After days of fighting with it, I’m pretty close to kicking phpBB to the curb. The code is a hairball, it provides no outward facing API for integration with other software… I’m sick of it.
I’d like to use some other forum software if we can find something suitable. So, I’m setting up some test forums for you guys to try out. The first one is Vanilla, here:
I’ve imported some of the posts from the old forum so you can see what it’s like. Vanilla is designed so that almost everything is a plugin—right now, I haven’t gone through the trouble of setting up the attachments or BBCode plugins. The theme I picked is one which I grabbed more or less at random. What I’d really like comments on is functionality, not on appearance of the theme (which I’ll modify if we decide to go with this forum).
I was just looking at the fudforum. A search of their support forums seems
to indicate it may be possible to do m2f with their forum with a little
admin setup of a group. Does look pretty robust.
Ok - with a whole new username/pw it works.
Doesn’t like me using my old name/pw when either joining as a new user (get
a username and/or pw already taken error) or just trying to login with it
(username/pw error)
We use Fudforum here at work and it’s OK, but doesn’t have much flexibility. Also the themes are pretty ugly; Keep in mind that getting a nice looking theme may not be easy. PHPBB’s strength is the sheer number of modules and themes available. It’s easy to add calendars and all sorts of stuff in under an hour. And the theme is clean and well designed from the start… that’s the biggest draw-card for me. Having to create a nice theme from scratch would be painful and time consuming… Then adding functionality that may be missing etc. And we would screw up the look and feel because we’re not web designers.
Also keep in mind we have 1500 users who are accustomed to the current interface; We would be forcing them to re-adjust. So I think… it’s a pretty important decision so needs quite a good case for change. Doing all of this may save development time, but I’m not sure that’s a good enough case for inconveniencing users. I’m in the “if it aint broke don’t fix it” camp. Keep it simple, working and flexible.
Would you elaborate on that? What problems have you had with it?
phpBB is shiny, but rotten underneath. Integration is the hard part,
in my opinion, not the theming.
I agree, the default themes for FUDForum are rather ugly. I think this
is fixable. A theme is something which can be made passable by nudges,
and anyway can’t fail to work, even if it’s not pretty.
Getting authentication and the mail bridge to work with phpBB is not
like that. If it’s not working, then it’s not usable at all, and the
state of the phpBB codebase is such that it could take an unbounded
amount of time to get it working.
(As a side issue: I can’t agree that many phpBB themes I’ve seen are
examples of good design—the ones which are make some rather radical
changes to the default phpBB interface. It’s far too cluttered to be
good design.)
The FUDForum interface seems like a near clone of the phpBB one, to me.
Do you think FUDForum would really pose a problem for anyone?
(Did you try Vanilla, which is quite different? There, the interface is
so minimal, that I think the scope for confusion is much less.)
I had a look at Vanilla and hate it (seriously, I wouldn’t even try to read the forum anymore)
FUDforum is fine but not that great IMHO (actually I still prefer the current phpBB).
No huge problems as such, it’s just not widely used. So if something goes wrong you’re unlikely to find an answer through Google.
Yes but shiny is the most important thing. I would lean towards getting a good theme happening before shifting over, to prove it can be done. The forum needs to be professional and easy to read to entice people to spend time on it and post. It can’t look ugly or amateurish. In my experience creating a good theme is a nightmare. It should be a simple process because html is simple right? Wrong! Positioning, layout and styles etc. turns into a nightmare unless you work in that field.
I agree it would be nice; But the case for change is fairly weak. The forum works and there are no complaints, just two minor incidents with CPU that I’m sure can be sorted. I admit we may not be able to tie it in with the new Wiki so tightly; But it’s no show-stopper. Moving to another forum seems like a ton of work, risk and inconvenience for very minor gain. Why rock the boat?
Vanilla and Fudforum look very amateurish and blog-like IMO. So yes, they would work; It’s just that humans may not want to use them.
Im with Ben and Wlk. Vanilla just looks ugggh. There still a lot of wasted
space and too much scrolling.
Fud isn’t so bad, it has a similarity to PHPBB. It may not have all the
modules and plugins but its not like we have a crap load now either after 3
years. User acceptance of FUD should be easier due to its likeness of PHPBB
if you do go that route (people hate change once they get used to something,
so less of a change is better).
Whatever y’all decide, after: Ben give me some ideas on the theme, layout,
example/sample links etc… I could get wife to whip that up. It’s what she
does so …
