Merging Forum Packages

Posted by santosj on June 9, 2006

I would like to take several Forum packages and merge the development and features of each into one. However, I have in the past wished that each of the forum developers merge their development on their own, but given the different paths of coding designs that each of the packages takes, I doubt this would ever happen.

The other issue is that I have no popularity in the developmental world. Even if I took each of the best features and combined them, I would be stealing from the other packages and would be restricted to their Open Source License.

Forum Packges

FUD Forum
phpBB — Most Popular
Simple Machines Forum

—–

ex PHP Forum
XMB
Mercury Forum
Mini BB
Phorum
Pun BB
Wow BB

FUD Forum

Never heard of it before today. Well, no. I have heard of it but it was such awful crap compared to phpBB, that I said no. I have heard that it includes AJAX, but I haven’t seen it used in the support forum.

phpBB

Development time is a bitch. The time it is taking for phpBB 3 to come out I have almost mastered PHP and could build my own damn forum. Nothing on the development team, they are masters from what I have seen of the code. When I first heard of the phpBB 3 (was called PHP 2.2 then), I took one look of the code and wet myself (not really). It was in my eyes some pretty complex large amount of code. Now, I took a look at the phpBB 3 code and I asked, why did they choose that design? I mean, I’m doing class code that rocks SPL and PHP 5 class features.

I do understand that for phpBB and it’s popularity, that it has to support PHP 4 and those who are using it. However I would rather they start working on PHP 5 features, since PHP 6 is coming out soon. How soon PHP 6 is coming out is unknown, I suspect it is coming at the end of this year or early next year. It is soon, and with its built-in Unicode support it will make support for other languages easier. However, I don’t know if PHP 6 is going to include support for translation, so dictionary lookup is probably going to still be needed.

I would like to start a branch with full class development, but then again I’ll be creating Yet Another Forum Package (that no one will use).

SMF (Simple Machines Forum)

Kicks phpBB’s Ass. However, this is before phpBB 3, which I suspect is going to gain the upper hand. I would have liked for SMF and phpBB to gain forces. phpBB uses functions and SMF uses functions. Yeah, they can work together. SMF may hate the classes in phpBB, but they can write function wrappers for them.

It also takes over the evolution of Yase SE.

Forum or Message Board

I classify Forums as multiple forum and subforum support, with unlimited threads and topic types.

Message Boards to me are simple, single forum where people post with limited topic types and features.

The distinction is that Message Boards use less resources as a whole and offer a limited subset of Forum features. However, I will use message board and forum as interchangable from time to time. Most packages fall in the middle between the two. I usually decide based on phpBB features.

Behold the Power of vBulletin

I like vBulletin, but it is so expensive and I would rather phpBB have the same features. Why should I spend 180 USD on a forum package when the development community of phpBB could easily replicate the same features for less? Again, phpBB 3 is including some of the features I fell in love with while using vBulletin.

Invision Power Board Sucks!

I hate IPB, even more so is the ‘free’ forums. I would rather donate to phpBB than to pay for the crap known as IPB, hell I would rather buy vBulletin. Why would someone pay for this crap? I just don’t get it. Anyone using IPB probably had to choose based on their budget and IPB is cheaper.

I would love nothing more then to rip all of the features from this crap shoot and place them in SMF and phpBB. Not copy the code, but replicate the features. If I ripped the code then it would destroy me and my attempt to destory it completely.

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