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Re: New forum software
trenc wrote:
Textile is great markup.
Textpattern use it by default. Most of us use it in our websites. So why the heck we should indroduce another markup here in a Textpattern forum?
+1
Yiannis
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Re: New forum software
Textile is great for the convenience of established Txp users. It is an additional hurdle for new or potential Txp users trying to find info here. Think branding. Offering a choice would be nice, but if we have to choose one or the other I am willing to forego Textile here to make the forum friendlier to newcomers.
Code is topiary
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Re: New forum software
If you use Textpattern, you’ll probably want to learn using Textile anyway. Might as well use Textile on the forum as well to get some extra practice. And some people do not know BBcode yet, so if this forum would use BBcode instead, those people would have to learn BBcode for the forum and Textile for Textpattern.
+1 for keeping textile for markup in forum posts (if that wasn’t obvious already)
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Re: New forum software
Textile is nice and we use it already, so I would agree that leaving the Textile forum option would be good. However, this forum needs to be updated and Phorum is a very good choice as Bert said.
If you can’t search in a thread, your forum software needs to be changed. Adding a Google custom search would to me be a poor choice.
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Re: New forum software
candyman, Here’s a PunBB toolbar, it works with BBCode, someone with access to this forum’s code can modify it to work with Textile.
ruud, you’re assuming that a prospective Textpattern user’s first experience with a forum is here, or for that matter with PunBB itself. I believe that whoever ventures towards Textpattern has already been around the Net, they’re probably maintaining a static site or are running another CMS or Blog and come here to evaluate Textpattern.
If Textile is a must have, another option is Vanilla, it has an addon. Though Vanilla is a bit different from a traditional forum, it does work well and has a loyal following.
Whatever is done, the current situation is not very conducive to attract and keep a vibrant community. A forum is the heart of an Open Source project, it serves as a place where people initially come for help and later stay to chat with like minded individuals.
Those that work on Textpattern, I imagine want their releases met with enthusiasm, yet any attempt to improve things is met with no enthusiasm at all. Either you keep a low profile and toil away in anonymity or you grow the community, you can’t have it both ways.
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Re: New forum software
hcgtv wrote:
ruud, you’re assuming that a prospective Textpattern user’s first experience with a forum is here, or for that matter with PunBB itself. I believe that whoever ventures towards Textpattern has already been around the Net, they’re probably maintaining a static site or are running another CMS or Blog and come here to evaluate Textpattern.
No, I’m not assuming anything. Those that advocate BBcode are perhaps assuming that people first visiting here already have BBcode experience from another forum. That simply isn’t true for all visitors. No matter what forum you visit, you have to adjust to how that new forum works: finding out what the relevant subforum is for your particular question, asking the question the right way, posting the question using the appropriate markup. Learning Textile is only one part of learning to use this forum and I dare say it isn’t the hardest part.
What are the features we’re looking for in a new forum? Things that we really need that the current forum doesn’t have. Not just from a user perspective, but from a moderator perspective as well.
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Re: New forum software
ruud wrote:
What are the features we’re looking for in a new forum? Things that we really need that the current forum doesn’t have. Not just from a user perspective, but from a moderator perspective as well.
The post I made on Phorum, highlighted what I thought would be welcome features.
As a user, I’d like to be able to search for things, and find them. Be able to upload a screenshot or a file to a post without having to take the extra step of uploading to a service or my webspace. A nice toolbar that helps me in making my post would be most welcome, I know BBCode and Textile but I’d rather highlight text and press a button.
From a moderator point of view, bot signups are a huge pain, as is spam. Being able to split or merge threads so as to keep them on topic is much needed, FluxBB 1.4 has this capability, though a bit rudimentary. Sub forums would allow better division of support topics, a hack Mary made here. Last but not least, a templating system so core files don’t need to be modified, so updates are easier.
I had hoped PunBB 1.3, with it’s extension system, would of gotten us to the promised land, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.
