POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

What forum software would be your most preferred option as an upgrade to the current one?

Just upgrade to the latest phpBB with a mobile compatible theme
17
63%
Switch to myBB
0
No votes
Switch to an CMS integrated forum like Kuena
0
No votes
Upgrade to Discourse
3
11%
Upgrade to NodeBB
1
4%
Upgrade to Flarum
3
11%
Upgrade to Vanilla forums
0
No votes
Switch to some Reddit like system (please explain below)
2
7%
Switch to some Twitter like system (please explain below)
0
No votes
Switch to a social network site with forum like functionality (please explain below)
0
No votes
Something else (please explain below)
1
4%
 
Total votes : 27

Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 17 Feb 2018, 19:30

That is only part of the issue (the smaller one), the bigger is that it would be really beneficial to move to another server (as the current on is kindly shared by Ghoulsblade & Hagish who are not really that active in or interested in maintaining this community forum). Thus upgrading is quite a non-trivial matter that has to be coordinated between multiple people and last but not least, there is a >5GB database & old attachments that I am dreading to run through any kind of update process.

In addition to that, I am personally of the opinion that if we go through all that effort we might as well transition to a more modern forum software.

Edit: what I am implying is that we might rather open a second new forum and slowly transition to it by switching certain old sub-forums to read-only as time progresses. That would be far be the safest "upgrade" path, but of course this would destroy all continuity with in the end an old read-only forum left. I am just thinking out loud here, but to me this seems to be a flawed but most pragmatic option right now.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby GunChleoc » 17 Feb 2018, 21:44

I'd create a copy on the new server first to test the upgrade path before going ahead. Of course, then you'll have to do it all again, because people will have posted in the meantime. Yes, there are more enjoyable things to spend your weekend with...
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 21 Feb 2018, 14:14

Quick mock-up of a NodeBB forum here: https://nodebb.freegamedev.net/

Feel free to register and play around with it, but I will wipe all user accounts in the near future as I plan to switch to a different login system (maybe preserving the user accounts from this forum).

There are plenty of cool plugins for NodeBB, so feel free to suggest some.

Edit: no decision on the forum system yet... this is just a test and suggestion from my side.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 23 Feb 2018, 17:30

No comments?

Could the above work for the people that voted to stick with phpbb?
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Sauer2 » 23 Feb 2018, 18:44

Probably, it didn't look too bad. But it didn't look or feel like an upgrade either.

And judging from the monthly npm fuckups and mongo dependency it probably isn't an upgrade in terms of administration. Well, the stake holder is mostly you.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Lyberta » 23 Feb 2018, 19:29

Probably a bit too white theme.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby themightyglider » 23 Feb 2018, 22:39

I like this one. It has a bit more modern look and feel but still seems to be very clear.

I saw you added a section for news feeds and community blogs. What is the intention of this?
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby charlie » 23 Feb 2018, 23:50

Sorry Julius, I had a brief poke around and it definitely looks like it has potential. Not had a chance to make notes or provide more detailed feedback.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 24 Feb 2018, 05:08

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:And judging from the monthly npm fuckups and mongo dependency it probably isn't an upgrade in terms of administration. Well, the stake holder is mostly you.


I am running it through Docker and using only Redis as the database, so that should hopefully mostly mitigate that.

Lyberta {l Wrote}:Probably a bit too white theme.

It is possible to make user selectable themes, and there is a dark/night mode build into this one (but somehow it isn't working right now).

themightyglider {l Wrote}:I saw you added a section for news feeds and community blogs. What is the intention of this?

As described in the ideas thread the idea is to unify various functions in the forum, such as having a bot post the planet feed into the forums and some sort of microblogging for users (mastodon, movim etc.)... but this is right now the main reason why I am not super happy with NodeBB... the only available RSS feed plugin has an external dependency on some Yahoo API and also the other ways of integrating are not nearly as good as with Discourse.

Also not so happy about the state of the LDAP or other user integration tools in NodeBB, so I guess I will also do a Discourse test installation after all. But it will take some time as I first need to fix my Ubuntu Laptop which somehow broke the UEFI boot yesterday :( I guess time to try that Solus Linux I was eying for some time anyways... (Edit: Done, Solus Linux is cool :) )
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 01 Mar 2018, 07:28

This is an example of what Discourse could look like in a more traditional forum like configuration:
https://forum.manjaro.org/
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Lyberta » 01 Mar 2018, 19:41

Deleted.
Last edited by Lyberta on 01 Oct 2021, 03:47, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 01 Mar 2018, 20:19

This is getting a bit off-topic but isn't there a way to white-list javascript from certain domains? I do understand blocking javascript from random web-pages makes certain sense (although I personally find it a bit extreme), but surly a website that is known/expected to only distribute FOSS javascript code to your browser shouln't be a problem? Or am I missing something?
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Magellan » 02 Mar 2018, 00:10

Julius {l Wrote}:This is getting a bit off-topic but isn't there a way to white-list javascript from certain domains? I do understand blocking javascript from random web-pages makes certain sense (although I personally find it a bit extreme), but surly a website that is known/expected to only distribute FOSS javascript code to your browser shouln't be a problem? Or am I missing something?


