Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 2:40 pm
right, the problem is getting traction with serious developers willing to invest some of their time 
A community of PHP developers offering assistance, advice, discussion, and friendship.
http://forums.devnetwork.net/
obviously, that doesn't have to be the case.I think a major obstacle is file structure of the back end too, it's always a total mess
somehow I get the feeling you are correct on your assumption regarding those developers, and that most people would have issues with your code. That's why a commonly agreed good and established coding standards are a must. Also using an established framework can do much to alleviate this and reduce the amount of work considerably, as I've iterated before.I know a lot of developers would disagree with me but if you look at my site's back end I guarantee you wouldn't even have to make a first guess where to implement a change it's so well organized
...and most people don't comprehend the principles of design. Nothing I say is going to change anything here and in general the same mistakes will be made by disregarding design. I'm working on my own implementation of things because there aren't any solid design principles built in to any existing modules that I've looked at...and even in my third alpha a couple of months ago everything from my new blog, chat room, forums, private messaging, polls, etc was and still is working beautifully and gracefully together delivered at the highest standards and working in IE6 even as I made substantial changes almost every day. How many other people can say they've built an entire suite with no more help beyond replies on a single forum? Though then again design must not matter if most people would have issues with my code. Progress means change and you can either adapt to a better designed work flow or emulate the established good enough implementations. I wouldn't expect most people to understand what I'm saying since they can't see my latest work though I never received a reply from you after I sent you a PM with a link to a live/private build of my work. I'll admit I don't know everything, I'm a designer learning development, though I don't see very many developers learning design. Show me one existing suite with all those features well implemented and integrated together or more served at the highest standards with a visual WYSIWYG editor with as many developers in whatever group is working collectively on that given project and I'll admit I don't understand design and or development. If you can't find a single project then just wait a few months and you'll see mine live or you could just visit the link I sent you and see it right now for yourself. A project is only capable of achieving their goals as the people involved will allow them.pytrin wrote:...most people would have issues with your code.
Yes, there are. And very smart people have organized them into design patterns - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_pat ... science%29there aren't any solid design principles
I've been to your site, and frankly it was quite confusing to navigate and use. In user interface design, often less is more and usability is about making flows clear to the user not showing him as many options as possible. Are all those features required / important? I've not seen much demand for it in forums, and I've been around a few. And regardless, it says nothing about the quality of code that runs it. After all, up-front phpBB does the job, it's the backend that is pretty horrible and outdated.Show me one existing suite with all those features well implemented and integrated together or more served at the highest standards
we might have different opinions on what those goals are. I am looking forward to creating a forum system that can outlive it's developers and be used by others. I care less if it comes built in with WYSIWYG (which I'm not sure is even appropriate for forums) or AJAX for adding / editing posts. Those are minor concerns in my opinion, yet you seem to place much weight on them.A project is only capable of achieving their goals as the people involved will allow them
My first reaction was YIKES! So I skimmed it again and my second reaction was YIKES!JAB Creations wrote:...and most people don't comprehend the principles of design. Nothing I say is going to change anything here and in general the same mistakes will be made by disregarding design. I'm working on my own implementation of things because there aren't any solid design principles built in to any existing modules that I've looked at...and even in my third alpha a couple of months ago everything from my new blog, chat room, forums, private messaging, polls, etc was and still is working beautifully and gracefully together delivered at the highest standards and working in IE6 even as I made substantial changes almost every day. How many other people can say they've built an entire suite with no more help beyond replies on a single forum? Though then again design must not matter if most people would have issues with my code. Progress means change and you can either adapt to a better designed work flow or emulate the established good enough implementations. I wouldn't expect most people to understand what I'm saying since they can't see my latest work though I never received a reply from you after I sent you a PM with a link to a live/private build of my work. I'll admit I don't know everything, I'm a designer learning development, though I don't see very many developers learning design. Show me one existing suite with all those features well implemented and integrated together or more served at the highest standards with a visual WYSIWYG editor with as many developers in whatever group is working collectively on that given project and I'll admit I don't understand design and or development. If you can't find a single project then just wait a few months and you'll see mine live or you could just visit the link I sent you and see it right now for yourself. A project is only capable of achieving their goals as the people involved will allow them.
If you take the time to go over the source for phpBB, you would see that is a hack fest and a rather unmaintainable piece of code. For most purposes, trying to extend or build on phpBB is a major exercise in futility. It does not have to be like this.what is the shortcoming of phpBB
Well, if I considered it a waste of time I wouldn't have proposed it. The fact is that when people are confronted with choosing an open-source forum system, the choices are pretty bad. I would like to have alternatives.It would be a waste of time to simply rewrite existing functionality just for the sake of having better back-end code.
Not discouraged at all, I assure you.I'm not trying to discourage you
This is irrelevant. Maintainable systems outlive the attention span of their creators since they are better suited to adapted to changing environments. One or several deprecated functions should not bring down a well designed system.those possibly willing to get involved to know whether one particular function will be deprecated in PHP 7 or MySQL 7 in example
Not sure what you mean by user adaption. If you mean customization, then it's useful mainly to power users and in power programs (such as photoshop for example). An important interface principle is the "minimal set of features", which is having just what is necessary to allow a user to complete his flow. Many features that seem useful in theory are little used or unneeded in practice. User feedback should always be the driving force for adding additional features beyond what is necessary. So far I have not seen any particular demand to the features you promote.User adaptation is an important design principle
If you still don't think having a better back-end code would make it a better system for developers, then really I don't see what else I can say.how would it evolve in to something better then phpBB besides better back end code
Second that.Second, I don't understand how meeting browser standards has much to do with the PHP code for the site? It seem like that has to do with attention to detail when making templates and generating HTML ... not the application code or design.
JAB, functionality-wise PHPBB is a good software. Even more, it's ok performance-wise (after all, the biggest forum of the entire Internet, gaiaonline.com is running on PHPBB). It's exactly the backend code that sucks in PHPBB.how would it evolve in to something better then phpBB besides better back end code? If that's your only goal then please clarify why the back end needs to be rewritten...is it really inefficient, are things difficult to change, is it weeded altogether so when you change one thing intentinally you unintentionally change something else?

The posts referenced have been moved to our "dump". That's why you cannot access them.JAB Creations wrote:Got an email notification...must have been a spam message since I don't see anything new...though I was denied permission to view anything at this link emailed to me...
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