[Mageia-dev] News about the forum

[rom1dep]

2010/10/4 Maât <maat-ml at vilarem.net>:
> Hi all,
>
> After many opinions and suggestions exchanges, mails and thought we have
> started to work on forum thing.
>
> Considering our hope to grow we started to analyse the board engines
> with a few axis of needs :
>
> Work input data :
> ----
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software_%28PHP%29
> http://www.big-boards.com/
> http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+FluxBB+FUDforum+Invision-Power-Board+MyBB+Phorum+phpBB+punBB+SMF+vBulletin
>
> (In this last link boards versions are not perfectly up-to date :-( )
>
> (and secunia resports about security alerts these last years)
>
> Axes :
> ----
>
> 1) Ability to hold under heavy loads and store many posts
>
> => phpBB3, vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, MesDiscussions.net which
> are the most represented on big boards
>
> 2) Moderation features
>
> => vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2, MyBB
>
> 3) User Features
>
> => vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2,
> MyBB, FudForum
>
> 4) Security
>
> => phpBB3, FudForum, vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2...
>
> (phpBB2 was not even considered as an option from the beginning)
> (MyBB was not very good)
>
> 5) Look and ergonomy
>
> => vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, phpBB3, Simple Machines Forum 2,
> MyBB...
>
> 5) Opensource (GPL or AGPL)
>
> => phpBB3, FudForum, MyBB (GPLv3 \o/), punBB, phorum...
>
>
>
> Method and results :
> ----
>
> We excluded proprietary software (wether free or not)...
>
> (Of course when it comes to usability and features vBulletin and
> Invision Power Board are far ahead... the goal was to find something
> hopefully able to compete with them) :
>
> So exit: vBulletin, Invision Power Board 2, Simple Machines Forum 2,
> MesDiscussions.net...
>
> Then we excluded forums with utf8 know issues like punBB...
>
> Then we excluded forums with too well known security issues discovered
> theses last years :
>
> So exit: MyBB (Sad for french people but that's life) and phorum...
> http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4144/?task=statistics
> http://secunia.com/advisories/product/4479/?task=statistics
>
> for Fudforum there were not much issues but one of them allowed system
> access... we saved it because of people enthusiasm on the lists :)
>
> Then we Excluded forums with bad organization of
> administration/moderation control panels and/or missing moderation features:
>
> So exit: fudforum (which also would have been painful to relook) and
> FluxBB also.
>
> Nota: Fud has got the very cool mailing list bridge that we should set
> up rather as soon as possible on the official board (but as already said
> this feature still needs to be thought about, discussed by people and
> heavily tested to avoid backfires... considering the current mailing
> lists trafic and the obvious lack of love of some packagers for forums
> this is not something to underestimate)
>
>
>
> => The survivor is phpBB3 which is n°1 in big-boards.com and yet is far
> from perfect imho. It will need some tweaking (that others would have
> needed also : mainly about troll management, and also support
> enhancements for example to mark support topics as [solved]) to match
> more closely our needs...
>
> So we started to work on phpBB3 with ash (thanks to ennael personal
> funding)...
>
> One cool thing is that phpBB3 is published also through git so we are
> able to track upstream changes and merge them quickly into our running
> version without breaking local patches and enhancements. (The upgrade
> via this method has been successfully tested a few hours ago)
>
> At this precise minute we have a fresh new (skinned) up-to-date phpBB3
> running that still needs a few adds (language packs for example).
>
> Hope we'll be soon able to push DNS records so that everybody can get in
> and give us feedback and improvement proposals.
>
> Stay tuned,
> Maât (a little bit tired... sorry my english is probably uglier than usual)
>
>
>

Nice, thanks for the good job :) !