I am using NoScript in Firefox, and after whitelisting the Manjaro domain, it displays just fine. I don't see any scripts trying to load from any other domains on that site (no Google analytics, etc.), so I trust them.

The Manjaro forum is actually quite decent looking, by the way. It is certainly different from the way this forum looks now, but at least it seems well-organized.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Lyberta » 02 Mar 2018, 21:55

Deleted.
Last edited by Lyberta on 01 Oct 2021, 03:47, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Sauer2 » 04 Mar 2018, 01:11

@Julius: Is it possible to have expiration dates for topics in one of the options? For example, if you create a topic, the default would be - say - 2 months after the last post. After that time it gets deleted.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 04 Mar 2018, 06:41

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:@Julius: Is it possible to have expiration dates for topics in one of the options? For example, if you create a topic, the default would be - say - 2 months after the last post. After that time it gets deleted.


Hmm, I know that Discourse can lock topics after a certain time, and nodeBB seems to have some (old/incompatible?) plugins for locking old topics as well. Auto-delete I have never seen, but I guess that would not be very complicated to write as a plugin. Any particular reason you think this would be a must-have feature?

P.S.: On the topic of Discourse: I seems that it allows multi-host forums, thus with relatively little extra resources needed (?) it can run multiple forum instances. This would allow us to truly host project forums, which on the one hand could be nice for some larger projects, but it would also fragment the community further...
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Sauer2 » 05 Mar 2018, 22:58

Julius {l Wrote}:Any particular reason you think this would be a must-have feature?

No. Would have nice to have, though, so you don't trip over old, no longer relevant topics when searching. Also that would allow for posting more images as the old ones get deleted, I guess.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby oln » 30 Mar 2018, 15:22

Lyberta {l Wrote}:
Julius {l Wrote}:This is an example of what Discourse could look like in a more traditional forum like configuration:
https://forum.manjaro.org/


Blank page with JavaScript disabled.


Yeah discourse seems to require javascript to work.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 20 Apr 2018, 20:41

Sorry for the lack of updates on this. I have been revising my server infrastructure and went back to testing php based forums. Flarum is actually really nice and very lightweight on the server. Right now it is more or less a Discourse clone by the looks, but it seems like additional view options are planned that make it look more like a traditional forum (and it supports bbcode). It also has an import script for phpBB, but our ancient forum database probably needs significant manual cleaning before I would trust such a script.

That said, maybe an updated phpBB isn't the worst option after all, especially as it would allow some interesting XMPP integration.

However I will be away from my home PC in May and most of June, so this update will be postponed at least until then.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 15 May 2018, 11:50

Julius {l Wrote}:Right now it is more or less a Discourse clone by the looks, but it seems like additional view options are planned that make it look more like a traditional forum (and it supports bbcode).


Here are some screenshots from the classic-forum view for Flarum:
https://discuss.flarum.org/d/9135-crowd ... for-flarum

It is still a bit rough in a few places, and I think it gets fonts from Google by default, but other that that it seems like a really nice and low resource system. Would like to have some alternative views on it though, before putting it up on my server as a test for FGD.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Wuzzy » 20 Jun 2018, 12:13

I prefer you just stick with this forum software, plus updates from time to time. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it, it works perfectly fine. I don't get why you even felt the need to change at all, it doesn't make sense.

But whatever you do, do not switch to Discourse! I cannot stress enough how much of a flaming piece of garbage it is.
Discourse is a horrible piece of garbage, it's completely broken without JavaScript and even after you enable it, it just has terrible usability. Discouse pretends that every device is like a smartphone, so the website layout just sucks on big screens; the developers seem to have a total disregard for users which do not fit exactly into their paradigm. That's not how the Web is supposed to work.
If you switch to Discourse, I'm afraid I will be effectively locked out of these forums.
PS: Did I mention that Discourse is garbage?
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 20 Jun 2018, 13:26

Well, due to high server resource load Discourse is not really being considered anymore anyways. But this forum has some significant technical issues, the upgrade path is difficult, and it really has very bad usability on mobile devices.

I am currently waiting for a alternative forum layout plugin to be completed for Flarum and then will install a test setup like I did with NodeBB on my server for people to test.

But I guess any kind of responsive forum will have some issues when you completely disable JavaScript.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby SecureUvula » 20 Jun 2018, 16:13

There's an "Orange" forum project, written in Go. I'm not sure how much JS it requires but at least it looks readable without any.

https://github.com/s-gv/orangeforum

I'm not a fan of PHP, but at least phpbb loads fast and works perfectly without JS, the biggest attack surface on the web. JS tends to run crappy on the OpenPandora / Pyra, too.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Julius » 16 Jul 2018, 16:44

There is a WIP Reddit like, but ActivityPub federated (meaning compatible to the new HubZilla instance on https://social.freegamedev.net ) system:
https://medium.com/we-distribute/prismo ... 3bfe1cf935

But early development and written in Ruby (so slightly more complicated hosting required). This and PeerTube might be worth a closer look in the future.
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Re: POLL: Which forum software would you like FGD to use?

Postby Arkinson4 » 29 Sep 2018, 01:40

Though there has some other forum software where are really good enough. And people like to use them according to their choice. But first of all, I like to use myBB, phpBB, vBulletin software.
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