Re: [libreoffice-website] choice of forum software

Hi Christian,

Am 30.11.2011 00:19, schrieb Christian Lohmaier:
> I also would consider it a waste of efforts. Rather than developing
> our own forum, the time is better spent fixing existing forums (when
> they cannot be tweaked to our liking).

+1
At the moment I consider to loosen my postgresql requirement a bit
because this also may include vanillaforums in the decision process.
vanillaforum has nice structured source code and uses a very sane way of
managing plugins, just found that out, so should be easy to fix/extend.

> Where some work is needed is the extensions and templates repository,
> but that is not using django, but is plone based. But if you like
> python, you might give Andreas Mantke a hand with maintaining the
> extensions/templates-repository.

I like python, but do I have serious problems to get into everything
that is related to zope/plone, so it is unlikely that im of help there.

> The search in JForum seems fixed (works for me at least), but overall
> the search options are a little limited compared to the advanced
> search in phpBB (you can only select all forums, or one specific
> forum, the UI doesn't allow to select a subset of the forums at once.
> Not sure whether it is a pure UI limit or a functional limitation).

I have a different view: I think both the default search in JForum and
phpbb are way to complicated. I shouldn't be necessary to follow a link
to get to the search form. The search field should be large or in an
easily recognizable position (see the new wiki theme). Otherwise users
won't use the search because to it's to much involved. I know that this
is mostly a matter of theming and that advanced search should also be
available, but it should not be the default.

> But as I never used the OOo-forums, I don't know how important it is
> to search across multiple different forums. Probably more a sign of
> loose moderation/topics not being moved to the appropriate forums)
> phpBB has the administration overhead, at least on initial setup, but
> I don't know how relevant it is, for JForum no additional
> modules/hacks/whatever they are called are installed, so it is easy to
> setup and upgrade.

Hm.... is there an easy way to extend the functionality of jforum? I
haven't found any documentation on the website regarding anything more
than basic installation.


> So functionality wise JForum supports Karma and Avatars, on phpBB
> those are not yet enabled/available. Question is whether we need
> those.

Karma: Only time will tell
Avatars: I possible: gravatar

> What is not easily changed by the theme is the "niceness" of the
> links. phpBB uses query-parameters
> http://forum-test.libreoffice.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4 , while on
> JForum they are "nice" (although not human-gets-info-from-the-url
> nice) http://forum-test.libreoffice.org:8080/jforum-2.3.2/posts/list/6.page

The phpbb URLs do look so ancient. Not something I like.
Btw, is there a reason that its named 6.page?


> Unless someone reports bugs in JForum, I don't see a reason to look
> for another alternative, i.e. JForum would be my "contender"/entry for
> the forum-decision. (So far between phpBB and JForum).

I have not yet looked at it in great detail, so may I ask some questions:
- Is it easy to adapt the theme?
- Is it easy to do some code fixes/expansions?
- Is there any documentation available?
- Is there a plugin/mod/whatever api?
- OpenID would be nice to have, any idea how hard it would be to get a
connector?

> While other forum-software has been mentioned, I didn't have the
> impression that those mentions were "pleeeease use this one, it is
> great", but more like "If you're still looking for alternatives, give
> it a try, I was using it (as a user) at some point of time". But I
> might have got things wrong.

I think we have no strong advocates of a specific forum software and
there is no one that fits perfectly.

> Let's see in today's BOD call (16:00 UTC,
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Meetings#Next_Call )
> whether we need more entries or whether we let people choose between
> the two existing ones.

Looking forward to hear you tomorrow.

Cu,
Alex

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