[Actionchix] Website wishlist

chris lists at semioticpixels.com
Sat May 20 02:40:21 EST 2006


Last time I looked at phpbb, the database wasn't normalized and had some
strange looking redundancies, which probably contributes to scalability
problems.

The built-in search functionality is usually pretty bad, but you could
hack another search widget into it (phpDig works pretty well).

For php sites, I usually recommend vBulletin as a scalable solution or
punbb for small forums that are unlikely to become large.

.02
chris

 

On Fri, 2006-05-19 at 08:39 -0700, jennyw wrote:
> Hi, Leslie!
> 
> Leslie Vincent wrote:
> > Hi, I'm totally new to this site and list, and not really qualified to
> > help work on it, but are you considering transitioning from e-lists to
> > a message board? 
> 
> One of the things about LinuChix is that it's a great place to learn new
> things. So don't feel underqualified -- you have an opportunity to
> volunteer on things that you haven't done before and be able to learn
> from the process!
> 
> I think it'd be great to have a discussion forum interface in addition
> to the mailing lists. RForum[1] has a mailing list gateway and has been
> doing a pretty good job providing an alternative interface to the Ruby
> mailing lists[2]. Of course, the grrls-only mailing list could not be
> made available on a Web forum since the policy is to keep no archives.
> 
> > And while I'm no expert on setting up a messageboard, if it's phpBB
> > based (i.e. no learning curve for me) I would definitely volunteer to
> > help with its maintenance.
> 
> I did a quick Google search for mailing list gateways and phpBB, but
> didn't come up with anything solid. Of course, maybe if someone looked
> harder, they could find something.  That said, if we decided to use
> phpBB, we should probably have a discussion about security issues. For
> whatever reason (maybe because its popularity makes it an attractive
> target), I keep hearing people complain about phpBB security. Another
> factor might be because they have a lot of features that other forum
> software packages don't -- additional complexity means more potential
> security issues.
> 
> These issues might not affect a less popular Web site, but LinuxChix has
> been targeted by jerks before, so it's definitely something we should
> watch out for.  The phpBB dev. team leader wrote a message last year
> about doing a complete security audit and an effort to incorporate
> current security practices[3] -- I don't know if by this time security
> is a lot tighter, or whether this is still an ongoing problem.
> 
> My inclination would be to go for one of the forum packages with fewer
> features (i.e., less code), like RForum or PunBB. The only one I know
> for sure that has a two-way mailing list gateway is RForum. RForum also
> supports full text search engines like Ferret[4] (the Ruby port of
> Lucene[5]), although the search form could use some improvement (pretty
> easy to change, though).
> 
> Jen
> 
> [1]: http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac
> [2]: http://www.ruby-forum.com/
> [3]: http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=308490
> [4]: http://ferret.davebalmain.com/trac/
> [5]: http://lucene.apache.org/java/docs/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Actionchix mailing list
> Actionchix at linuxchix.org
> http://mailman.linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/actionchix
> 



More information about the Actionchix mailing list