davehakkens

warrior

18/07/2018 at 10:40

highly on the list for V4. Up for testing! But Discourse also has limitations though since its only forum software. We’re looking into something for the entire community.. Would be a good start to collect/review a few alternatives here and try them out?

sure, if you like i can do some setups, give me the list and i can evaluate it. i had this done before and i did end up quite happy with ‘nodebb’. there is nothing you can’t customize or integrate 🙂 all in JS, easy to pick up.

you have special needs (or what you mean by ‘entire community’)? , for now i see only the need for a proper forum; the possibility to show/promote/extend v4 or user content would be nice but that’s quite another story.  for such things however you can use Liferay but it’s hard to run/maintain/extend since it’s Java.

I understand you want to make it looking unique, but really, forum is forum and I can’t believe this BuddyPress (is it?) is that poor 😉

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 12:42

I find this forum cool personally, but yes it’s a bit pity the double, triple, quadruple or more even more topics. Like proposed, I don’t remember where, it could be cool to have a better topic searcher to avoid recreating topics which already exists.
Maybe we could add a message, when people make a topic, with similar topics displayed and ask a confirmation with a message like “There are already topics containing these word [lists of them] Are you sure you want to create a new one ?”.

And at least, I don’t know if it’s possible with this forum framework, but give more power to moderators to allow them moving topics from a forum to another, editing members messages or topics and more.

You could also make a topic saying all rules and restrictions to make a topic like : “No insult”, “Check if there is an already existing topic treating of the same subject”, …

hi adrien,
not so sure, to me using this forum now on a daily base : its a real PITA, from ground up just bad. i am now 30 years behind the screen and i can tell you it’s a slap in the face for any professional user. that’s why i suggested just a real forum software just 🙂

well, i actually don’t even know where to start, that’s why: i insist: please give us a proper tool ASAP, this here is about research & development, not a fan page or such 🙂

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 15:09

So why not ! I’m much younger than you so I think I have got less experience.

Otherwise we could build (develop) a new forum, easier to add things, to personalize, …
But I don’t know if it’s better to use an other software ? (whithout consider the time factor)

adrien,
not sure i understand, i didn’t mean to be offensive 🙂 all i am saying that the current forum has to go where it belong: in the trash.

doing a forum software from scratch requires obliviously decades of experience to build this right, as we have seen with most classic forum software (with still 60-80% market share). that’s why: just use something which is established, since long and customize it from there. phpBB and the like provide obviously a good forum software, and we have the new on the block: nodebb, discourse (still too simple and not really a forum software)

also, if you jail users in this ‘it must be easy’ thingy then don’t expect much from your community. Dave told me once that outsourcing the bazar to a custom ebay store is not his thing, because he literally thinks people are too stupid to use ebay, well… i don’t know, i think you need to be really retarded being unable to use ebay. anyway, i understand that Dave is a designer, and so we’re dealing now with the results of this and so i keep bugging:-)

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 15:36

I didn’t take it offencive and I wouldn’t show that I feeled it. I tell a reality I’m only 16 years old, you past nearly the double of my existence using internet ^^
My english is far to be perfect I think I badly expressed what I would :p

I think using a real forum software could be nice, but I don’t know if we’ll can synchronyze it, easily has now.
For me the best idea is to make from scratch (not totally) a new forum, using php, html, mysql, … I think it will be powerfull and we’ll can edit it has we want.

adrien, never mind, i think we spoke on 2 different lanes. in any case, let’s move 🙂

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 15:39

Certainly 😉
Let’s move to do what ? ^^’

adrien, yes, this seems always very tempting. the problem with is always that somebody has to maintain this, over a period of many years. given the resources of PP we will never be able to make this in the long. a good forum software done with the tech we have right now would exceed the 1 million lines of code easily, at this point it’s long term project for at least 2-3 people. it just doesn’t worth the effort.

i suggested nodebb because most of it is there already, and the best part: it’s in javascript, easy to extend and maintain. and: we could finally interlink/exchange content with the main site. this things are hard to do in PHP or Java,…

to me, after all: the best code is NO code! if you would do this forum software from scratch however, it requires still 2 seniors to establish the normal software development cycle: code audits, reviews, etc… especially to avoid the problem of building a monolith build by a single person…

trust me, nobody here wants to spent time on such things like a forum 🙂

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 15:57

I already did a very tiny forum which allow making categoies (forums), topics, replies, …
It didn’t take me a lot of time if I remember well, I think we don’t need a complex forum but a more complete to avoid problems said before.
I take a speed look to nodebb but it seems very complex and design don’t goal with the chart of this site. But I pretty sure that we could change it.
For me the code is cool for the personalization and often it’s less heavy than a big CMS.

for anyone who’s interested in nodebb: i installed a jailed instance here, feel free to toy with it: http://pearls-media.com:8888 (user: admin, password: 213,,asd )

adrien, that’s exactly the point, people make all sort of weird assumptions of what other people need. a good forum is very complex thing after all, nothing you can do from scratch without long-term experience in forums itself. if you jail users up in something what you think is right, then you get exactly the result we have now, a big piece of unrelated and horrible to classify mud, literally useless information informatic wise. that’s why most page owners give users the max. : phpBB and the like. it’s a no brainer, really.

at the end it’s like sending your users with a knife only to a gun fight 😉 . the main page does exactly the same btw.

