forums + portal for {lang}.centos.org sites
 

Karanbir Singh wrote:

Hi,

Earlier in the evening today Ralph, Fabian and I had a chat about the
present state of the language subsites. This email sort of summarises
the main issue ( s/w ).


We seem to have run into a slight technical hitch with punbb/fluxbb.
They dont support LDAP as a backend. And we had decided a few months
back that all new rollouts must have ldap backend so we can rollin
CentOS-DS / openldap based backend.


So we need to look at alternatives, and since the primary focus of these
international sites is going be forums : Here is a shortlist ( if there
is anything else that people are aware of, please add to this list )

- phpBB
- SMF
- Fudforum
- phorum
- fluxbb



Purely from a users (and moderators) PoV, SMF would get my vote IF it
meets the requirements outlined below. I believe it meets the key
usability features that our users are looking for from the forums
software as outlined in this feedback thread:


http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14921&forum=18


Requirements:
- Must be able to scale ( couple of hundred thousand msgs )
- Must be able to handle ldap auth ( if it cant, whats involved in
writing the ldap-auth portion )
- Must address the specific requirements raised by the present
www.centos.org forum users ( Can you please fill this section in ? )

- Must support all languages we need ( pure utf8 support would be good )
- Secure
- Skin'able

Nice to have:
- Capable of running multiple instances from a single deployment
- responsive community :D



<snip>

If there's anything I can do to help move this process forward, then I'm
a willing volunteer - I'm just not sure where I could help out.



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Dear Karan.

I can still suggest Joomla/Fireboard which is customizable and scales
well. Joomla is also LDAP capable and offers some nice features like
FAQs, News Headings and so on. Fireboard currently works in
compatibility mode on Joomla 1.5 but should do it's job either. I am
personally well known with Joomla Templates.

If you are just looking for a forum, phpBB is very nice. There are
also some Board/Portal attempts available for phpBB like Board3.

Fudforum does not scale so well and is AFAIK text based.

Simplemachines is also nice and there is a portal software available
for it, too.

Best Regards
Marcus
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Marcus Moeller wrote:
> Dear Karan.
>
> I can still suggest Joomla/Fireboard which is customizable and scales
> well. Joomla is also LDAP capable and offers some nice features like
> FAQs, News Headings and so on. Fireboard currently works in
> compatibility mode on Joomla 1.5 but should do it's job either. I am
> personally well known with Joomla Templates.
>
> Simplemachines is also nice and there is a portal software available
> for it, too.

I really think that we are "just" looking for a forum software at the
moment - not a portal.

Ralph
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Ralph Angenendt napsal(a):
>
> I really think that we are "just" looking for a forum software at the
> moment - not a portal.
>

http://www.forummatrix.org/
DH
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David Hrbáč wrote:

Ralph Angenendt napsal(a):

I really think that we are "just" looking for a forum software at the
moment - not a portal.



http://www.forummatrix.org/
Yeah i looked at that site yesterday during the conf call but for
example it doesn't list all the features we want .. For example it
doesn't say if a forum software supports ldap auth so you have to visit
all of them to discover it yourself ...


--
-
Fabian Arrotin <fabian.arrotin@arrfab.net>
"Internet network currently down, TCP/IP packets delivered now by
UPS/Fedex ..."




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Ralph Angenendt wrote:

Marcus Moeller wrote:

Dear Karan.

I can still suggest Joomla/Fireboard which is customizable and scales
well. Joomla is also LDAP capable and offers some nice features like
FAQs, News Headings and so on. Fireboard currently works in
compatibility mode on Joomla 1.5 but should do it's job either. I am
personally well known with Joomla Templates.

Simplemachines is also nice and there is a portal software available
for it, too.


I really think that we are "just" looking for a forum software at the
moment - not a portal.


Ralph


Right, but on the other hand, if a portal (that conforms to our
standards) can be added easily on top, why not ?
That's what we did (but i've never said that it was the best solution
...) for the fr.centos.org .. punbb for the forum and puntal (that is a
small portal on top of punbb) ...



--
-
Fabian Arrotin <fabian.arrotin@arrfab.net>
"Internet network currently down, TCP/IP packets delivered now by
UPS/Fedex ..."




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Good Evening.

