Web forum software.

[the_eggwhite]

Alternate messageboard software...

Since it looks like the glitch in my current messageboard software is never going to get fixed (alas, Vanilla's great in most ways, but doesn't play well with sites where members need to be in multiple groups - and the plugin for it doesn't fix it). Since I can't bring myself to invest the time to create my own forum code (I could do it, but it'd take me time that I'd rather spend doing other stuff), I'm looking around for other free forum software to use. It needs to run happily on an IIS based server which can cope with asp or php happily, and has MySQL to hand - it can handle other stuff too, but I'd prefer to be able to hack around with it, and I can cope with those pretty well.

Either that, or I need to fix the multiroles extension for vanilla, and my PHP isn't really up to it unless I spend ages doing that too.

So far, the software I have on my (growing) shortlist is as follows:
MiniBB - http://www.minibb.net/
BBpress - http://bbpress.org/

Both of these would require some tweaking to get the kind of thing I'm after, with MiniBB looking slightly more promising interface-wise. I still like the Vanilla approach better, and think it works better for low-traffic boards, but it looks like it'd be pretty easy to make minibb behave in a pretty similar way. BBpress looks a lot easier to play with the visuals, though, and comes with built in antispam gubbins if I care to use it.

Whichever I use, I'll need to work on integrating it with my login system for the rest of the site as well...

This is mainly here as a note to myself, but I'm interested in comments about this from others if they've got knowledge or experience in this field!

Comments

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

That's pretty interesting. I want to put a message board on the work website but had no idea how to do it! I might have to experiment :)

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

That's very definately something to talk to your higher up techies about... even if it's just for their advice about what is or isn't running on your servers that you can use.

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

I know they run Perl and SQl, I have checked :)
No idea about anything else!

[themadone.livejournal.com]

[subliminal message]Learn Perl![/subliminal message]

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

[Exaggeration]Perl is a horror and should be burned![/exaggeration]

It's good at what it does, but a large amount of what it does is obfuscating how it works from people who don't already know how it works. Horrible, inconsistent nightmare of a scripting language.

I've tried learning it, and I found assembler easier to get results with.

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

It does break my head. But then my head is WEAK!
I suck at programming :)

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

If I take the time to do it properly, I'm actually fairly decent... and I still just can't grok perl.

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

*grin*
Then there is little hope for me!

[themadone.livejournal.com]

Strange, it makes perfect sense to me - but then I'm the kind of freak that soaks up computer languages like a dry sponge in a bucket full of water :)

Fundementally though, it's just a language for manipulating strings easily.

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

I have been trying :)
I don't have the access rights to install a perl thingy on my machine to try any out though! IT are dragging their heels about it!

[themadone.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm of the "code it from scratch" camp. Means you definitely get something that does what you want and doesn't have loads of extra pointless features that you'll never use. Case in point - the forums on the IFIS site. I suspect if I'd tried using an off-the-shelf implementation, I'd have had to have spent just as much time trying to get it to work with the authentication system and the archiving code.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Code it from scratch is what I'd like to do, but I just don't have the time. I've been saying "I'll code one up" for months and haven't managed to actually bring myself to do it. I've designed database structure and basic tables for it, and worked out what functionality I need it to have, but I've not managed to get myself to sit down and actually start coding.

So what I've been doing instead is looking for simple (basic features only) style forum software which has a good system for extensions and modification. Vanilla's great for that, but I've not been able to put up the time to learn how to fix the one problem it has. There's an extension that's meant to fix it, but it doesn't work properly, and nobody seems to want to fix it for me.

Also, an off the shelf system means I have other people looking out for problems and vulnerabilities and telling me when they find them... which is an improvement on my only finding out about them if somebody uses them.

Ideal world, I'd build my own. Unfortunately, not practical right now.