You dont need phpbb for this. Save the user's messages in a table.. You can have 2 tables.. users and messages. user_id -> foreign key for messages. Whenever the user saves a message, save it in messages table which references the user_id of that user. List all the messages of that user for viewing.. select message_details from messages where user_id='user-id-of-that-user';
To search for a message, you can use select message_details from messages where message_details like '%-search-string-%' && user_id='user-id';
Since its a school project, I dont think you need more than that!
Cheers,
Naveen