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yiisoft-contrib / yiiframework.com

Source code for official Yii website
http://yiiframework.com/
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Replacement for the old forum software #84

Closed tom-- closed 6 years ago

tom-- commented 8 years ago

PHP BB apps from the early 00s like IPB still work but are clunky and lack modern features. If we want more people taking part, which we should, then we should consider alternatives.

I'll begin by suggesting Discourse. I use it at New Relic and like it a lot. It has an impressive feature list, a good pedigree and some serious sites and projects have committed to it so I think it's going to be around for a while. It spent a long time in beta while Atwood obeyed his own Rule of Three so I think it's mature enough for Yii. It's written in ruby but at least that means it's not written using Laravel 8P

samdark commented 8 years ago

I'm for replacing IPB (it's not phpbb). Not sure with what exactly though. Discourse is a cool thing but, it's something we totally can't hack well. My Ruby sucks :)

samdark commented 8 years ago

I wonder if there's anything that integrates well with GitHub, is markdown-powered and has decent editor such as http://codemirror.net/mode/gfm/...

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Would be ironic if we switched to flarum.org - powered by Laravel, but really awesome, at least once it's out of beta.

What is the forum software behind devmaster.net - it is similar in that it is based on tags and not fora.

cebe commented 8 years ago

What is the forum software behind devmaster.net - it is similar in that it is based on tags and not fora.

http://forum.devmaster.net/ is a discourse.

cebe commented 8 years ago

note that discourse has an entry page like this: http://forum.devmaster.net/categories which is more forum like and I would prefer that as the default page.

cebe commented 8 years ago

Discourse is a cool thing but, it's something we totally can't hack well. My Ruby sucks :)

I think we should focus on features here and not on technology. If Discourse fits all the needs we find a way to adjust and host it. At least it has a great opensource spirit and has a ton of usefule features + it is stable enough (compared to flarum for example).

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

To be honest, it is easier to hack on Ruby since Yii is borrowing a lot of ideas from it (ROR) - at least hacking on the views is not out of our reach I think. There must a lot of people who are integrating it cross language.

mdomba commented 8 years ago

I heard all good reviews about vanilla forum but apart from installing it can't find time to test it:

http://vanillaforums.org/ https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla

the recent version 2 was written with a new micro PHP framework called garden (still hasn't an official page) but it's author has some blog posts about it - http://markosullivan.ca/garden-preview-part-i/

But

I think it would be easier to stick to IPB. The current version is not lacking any modern feature, the thing is that we don't have the latest version installed and IMO it would be easier to transfer the current DB to the new version than to a new forum software.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

I don't agree that Yii should "stick with" anything if there are better alternatives. I am not too fond of Vanilla and I'd rather that it was going to be Discourse. I personally didn't like the way it was set up and IIRC you had to hack and install lots of addons to make it usable. That might have changed, but a visit to the official Vanilla community does not convince me. I feel that Discourse has a more coherent solution out of the box.

I think that one of the greatest things about Yii is the community - and I think that it deserves the best. :) Even if it's in Ruby. (I have checked the Discourse code and it seems to be nicely written standard RoR).

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

I will install and test Vanilla - it has been five years since I tried it. And perhaps, if it turns out to be a fitting choice for the Yii community, I could help theming it.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Vanilla has absolutely no batteries included, and you even have install a lightbulb as well. :)

What it does have, is a Bootstrap addon that would make it easy to theme it.

Vanilla went for composer just about a month ago, so the master is easy to include as a composer package and a proper Vanilla module could be made.

I agree with @mdomba that a switch from IPB is only warranted if the new forum software kicks some serious backside. So, let's see.

No doubt that Discourse is above Vanilla in terms of professionalism, but I have a feeling that it will be more satisfying to have something that can be hacked on easily, and directly embedded via a Yii module.

slaFFik commented 8 years ago

http://flarum.org/ ? https://github.com/flarum/flarum

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

We are tempted, but Flarum is not out of alpha/beta yet and it is written using Laravel ! :p Still, it looks and feels stunning. But it won't be ready for such an extensive multi-cultural community like the Yii community. Even Vanilla, if my calculations are correct, would require at least 20 addon packages to accommodate for translations, media handling, file upload and user profile stuff. ;)

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

First impression after installing Vanilla: Not as bad as I thought. The 'vanilla' package (pun definitely intended) contains 21 plugins that you can enable/disable and configure at will. I enabled 15 of those. Should take care of the basic needs and match the functionality of IPB. Then all the different language addons needs to be installed.

It is up at http://testing.jacmoe.dk/ - you can register (hopefully) and then I will add you as admins as I see fit so that you can get a feel for how Vanilla is like in practice.

The data transporter supports IP Board 3, that is hopefully the current software?

In the mean time I will probably spend some time tweaking it and start working on a theme using the Bootstrap addon (of course).

