Forum Test

[Kemp]

In theory yes, but honestly how many people who can't be bothered registering an account actually stick around beyond their first question? I can think of maybe two people in the whole time I've been here who have ever guest posted and then registered an account and stayed active. There's far more who register an account beforehand even if they only end up asking one or two questions.

[Candy]

I know of quite a bunch, at least some 6 or so. Some keep posting under guest, some unregistered (and then became guest) etc.

[Kemp]

Hmm... I honestly can't think of that many (not trying to push my point, just surprised I managed to not notice them). I agree with you to an extent though, disabling guest posting or using email verification wouldn't be a problem (the former meaning a quick signup is required, the latter meaning signup is a bit longer but guest posting can still be used for quick posts). Doing both may turn people away. I'm torn. On the one hand I would prefer easy access for everyone, on the other hand I do think people should bother taking a few seconds registering if they want us to spend time helping them Either way, it's not up to me and I don't really feel strongly enough about it for any decision on this matter to make me strongly object. Over to you guys...

[AGI1122]

I know of quite a bunch, at least some 6 or so. Some keep posting under guest, some unregistered (and then became guest) etc.

The thing is, those 6 can just register. It's not like we are turning them away or something. Plus if they have fear of "email addresses getting out when registering" they don't have to worry, the email address is hidden from everyone except admins, well unless they want their email address public they can choose to make it public.

[Neo]

Is there some reason in particular why we are not using SMF (or some other ready to use forum software)?
It really is quite good now. And creating one seems like re-inventing the wheel.
Just my 2 cents.

[Kemp]

Well that's been covered in detail (portions of both the first and second pages I believe).

[Neo]

Yeah realized there was more than 1 page after I posted.
Anyway SMF still sounds like a better alternative.

Being able to delete a whole thread, or a selection of postings, with just 2-3 clicks is a great help to the mods.

It should also be optionally possible to delete the author's account together with the thread / post, to weed out the one-shot spamguests

IIRC SMF allows you to do that.

[AGI1122]

Is there some reason in particular why we are not using SMF (or some other ready to use forum software)?
It really is quite good now. And creating one seems like re-inventing the wheel.
Just my 2 cents.

If you mean why mega-tokyo isn't using it instead of YaBBSE. The reason is because the php version on this site it too old to run it. And no the problem is not that SMF has a strict requirement... it's that this site is using an ancient version of php.

[df]

actually i'm on php 4.4.2 now but still mysql 3

[AGI1122]

Ah so they finally upgraded it. Suprised they didn't move to php 5 though. ::)

[Neo]

Going through the SMF requirements. I think you may be able to use SMF.
So if this is possible will you be upgrading the MT forum?

[AGI1122]

Going through the SMF requirements. I think you may be able to use SMF.
So if this is possible will you be upgrading the MT forum?

That depends on the version of mysql he has. If it's older than 3.23.4 it won't work.

MT most likely won't be upgraded if it's all moving over. But then again, if df plans to keep hosting the AGI/SCI side of things then maybe some time in the future there might be an upgrade.

[srg_13]

I tried SMF on mysql 3 a while ago (actually about a year or two ago), and as far as I recall, it worked fine. It is really a great package, and it has a classic theme that loks mostly like this one... So we could keep the look of the board the same (or at least similar). It's really worth the upgrade though.

You should try it out in another folder, and see if you like it.

-Stephen

[Solar]

Yes there are other forum software packages that are quite able, no, neither MT nor osdever.net are going to use them. See beginning of this thread.

Yes, MediaWiki is great and driving Wikipedia, no, the OSFAQ is not going to use it. See "Working on the OS FAQ", page 7 ff. IIRC.

::)

[Neo]

For the curious, a couple of reasons we decided to make a homebrewed forum:
- really bad experiences with phpBB
- don't want to deal with the bloat of vB (anyone else poked through it? it's amazing...)
- we could find no pre-existing forum that was easily integrated with a website; not without incredible understanding of it's internals, something hard to get since all (at least most) forums lack any documentation outside of semi-cryptic code comments
- various strategic reasons related to our jobs that let us pay bills and keep ourselves from becoming anorexic

Are you referring to this?
Actually you could use some CMS (e.g. drupal) and try integrating it (or will that be developed too?)

Anyway are others allowed to join in on the forum development process?