forum for WB

[Availor]

Maybe it is planned in the third version, but I think a native forum for WB is essential.
There are many small and neat forums and some do not require a database.

http://hot-things.net/?q=eforum Here is an example.

[Ruud]

Just found this:
http://securitydot.net/vuln/exploits/vulnerabilities/articles/16455/vuln.html

The hot-things webpages are dated jan 2006 (some months before the exploit was reported). Looks like it is not very much alive anymore.
On some sites the exploit is listed as fixed, but a fix with the same version and a link to a patch that is not available anymore doesn't give much confidence.

Ruud

[Availor]

I just gave an example of this small forum since it does not have databse. I'm sure there are lots of other forums around. My point is that there will be a built in forum in WB. I don't think it should be very complicated, but it will sure be useful.

I presume it's possible to just copy the files inside the template folder and call the index.php functions from within the code snippet. I am not sure if it is going to work but I will make some tests to see if it works out.

[pcwacht]

My point is that there will be a built in forum in WB.

You sure there will be?

I don't think it should be very complicated, but it will sure be useful.

Not very complicated - ie. very simple?
Try news with commenting, very basic, news item is post, post and comments will give thread.

Personally I think a cms is for content etc,
A forum is something else....


John

[Availor]

My point is that there will be a built in forum in WB.

You sure there will be?

I meant it to be said as a question, misspelled the sentence 

I don't think it should be very complicated, but it will sure be useful.

Not very complicated - ie. very simple?
Try news with commenting, very basic, news item is post, post and comments will give thread.

Personally I think a cms is for content etc,
A forum is something else....

John
[/quote]

I know it's possible to use comments, but still, why limit ourselves? If there's a forum there's an option for a portal-like websites and more possibilities. A forum is always nice to have.

It's like WYSIWYG editor. Some people still don't like it, but it's better to have this rather than not 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks a forum, as a module or as a builtin function will be a nice addon to the system.

[pcwacht]

Maybe not clear enough

cms is for telling people about stuff = content
forum is for people to talk about stuff = portal

forum : there are only a few good secure safe forums out there, written over heaps and heaps of time
Look at smf - phpbb - and some others

Only benefit of integrating a forum within wb is the unified userdatabase
Creating a NEW forum as module for WB is a huge task.
It is much easier to create a gallery or something like that, would take mere hours, maybe few days
Creating a solid forum would take months even

Look at these forumtopics:
http://www.websitebaker2.org/forum/index.php/topic,9702.0.html
http://www.websitebaker2.org/forum/index.php/topic,7537.0.html
to get you started on some kind of integration

The guestbook with commenting could allso be a rudimentary forum as well as the news

John

[Availor]

That's why I wanted to find a databaseless forum, or a simple message board.
The difference between guestbook and a forum is that you can have several categories in a forum. Users can start their own topics, rate them and reply to them. Moreover they can use PM function and so on...

[Stefek]

Hey Ava,
what about the VannilaForum?
I think it's allready implemented so far - isn't it?
I don't really know, because I would never think about to have a Forum running with WB.

But.. you know.. there are so many forum (os) out there.
Take a look at miniForum.

And some day I have seen a post about a bridge between phpBB and WB.
Use the search.

Best regards,
Stefek

[Availor]

phpBB bridge is hard (for me) to deal with.

About vanilla... I asked a friend of mine to insert it.... It doesn't work with Hebrew (RTL) very well so this failed. What I meant by "inline" forum is to be able to insert a forum without the need of going way into coding...

Like you add a WYSIWYG page...

Again, this is my personal opinion about having a forum. I think you'll agree anyway that it's better to have something you may pass on rather than no have it at all

[Ruud]

The solution is simple..

Tell everybody to use WB. Especially in other forums and blogs (pagerank > 7).
Eventually someone that knows PHP in such level that he/she can build a forum will join the community.
If he/she has a couple of months spare time, he/she starts building.
A few months later there will be a limited 0.1 version..
After a year of (free time) debugging there will be a WB forum v1.0

 
Ruud

[bupaje]

If you can't get what you want maybe you can use the Wrapper module and just create a minimal template for an external  forum instead. I had done this on my site with Gallery2 and ezboard forums (I don't use them anymore).

You can see how I did that to integrate BigFishGames into my site http://www.stormvisions.com/pages/games.php - I just removed the banner and modified their template to match my site better. I isn't a perfect solution but it does work. The old ezboard forum I used use to take a sec to load so I made the Wrapper page link to a simple redirection page first, that displayed animated "Loading Forums ..." message while it fetched the forum it so the user wouldn't stare at a blank page for 3-5 seconds.

[Availor]

Very nice website. I have been using a wrapper as well.

Ruud, I did not mean to create a forum from scratch don't think I'm that naive.
Look at what php-nuke have done and you'll see my point.
They are using phpBB forum, but the difference is when you install php-nuke you already have this forum with the installation on the same database so you don't need to install anyting else and you don't need to use a bridge. If there's already bridge for phpBB or smf or vanilla that's good, but only experts can use that. I never meant creating a whole new forum.

I asked a friend of mine to make a bridge for vanilla and after two weeks of work he said it can't be done with the RTL language and the coding I need...

I suggested a databaseless forum from the first place because it's simple - it has index.php which includes 4-5 other files in it.
I used the small forum from http://hot-things.net/. I copied all the files inside into my WB pages directory and copied the code from the index.php into my template which I called "forum" and created a blank page with it. This partially worked. If I could do it with no knowledge of php or programming then I'm sure more experienced coders could do better than me.

This post was made only as an idea, if someone wants to go on with it. I don't intend to argue about whether it's good or bad...

[Ruud]

Sorry Availor,

Reading my post this morning I noticed it was maybe a bit too cynical.

My point is, the small forums are never good enough and very often will disapear before it is fully functional.
The bigger forums are generating new versions all the time, it takes also a lot of time to keep up new versions (read:exploit patches) when you really want to integrate it in WB and keep up with the latest versions.

Php-nuke is a much bigger community (180.000 users), so there will automatically be more people that are building wrappers for things like forums.
The downside is that there will probably also be much more crappy modules built by "not the best" programmers.

Anyway, this post http://www.websitebaker2.org/forum/index.php/topic,7052.0.html has a complete module that installs a database driven forum (punBB) within WB. You will still have to do work to get it to look like the rest of your site, but you could give it a try.

The part in my previous post about spreading the WB word still stands. When the community grows, WB will get more functionality automatically.

Cheers,

Ruud

Ps. I really like your templates

[Availor]

Thanks for the complimet 

I agree about the WB community, but I suppose that depends on you and me in a matter. I'll throw in whatever I've got and you throw in whatever you've got.
WB should be promoted better but that depends on us I guess