Sphinx search is supported by an addon, but I am not sure if one exist for Elastic.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Without installing any additional stuff, I am quite pleased: vanilla1

Yes, I pasted that code directly into the editor, which I have configured to use Markdown by default. You can quote and mention people - that editor is not bad.

tom-- commented 8 years ago

I'm not very familiar with vanilla but a quick look at their "showcase" shows a lot of sites that look like old PHP forums from the early 00s.

tom-- commented 8 years ago

As far as Flarum goes, we simply have to port it to Yii.

Forin commented 8 years ago

What about the old forum, in particular yii2? Close and convert existing topics? Or lose existing contents?

In my opinion invisionpower is ok. If you ever want to make money from professional paid support, you could use the commerce extension: https://www.invisionpower.com/features/apps#commerce

Theres a build support desk which handles billing, member group promotion and renewals, automatically.

If you choose another forum, I think this is a must have, maybe not now, but in the near future.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Vanilla surprised me, to be honest. Just took a test drive and it already has what IPB has, and it does it better. Especially the editor!

The looks can be changed easily and all the current discussions can be transferred to it - so no lost discussions and no broken links.

tom-- commented 8 years ago

@Forin I suggest keeping the old IPB in read-only form and at the old URL so that google indexes etc. all remain.

tom-- commented 8 years ago

@jacmoe IPB with a better editor isn't really a step into the 2010s.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Professional, paid support is probably best done in a separate forum installation, IMO.

@tom-- there are in depth instructions at Vanilla about how to ensure that you don't lose search traffic due to broken links. :)

I didn't say that Vanilla was IPB with a better editor. IPB is horrible in my humble opinion :)

What I said was that Vanilla is already much better totally out of the box and not configured/massaged to meet your needs. And that is not bad. Pretty close to Discourse - not there, but very close.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

I agree with @samdark that we probably would be most happy with a forum written in PHP that we can hack on with confidence :)

tom-- commented 8 years ago

I disagree with @samdark because there are better ways to spend time than hacking forum software. If it were up to me, I'd be looking for something to use rather than modify.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

This is under discussion @tom-- so I expect us to discuss, not fight. A discussion for me is not about who's right and who's wrong - it's all about exchanging ideas, to shed new light on old subjects and to go forward, and perhaps even change our minds. I was only lukewarm towards Vanilla when this topic started, now I am beginning to see that it might be better for us to be running a forum written in a language that we grok - regardless of whether or not we're actually going to hack on it or not. That does not mean that I think that Discourse is garbage. My world is rarely black and white.

rugabarbo commented 8 years ago

http://www.discourse.org - modern, free https://xenforo.com - secure, stable, but non-free

IPB sucks. It was good, when it was being supported by authors of XenForo (: vBulletin sucks. It was good, when it was being supported by authors of XenForo (:

mdomba commented 8 years ago

I wonder if all of you that wrote for IPB that sucks if you are commenting the current yii forum version? Because that is an old version (3.1) and IPB is out with a new version (4) and new features...

IMO IPB has a very good suport / admin section but if you don't install a local copy you can't see that part of it.

btw. here is a nice comparison of IPB and XF - https://theadminzone.com/threads/xenforo-vs-ipb-review-with-pretty-pics.117908/

Forin commented 8 years ago

IPB Demo 4.x: https://www.invisionpower.com/demo

rugabarbo commented 8 years ago

Oh, sorry, I mean vBulletin, not IPB (: I updated my comment. I didn't use IPB last 7 years, so I don't know IPB advantages...

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

The advantages of not using IPB is that we have more control of what kind of features we want from the software. Even if Discourse were chosen. The advantages of IPB 4 is that it is not IPB 3, but I have no idea whether or not the editor is an editor made for programmers (or not). That has to be the most frustrating part of the whole package :p Vanilla seems to be a refreshing change and I can see that it can be tweaked to accomodate a lot of things, QnA posts like StackOverflow and wiki pages like - er - a wiki, in addition to a category based forum. The Yii extensions could even be hosted from it. I get a growing suspicion, however, that development might have slowed down and users have found other pastures and that certain features is not going to be available. I hope that's just fatigue from being overloaded with way too many Vanilla addons..

The disadvantage of Discourse is that most of us don't speak Ruby, but maybe I should try it out.

It's like getting married :) You want to know what you are missing out on before making a commitment, don't you? :)

rob006 commented 8 years ago

Maybe we should do a SWOT analysis? So far, this discussion is extremely unconstructive. "This is old", "this is modern", "this is cool", "this sucks" - these are not really arguments.

