Unlike PHP, where generally the script is starts to run when a request is made to the server and ends once the complete reply is sent, news.arc is set up to run as a long-running process, handling requests as they come in. It would be a little tricky to port news.arc to PHP.
I don't know about Rails....
Either way, a message board is certainly a reasonable project to pursue in PHP. ^_^ How long have you been programming? It seems similar to a second-year final project I had in college. The important thing is to be comfortable with using some kind of persistent storage (not necessarily a database, but that works) and doing a lot of string output. :-p
First of all, thank you very much for your reply :)!
I see, I don't know anything about Arc and how news.arc works, so I didn't know that it would be difficult to use both news.arc and PHP.
I have been programming for about a year = newbie.
But wanted to give a try since I love Hacker News and now that I love Arc Forum with the warm welcome I received :)!
Are there any services other than Hacker News and Arc Forum that was build with news.arc!?