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Re: New forum software
An informal review of this thread so far. Some key comments:
Els wrote:
Sorry, but we don’t need to be convinced that change is needed, we need an inventory of
- the features we need
- the software that can provide them
- practical consequences of a software change.
wet wrote:
We won’t need a decision unless we have a valid reason and definite (wo)manpower to migrate. If on-site search is the only relevant concern, I’ll add a Google search box and we are set. … the mandatory questions are “Why?” and “Who?”
Main issues raised:
- search
- appearance
- Textile
- difficulty of maintenance/moderation
I’d say there is consensus that improving search is important. The next two issues have not produced a clear opinion trend, unless it is to keep Textile. Some other mentions such as search-in-thread, sub-threading. The last issue has to be weight against the difficulty of a move.
No (visible) progress on “who”.
Code is topiary
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Re: New forum software
My own (and thus the most “official” available) stance follows:
- Textile will stay. Personally, I’m using Textile in Textpattern, this forum, my Drupal sites, Redmine, Basecamp, and basically everywhere else where it is available without causing havoc. WYSAWYG editors aren’t even offered on the WordPress fora (they have quickbuttons), so there must be huge crowds of noobs who can post without them.Those who cannot manage to learn Textile are not our primary target audience, and I don’t think that requiring Textile for the forum is a bullet point against choosing Textpattern CMS for prospects in the first place, for asking a question and starting a thread does not require any markup.
- PunBB’s flaws as they are valid for this forum have been defined:
- search (global and intra-thread)
- moderation
- markup flexibility, themability
- “Cool URIs don’t change” is a conditio sine qua non. 301 redirects are acceptable.
- Until noone steps up to actually do the work, this discussion has already rendered all necessary results.
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Re: New forum software
wet wrote:
Until noone steps up to actually do the work, this discussion has already rendered all necessary results.
In this post Bert said:
For the Textpattern forum, I would advise us to contract the Phorum team for the conversion. We can take up a collection, call it a forum ransom, I’d be willing to chip in $100 from my PayPal account. The Phorum team can convert inter-forum links contained within messages, external links are another matter, if needed, this could also be looked at. Any other needs we may have in the conversion process, like Textile to BBCode conversion or a Textile parser module, can also be discussed.
I’m willing to work on the template, maybe Stuart can lend some guidance after he’s finished up with the new look of the home page. I can also supervise the conversion process, make sure it works to our specifications. Whatever else you see needs done, that I haven’t covered, feel free to ask.
Would Textpattern proper be willing to dedicate some funds to a new forum?
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#71 2009-10-05 01:54:19
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: New forum software
Background information…
- Yes, the forum was modded to use MySQL FULLTEXT. The PunBB search system caused a massive table that had to be backed up (regenerating was ridiculous).
- You have to take into consideration all the existing posts that utilize Textile.
- When I looked at using Phorum, I discovered that all topic and post urls would change, with no conceivable, reasonable way to have old urls redirect to the new. This is the drawback for swapping to this system.
- Vanilla is far too vanilla. The amount of extensions we would need and have to write ourselves just to replicate our existing functionality would be silly. I didn’t particularly like writing even a couple “simple” extensions for it.
There is one far simpler possibility, which I’ve brought up before:
- Take this forum as it is, disable registration/login, and archive it at a different URL. Use the Announcement feature to make folks aware of what the heck they’re looking at, and where the new forum is. Make a simple HTACCESS redirect for PunBB-looking forum/topic/post urls so Google still works and folks can find old stuff.
- Install Phorum, have the users automatically transferred, and start over fresh. Important stickys can be copied over manually.
There’d be some minimal swapover “pain” for a bit, but it’s a possibility that could happen quickly, easily, and cheaply.
If anyone has any specific questions for me I can answer them, but I’ll otherwise step away from this discussion now and let you folks hash it out.
Last edited by Mary (2009-10-05 01:54:45)
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Re: New forum software
Another +1 for Tabula Rasa becoming the default style (of course I’m a bit biased :) ). As mentioned when I first worked on it it’s more legible and adheres closer to Txp branding. The purpose of making the style was not just to pretty it up, but thoughtfully design the forum so that its visual appearance reflected the high quality of discourse that I was happy to be a part of.
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