Forin commented 8 years ago

IPB uses CKEditor : http://ckeditor.com/demo#widgets IPV 4.1 has a code-box which pops up if you press the "<>" button, shown in the video at min 2:00 : https://community.invisionpower.com/blogs/entry/9739-ips-community-suite-41-editor-update/

I don´t know about Discourse and Vanilla, but they have a different editor... https://meta.discourse.org/t/more-advance-editor-should-be-here/14102?u=downey

How far is Vanillas editor better?

tom-- commented 8 years ago

@jacmoe I didn't intend for it to be a fight or battle of opinions and apologize because that's what seems to have happened despite my intention.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

@tom-- don't worry about it - I'm good if you are :) Perhaps I was a bit too grumpy :)

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

@Forin The editor in Vanilla can be configured to use Markdown and then works like the editor we are typing in right now. Pasting from various sources does not mess things up and you don't get weird formatting, etc. It just feels better.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

If we are considering Discourse, perhaps we could also consider NodeBB ? I am more comfortable with Javascript than Ruby, and it looks really nice: https://community.nodebb.org/

And then there is Luna (perhaps) and Codoforum (promising).. both in PHP.

http://getluna.org/index.php

https://codoforum.com/documentation/introduction

Edit: those two seems to be slightly behind Flarum, though..

NodeBB seems to be on par with Discourse in terms of features..

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Unfortunately, I can't install neither Discourse nor NodeBB on Dreamhost, so I can't setup a joint tryout. And Codoforum and Luna I think is out of the question - then we could just as well go for Flarum. ;)

I don't have any beef with IPBoard, mind you. I just want to see something that turns out to be better than both the old forum and StackOverflow, and would give the community a boost. I am also thinking of something that perhaps could be used to host the wiki and the extensions repository, but that is just far fetched ideas. I have seen that Vanilla can do it, but perhaps Discourse/NodeBB can do that too.

tom-- commented 8 years ago

NodeBB looks pretty good. JS and node works for me although I don't expect to be hacking it.

One feature from Discourse that I didn't see in NodeBB for old-timers like me like:

Mailing List Support

Opt into a special mode where all messages are sent to you via email, exactly like a mailing list. Start new topics via email.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

There probably is a plugin for that - should be over 300 of those. :) That is a neat feature - especially being able to partake in a conversation by email.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

@rob006 I don't think it is unconstructive. We are trying to figure out what we want, exactly, from a forum software. Part of that is to name forum software that we like, and forum software that we don't like. That might not be particularly articulate or refined, but at least it's a start.

What is SWOT, and how do we get started?

rob006 commented 8 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

First of all we should decide what we expect from the forum and what are the pros and cons of every engine. Forum engine concerns not only the forum, we must integrate at least a base of users and sessions. A modular engine can also be easily used to handling comments on wiki or extensions base. This can save a lot of work, but it is practically impossible, if we choose a non-PHP engine.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

This is an interesting discussion about Vanilla versus Discourse: https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-does-discourse-compare-and-contrast-with-vanilla-forums/1701/18 ((EDIT: that topic is 2 years old so grains of salt should be applied))

I would say that the strong points about Vanilla are:

Weak points:

PS: one of things that appeals to me (at the moment) is that a forum topic can be turned into a real tutorial or FAQ item just by toggling a few settings. I often wish I could do the same to topics in our current forum.

tom-- commented 8 years ago

@rob006 that's a tremendous idea!

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

I would have liked to triumphantly post the URL to my newly created Heroku NodeBB app, but now I am seriously tired of this shit :x: Just like RoR, Node.js moves in mysterious ways - especially NodeBB.. I might give it a go later, but now I am nervewrecked from reading excessively obtuse instructions and after facing build errors - that are fixed in NodeBB master (fails on lwip node module that master is not using anymore..) I got as far as actually managing to setup, compile/install and deploy, but then the crap crashed with no informative log message.. Wonderful! I am sure that I will run into the same pile of problems if I were to attempt to install Discourse :D

If any of you are feeling adventurous, you could maybe create a test installation on OpenShift, Heroku, whatever..

I need a Scotch. ;) Or a PHP based forum.

samdark commented 8 years ago

You need both, I guess ;)

rugabarbo commented 8 years ago

You have to take care of the mobile version. I think new forum front-end must support modern devices.

Forin commented 8 years ago

Vanilla seems to have no mobile view?! www.vanillaforums.org/discussions looks chaotic on mobile IPB is responsive: https://community.invisionpower.com/

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Vanilla is responsive - it is actually the job of the individual themes. It is odd that the hosted Vanilla does such a poor job on mobile devices. It has several mobile mode addons - haven't tried them as I believe in the dogma that the theme should respond well to any size/device.

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

@Forin Could you try this on your mobile? -> http://testing.jacmoe.dk/index.php?p=/

jacmoe commented 8 years ago

Okay, I see what you mean.. Need to click on 'Full Site' link - I wonder how you turn that thing off? There is no reason for a separate mobile version..

EDIT: fixed now.

$Configuration['Garden']['MobileTheme'] = 'bootstrap';