and don't know any programming language other than the most basic of html.

Is this something I could either download as a template, or is it more complex than that? I mean - obviously the content of the board is stored somewhere; is there an idiots guide to constructing this, or am I getting in over my head? How do I go about this?

Any step by steps or pointers (in laymans terms) is appreciated.

Thanks!

Basically, you need a server and then you need to run forum software on it. Most forum software will run on PHP+MySQL. Apache, PHP and MySQL are all open-source software and free to use, and fairly easy to set up as well as very well documented.

Popular forum software are phpBB, vBulletin and Invision Power Board. Of those, I believe phpBB is free and the others decently priced.

Thanks Effovex - this is very helpful and I appreciate it.