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The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 1:17 pm
by jackpf
Ok, I don't normally post polls or whatever...but since I've had a bit of encouragement from the mods, why not ;)

Ok, so I've heard that devnetwork.net might be switching over to MyBB (or at least, it's being considered), and I was just wondering what people's opinions are.

:)

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 2:05 pm
by Eran
I voted for building one from scratch. All the current offerings are pretty much a mess and I think this forum has all the necessary skills to pull it off.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 2:08 pm
by jackpf
Yeah, me too.

I wouldn't call them a mess....but I do think we could make a better one ;)

Plus, it'd be fun. As long as we can be decisive...and don't argue too much.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 3:42 pm
by kaszu
I must have missed something, why are our mighty leaders considering switching to something else? :)

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 3:45 pm
by Eran
it's a continuation of this discussion - viewtopic.php?f=7&t=103242

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 5:10 pm
by jayshields
More hassle/effort than it's worth. Stay with the same setup. It would take years to build a better forum than one such as phpBB.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Mon Aug 10, 2009 5:16 pm
by Eran
It would take years to build a better forum than one such as phpBB.
are you serious? have you looked over the code for phpBB?

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:23 am
by jayshields
No, I haven't. It doesn't matter if the code looks like a pile of dog food though. There are so many features and it's pretty robust. It wouldn't surprise me if there was over 30k lines of code in there.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:27 am
by Eran
It doesn't matter if the code looks like a pile of dog food though.
Well it does matter if we're speaking of quality. And there are plenty of downtimes, bot-attacks and other miscellaneous problems that are patched over temporarily since extending phpBB is such a hassle.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:38 am
by onion2k
pytrin wrote:And there are plenty of downtimes, bot-attacks and other miscellaneous problems...
Any custom build we did would have to cope with the problems that phpBB copes with, even if phpBB doesn't do a particularly great job. It'd be very complicated. That's no reason not to try of course, but I think it's premature to suggest switching to a custom developed forum until we actually have the beginnings of one in place to switch to.

I did actually suggest (in the mod folder) a set of new awards for next year's PHPDN Awards to reward things like "Best PHPDN Community Project", "Best Project Leader", "Best Project Developer", and so on. The thought process behind such awards was that there have been quite a few PHPDN projects talked about, like the PHPDN Store, the image search engine, etc, that haven't ever gone much farther than the discussion stage. Something to encourage them to get to the coding stage would be good.

Perhaps you should get something started on this forum idea ... you might win!

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:48 am
by Eran
That's no reason not to try of course, but I think it's premature to suggest switching to a custom developed forum until we actually have the beginnings of one in place to switch to.
Yeah, of course. Such a project would have to be mature enough to replace phpBB for devnet. I think though that with the knowledge and skill we have on the boards on development, security, performance and so forth it is very much achievable. In fact, many of us have side-projects that could integrate nicely with this effort (for example, Vlad's permission system and arborint's skeleton framework).
Perhaps you should get something started on this forum idea ... you might win!
nice motivation ;)

This thread is a start. If enough people get on-board, we could move forward. I don't mind being the catalyst for discussion, and of course pitching in on development.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:15 pm
by jackpf
Yeah...

I have actually had a go at starting it off. Just like...planning stuff out. Thinking about it, I agree onion2k's point...it will be monstrous!! phpBB has so many configuration options...moderation/admin tools etc...

I've been working on my own forum for ages - I guess I never realised I wrote so much code for it. If this ever were to get off the ground, it would need a fair few of us working on it...

Still, it'd be fun to try. And yeah, as pytrin says...we've probably got a fair bit of it coded already due to our own side projects and stuff.

:)

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:49 pm
by Eran
I actually wrote a couple of forum systems before. Nothing as extensive as phpBB, for sure, but the basics were there. It's really not that much work, and you don't really need the entire set of features phpBB offers - as long it can be easily modified / extended. phpBB has a lot of little used features.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 12:08 am
by matthijs
I don't doubt there's enough skill here to build a forum. But the challenge is you need a couple of people motivated and disciplined enough to keep it up. I've seen a couple of projects started now, and the enthusiasm is large at the beginning, but at some point a project needs a few people who lead, who manage everything, set deadlines and milestones, etc and who keep it up to actually do the hard work

Maybe a problem with a pure community project is that if a lot of people are involved but nobody "owns" the project, that there's also nobody who feels like it's "his" project, who feels responsible to do something every week. You can just come and go. One month you start on a small part of code for the project, next month you're overwhelmed with work and forget about it. From what I see around, almost any successful open source project does have one person who leads everything. And then once (and as long as) the project runs, it gets attractive for others to be involved.

Re: The Forum!!! (for want of a better subject...)

Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 3:13 am
by Benjamin
matthijs has hit the nail on the head. I've also noticed that community projects spend so much time debating how things should be done, that nothing ever gets done. I'm considering launching this project, but I want to verify that I have enough time to do it. I'm in the process of wrapping up a project I've been working on and will get back with everyone shortly.