>> I really think that we are "just" looking for a forum software at the
>> moment - not a portal.
>> Ralph
>
> Right, but on the other hand, if a portal (that conforms to our standards)
> can be added easily on top, why not ?
> That's what we did (but i've never said that it was the best solution ...)
> for the fr.centos.org .. punbb for the forum and puntal (that is a small
> portal on top of punbb) ...

I think we are definitely in need of a Portal software unless we won't
use the wiki for that. SMF can be extended with:

http://www.tinyportal.net/

which may also be an good option.

Best Regards
Marcus
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Karanbir Singh wrote:


So we need to look at alternatives, and since the primary focus of these
international sites is going be forums : Here is a shortlist ( if there
is anything else that people are aware of, please add to this list )

- phpBB
- SMF
- Fudforum
- phorum
- fluxbb



Would someone take a quick look at the SMF license to see if it meets
the project's minimum requirements or not:


http://www.simplemachines.org/about/license.php

At least then we can either tick a box or eliminate one possibility
taking a little step closer to a solution :)



Requirements:

<snip>
- Must address the specific requirements raised by the present
www.centos.org forum users ( Can you please fill this section in ? )


This is a task I can do. Where/how would you like the information?

Once we have a slightly shorter shortlist, I'm happy to go off and test
some existing forum sites (using said shortlist) for end-user usability
in this regard too.


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Ned Slider wrote:
> Would someone take a quick look at the SMF license to see if it meets
> the project's minimum requirements or not:
>
> http://www.simplemachines.org/about/license.php

"Any Distribution of a Modified Package or derivative requires express
written consent from Simple Machines LLC" turns me off a bit.
<http://cmsreport.com/node/1777> has some more information about that.

"Any Distribution of this Package, whether as a Modified Package or not,
requires express written consent from Simple Machines LLC." doesn't
really sound better.

> At least then we can either tick a box or eliminate one possibility
> taking a little step closer to a solution :)

I don't like the license :)

>> Requirements:
> <snip>
>> - Must address the specific requirements raised by the present
>> www.centos.org forum users ( Can you please fill this section in ? )
>
> This is a task I can do. Where/how would you like the information?

Why not here in this thread first?

> Once we have a slightly shorter shortlist, I'm happy to go off and test
> some existing forum sites (using said shortlist) for end-user usability
> in this regard too.

Cool. Thank you.

Cheers,

Ralph
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Ralph Angenendt wrote:

Ned Slider wrote:
Would someone take a quick look at the SMF license to see if it meets
the project's minimum requirements or not:


http://www.simplemachines.org/about/license.php


"Any Distribution of a Modified Package or derivative requires express
written consent from Simple Machines LLC" turns me off a bit.
<http://cmsreport.com/node/1777> has some more information about that.

"Any Distribution of this Package, whether as a Modified Package or not,
requires express written consent from Simple Machines LLC." doesn't
really sound better.

At least then we can either tick a box or eliminate one possibility
taking a little step closer to a solution :)


I don't like the license :)



I don't like it either - that's why I raised it. Is it a show stopper
discounting SMF from further consideration or is it something we can
still work with (the license) and keep it on the shortlist? No point
doing a lot of ldap integration work or whatever to only find out down
the line the license isn't tolerable.



Requirements:

<snip>
- Must address the specific requirements raised by the present
www.centos.org forum users ( Can you please fill this section in ? )

This is a task I can do. Where/how would you like the information?


Why not here in this thread first?



Here is a summary of issues raised by forum users so far:

*Major*
- Persistent logins (users currently have to re-login every 24h)
- The remember me, keep cookie for 1 year option looks broken (relates
to point 1 above and is presumably a xoops issue)

- View/jump to first unread post within thread feature
- Remember read/unread posts across multiple PCs/logins (per user, not
per machine)

- Ability for users to change/edit their registered email address.
- Better management of subscribed threads


*Minor*
- Thank User button/feature
- Quick links feature

I'm guessing this list is fairly final as no new issues have been raised
for quite a while now in the forum feedback thread. For reference, the
thread may be found here:


http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14921&forum=18

My understanding is that most all modern forums software caters to these
requirements - users are just asking for the features/usability they are
accustomed to elsewhere, nothing out of the ordinary, but that is
missing from the current xoops solution.


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