[Mageia-dev] News about the forum

Mon Oct 4 00:31:48 CEST 2010

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 :) !
+