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Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:03 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
My wish would be easy integration (logins, and sessions) with CMS's and other applications. All the way down to standalone forum instances, temporary forum instances, etc.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:07 am
by Roja
Maugrim_The_Reaper wrote:My wish would be easy integration (logins, and sessions) with CMS's and other applications. All the way down to standalone forum instances, temporary forum instances, etc.
Oddly enough, phpbb's login and session handling is pretty easy once you get down to it. I've been working on it for several projects, and its not as bad as I initially expected. The only real issue I see would be true in virtually all forums: That once you integrate multiple logins across multiple apps, you have to also integrate multiple signups.. which isn't quite so easy.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:08 am
by foobar
Ambush Commander wrote:Without tables? Absolutely awesome.
That could be done fine with phpbb as well, assuming you're talking about HTML tables. Just edit the template files.

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I actually once did a forum. It was my first server-side code that went live, too. It was done in VBS with ASP 2.0 . It was a hopeless mess, but I was 15 at the time, and had virtually no experience doing any sort of server-side programming. It was buggy and the search tool was limited to a brute-force LIKE query... but it worked. ASP and HTML were interspersed for impossible to maintain code. Practically no use of stylesheets and a single view forum/thread/latest-threads/search-results file with about 2,500 lines of code (including HTML). That was a pretty wild ride, I tell ya... Oh, and before I forget: it was back-ended by an MS Access database! Not MSSQL, but Access. Just think about that for a minute.

I have since worked on a php forum, but that never got very far past the pre-alpha concept phase. Here I have some tips for you:

- Separate content from design from logic. This is absolutely mandatory. Read the "horror story" above for explanation. Don't get yourself into the forrest of HTML + PHP + Arbitrary text.

- OO design recommended. I won't say mandatory, although I believe this to be better, so as to not spark another OO v. Procedural flamewar. The reason being that OO design allows for modularity, which will keep the time maintaining code to a minimum. Also, this allows for an easier integration of a plugin interface, which is popular nowadays.

-Security. Keep everything as secure as possible. This is also easier with OO code, since it allows you to abstract yourself from your code and consider the bigger picture. Make sure you test all your user input for malicious XSS, SQL injection, and CSRF attacks. Don't trust your users! Ever!

And here something more specific (trendy/popular stuff nowadays):

- AJAX for a real-time experience.
- XHTML compliance & RSS feeds.
- No HTML tables. This will give you lots of cross-browser incompatibilities, but it gives you more control over your page and the page's source-code is a dream come true!
- Put the output through HTMLTidy so your source-code looks good.
- Plugin/Extension interface. So you don't have to mod your code and be unable to upgrade like with most forum systems such as phpbb.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:11 am
by Maugrim_The_Reaper
Not quite the same thing I meant - can you literally grab only the data for one page of a forum without any further processing (up to display/theme level)? I'm not a phpBB expert, but I'm guessing the process might be messy, complicated and quicker to simply hack a quick minimal forum yourself with less requirements...

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 9:18 am
by onion2k
What I would like to see is a distributed forum .. the same script running on lots of servers talking to each other with webservices and a unified front end for the users .. essentially the same sort of thing as newsgroups but without the full replication side of things. That would enable people to share the bandwidth and costs of running a major forum, and could possibly enable people to plugin new folders in whenever they wanted. Ace. Bloody complicated though.

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2005 11:34 am
by Charles256
Roja- as of right now I'm making unsubstantiated claims. (i.e. the better wheel.) However, by going public and getting ideas from others it gives me a reason to do it. Motivation. See if there is a reason for doing it. Right now the main thing is implmentation of AJAX, especially on the admin side, perhaps make everything that happens in the backend of the forum also able to happen directly from the forum if you're an admin/mod. Though, I could see this leading to complaints (i accidentally deleted a thread when trying to open it!) but with proper design it should be possible. Also, the addition of CSS driven layout, which might be tricky as intricate and deep as forums can get. Perhaps more built in add ons to the way you can display text which can be disabled/enabled through the backend by the click of a mouse rather than installing a billion hacks. Right now, I'm trying to see if anyone has an idea that is glaringly good enough to work on a forum. (also, I kind of want to do it just to put in my portfolio, which I am tryign to build up.)

One thing I would like to see: On a forum I visit they have a user rating, which is something I think I want to add as well because it's a nice feature but I also want to make a few changes to it (perhaps the ability for an admin to make changes to the score in case someone rates them unfairly. i.e. knocking their rating down because they are hot pink).

Another thing: Make it a little easier (actually, a lot easier) to integrate the user system on the forum with the rest of your website if that is what you are aiming for.

Also plan on making it even easier than phpBB to modify the current scheme as well as maybe giving some guides on the admin side on where in the code you can change certian things. Information I had to dig for. Arguably, you could say if your not smart enough to find it tough, but I want to make it easier for those people that don't read code all that well. Which is important, because nearly anyone can install a forum:) not anyone can modify it...

and that's all I'm going on now. LOL