Forum News

[unknown user]

It's obvious, Vanilla is a non-comfortable, eye-depressing excuse for a Forum engine, while phpBB, despite being a common choice, actually offers much more expandability and customization. So the only variant here is phpBB.

 

However, I protest against the removal of the comment section. It feels natural to discuss news as they appear. Indeed, forums have a wider range of possibilities but when it comes to News and Updates only, comments are much more efficient.

[unknown user]

I personally think that the PHPBB style forum looks much better than the vanilla one.

 

I'm not really too knowledgeable on forum software, but I've heard that vbulletin is apparently good, although I think you have to pay for it.

[unknown user]

Dark is good, light is bad...

 

To keep spam down, just get a couple moderators that can delete posts, and ban accounts. Works wonders on keeping down spambots. (I have experience as a moderator/admin on several forums if you need help with that aspect of the forums)

[unknown user]

Well, you could steal vB, but I don't recommend it...

[unknown user]

It's not the numbers that should count, but the quality of the few that you'd actually want to use.

[unknown user]

as far as I've heard WP-United integrates both accounts and cross posting for phpBB, why is that a problem?

[unknown user]

Zach, is the only problem in syncing current WP user DB with phpbb's user DB? This is not possible because both products md5-encrypt passwords, right? Apart from that everything is ok?

 

If this is the case, I once had a similar problem with other products and there are several ways to solve that:

- Easy and stupid way: sync users, generate random passwords, email them to users (together with instructions on how to change password).

- Hard, hackish and probably still stupid (but fun!) way: allow to sign in only via WP, remove sign in form from phpbb completely. Install a single sign in wp-phpbb bridge. Do the same for registration process. Sync users, generate random passwords for phpbb users. Now find the place where WP sign in happens and hack it: whenever somebody signs in via WP, you do have access to his non-encrypted password. At that moment you can take that password and replace phpbb user's random password with the real passwords. With time, as old users sign in WP, their phpbb user equivalents will be getting updated with normal passwords and the bridge will be functioning as intended. Also: you'll need to force "remember me" users to log out when this thing goes live so that everyone would need to re-login into WP.

 

Hope that helps!

[unknown user]

Also don't be mad at Ross. I can feel your disappointment, but really, it's a very common situation Customers tend to be random, unpredictable and illogical and I think it's our job to predict what might happen in future and get prepared to that

[unknown user]

I prefer PhpBB. It has a better layout and I would not care if I have to sign up again.

[unknown user]

Come on man, you're making it sound like you had the solution to all this the whole time. What you said is all true, but I also wanted the login and user information imported over. I was told at the time that it would not be a problem to do this with Wordpress logins, so I didn't see the forums as the highest priority. You'll remember I was pretty desperate to get the new site up asap since the old one kept getting hacked. I was actually quite surprised when I was told last week that this wasn't currently an option, since I was distinctly told otherwise (not by you however, I just checked the emails). My apologies if I misunderstood. The original plan (and still the ideal one) was to have everything crossover, something I don't think phpBB did. Anyway, I've been contacted by someone saying that BBPress will work for what we're trying to do. I think that's worth looking into.

[unknown user]

Mhmm. I think it's time to change my password for this site. I use my low-impact password (I have a few, depending on how critical it would be for it to be stolen), but I think i need to go even lower.

[unknown user]

I also agree with this. Darker forum schemes are much easier on the eyes, although lighter forum schemes can be okay as long as it's not blindingly bright.

[unknown user]

Surprising how often Freeman shouts IN HIS MIND...

 

Anyway, PHPBB, it's a design i'm far more used to. The other looks...terrible. Like a news feed, as you said.

[unknown user]

I agree, that first one looks strange. I'd prefer phBB, because its the standard for a reason.

 

As for account stuff, I personally could care less if I have to spend thirty seconds registering again - it's not very hard.

 

Hope this (and the Tunnel) keep progressing along

[unknown user]

I am with Ross on this. I've seen other authors doing the same thing and it works quite well. When a blog entry is posted (e.g. new FM episode), it gets duplicated to forum as a new thread and everyone can discuss it in that thread. In terms of functionality we don't lose anything. On the other hand by doing so we encapsulate all our discussions in one place - forum.

[unknown user]

J.C., no need to worry. In the method described above your password won't get stored in the un-encrypted form. It's just there is a place in the code where we have access to the un-encrypted password and we can use that - grab it, encrypt it in the way phpbb wants and then update phpbb_users.password (or whatever the field is called there). That said, the sign in process won't get less safe.

[unknown user]

You can't shoot things off with a flamethrower. Maybe a nail gun.

[unknown user]

I'm not sure I like the idea of no news comments, but I suppose the comments would be a little redundant with a forum as well.

[unknown user]

I hear you, I don't like very much the idea of hacking the sign in module in order to retrieve the password, to feed it to the encription module for phpbb. There could be some... ehm... unforeseen consequences. Just in case, I'm using my less-critical password now.

[unknown user]

can you shoot thing off with a gluon gun?