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 16:19

I belong to the people which use the forum, certainly I’m new, but I already saw things that don’t work and things that need to be add. I took a look to your nodeBB, but I feel it very complex, of course it’s my perspective.
I think we can make a topic to ask to the community what does they want to see on the forum, what does they think about the forum, …
And then we’ll have an view of a major part of the community.
Don’t you think it’s a good idea ?

If you’re intrested in I can try find the forum I’ve made and send you pictures.

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 16:22

Sorry but I didn’t understand the metaphor ^^’
I’ve understand that this is problem but I didn’t the relation with the forum.

adrien: about the metaphor: PP is obviously a R&D project, still at it’s very beginning and worst: serving different usage scopes. we had from time to time some professional users, sharing their data, very valuable data, others shared their experience, important experience. and most of it is kind of invisible, hard to find, we don’t have a central database to place this more visible to new users. we can’t even write here even proper articles (multipage,…) or even using standard markup like markdown,… i can spend the whole day here of what we can’t right with this forum software but the point is exactly this: we’re fighting with knifes in a gun fight 🙂 all information here is super fragmented, in too many different places, hard to find, causing a hell of money to the user at the end.

nodebb really complex?  not at all to me, it’s actually still too basic when it comes to exchange, classify, tag or promote valuable information by the community, it’s a good start but nothing more. the point is also that we have auto approved moderators with some points who can take care and help with valuable content. right now, the PP team has to go through all posts and find that valuable information, re-process it, and rewrite it to put it at the end in their new and static new v4. a process which is tedious and probably consumes a hell of the donations,… that’s all not needed with the right data structure and flow.

your forum software: sure! i am always interested in new approaches to tackle exactly the problems we have in the R&D corner 🙂
g

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 16:48

Maybe I don’t it at all.
When you tell that we’ve got knifes in a gun fight, you’re talking about teh forum or about precious plastic ?
Yes I’ve seen that some people lose money due by missing informations.

I find it complex because there is a lot of buttons, menus, … After I don’t really now that @davehakkens want. If he want a very complete ui or just the necessary.

I finish editing it before send you pics (because I’ve make it in 2016, some datas are bugged ^^)

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 17:13

There is my forum that I made !

Edit: I know if all pictures will be send, else I’ll but the forum on my website or I’ll use an other method to share the pictures.
And the forum is in french ^^

@adrian: nice!

knife vs. gun fight: it’s about both, forum & site 🙂

what dave wants: don’t bother, bother about the community needs, only! it takes some months of observing what’ s happening here (reading between the lines, dropping out users, life-time new users, kind of questions, qualities of users/content, number of sales in the bazar, worth-mention-able success stories, budgets, ..). Dave is just the guy who got us here and we can only hope that he understands that PP is bigger than him or what he wants 🙂
g

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 17:35

And I’ve made very fast, I don’t remember how many time it takes to me but I know it was fast, and I think the designed take me a good part of the developping time (I’m not very good in design), but the design is already done here ! After I don’t know how yet but I think it could be easy sync account and a handmade forum.

I think I could do a forum which look same at this one (which the users will not be disapointed) and after add uprage slowly (not to bother users again). But I don’t know if the Huge Dave will accept this ? :/

And I know if you think it’s a good idead ? :p

Don’t  you think I (we) could create a topic about the community ideas about the forum ?

adrien, i can tell you only about the incredible slow adaption rate when it comes to user ideas, recommendations, content. the PP team sometime pops up in the forum but it’s most of the time about something else. what they are actually doing is a big mystery to me. i think they are super busy with another super static version of the page. i won’t expect anything from them, anytime soon. and in top they have that hippy/eco village thing running, called project kamp. make your own conclusion please…i just have no idea whats going on, i only know they received a hell of funding but as said, no idea what they actually doing now with that. one thing is for sure, their mind is set about quite some stuff about v4, unlikely they would take a home baken forum software or such.

i can only recommend to tag Dave with a concrete proposal or new subject in the forum, may be he picks it up for sometimes later 🙂
g

adrienluitot

helper

19/07/2018 at 18:06

It’s a little structure, he is often alone. And I have the impression that there is a big community. So they can’t answer to everybody and take ideas of everybody.

To me the project kamp is a very nice project and like this lifestyle.

Okay I’ll try to make a topic, I hope you’ll help me (maintaining the idea), if you’re intrested in.