I've made Custom Discussion Boards Before. I could be interested in helping out or designing the layout. I've also have experience with AJAX chats.
I'm not saying im your guy for this project, but i probaby could do it for you.
Questions:
- Do you want AJAX scripts running on your discussion board?
- Do you require Javascript to be written into you disccion board?
- How many many database tables and fields do you expect to be using?
- How much of the work is done already or is it going to be a from scratch project?
- How many core files do you expect there will be? 1,2,3,5,10,15,15+?
- How many people are you expecting to be on the site per day? per give month? or within a 30 minute period?
None of the questions above are breaking factors, Its just a question of how much work is required to complete the project. Simple Discussion Board could be a 1-3 day project. A more Advanced Discussion board would vary time wise depending on the factors questions above.
Also i'll find it helpful if you can give me more detail on your designed layout and functionality of the website. By functionality, thats more of a AJAX/javascript question related to user-friendly interaction and helpfulness.