Forum solution: Simple Machines Forums

Instead of writing a custom forum solution, check out SMF:

http://www.simplemachines.org/

It is being used in very high traffic sites and is super fast. I have a few installs of this and it is really easy and fast to manage and customize.

And it's free!

I suggested the same thing too. See this post http://members.livemodern.com/forums/other/website/0450110816259
basically the response was Yeah I hear ya, but...
Its hard to beat something like SMF, huge active community, stable, fast, free.

Gotta agree. I don't quite see the logic in spending more money and time into this system when they're great forum-specific products out there.

I know there is some appeal in having a single-login for the entire site, so I can appreciate that want, though I'd be glad to sign in twice in exchange for having a lean, mean (and fast) forum system.

Do you guys have any idea what it would cost to integrate two different systems? Not ball park, but real numbers.

Marshall

What kind of integration are you looking for, Marshall?

Without knowing any details, I'd suggest that the only real integration an end-user would need is perhaps the sharing of the username password. That could be accomplished fairly easy by replicating the usr/pwd and maybe the avatar image between the two DB tables of the site DB (Plone?) and the forum DB. I imagine a competant DB person could whip up a stored procedure or chron job in less than an hour to handle that. It might take another hour to redirect the forum's links to the appropriate sign up page on the Plone system.

Other than that, I don't think folks need tight integration. Speed and ease of use is what counts the most. IMHO, of course.

I agree about speed and ease of use being priority for the end user. Also curious about what kind of integration you do have in mind Marshall. Not meaning to come across attacking, just curious really.

I don't understand why you need two systems.

You can have people register for the Simple Machines forums, then the rest of the site is available to browse for anyone- no registration needed.

If you want to send a newsletter or whatever, you can use the SMF member list.

For an easy solution to the rest of the site, I suggest Wordpress- easy to set up and run. (also free!)

You can use the contributions, not to reinvent the wheel and write something untested from scratch, but to have an expert install and configure a great, robust, "prefab" solution like SMF and Wordpress.

Just my .02!

While I don't find it wrong to ask for money to give to the open source Plone project (I'm all for open source) I do have to ask again what DWELL is bringing to the table. Do they contribute funds in exchange for their banner?

jmellicker...wordpress is great, but not really an automated 'community portal' like plone or phpnuke and the like are.

That said, I agree...writing yet-another-discussion-board system is a bit like reinventing the wheel.

Do any of these other solutions offer the ability to be integrated into the overall site layout the way the Plone solution does? I mean site wide links at the head, personalized favorites and messaging at the margins, etc? My experience is that these other forum products have their own messaging system built in and it would not integrate with the other features tied into the rest of the community pages - blogs, photo albums, personal web pages.

I don't want the experience to be that when you go to visit the forums you click out of the community site and into the messageboard site, for instance as you do at Fabprefab. Its a different interface, different layout, it feels like a different site. I am not knocking Fabprefab - what they are doing works very well for them, but community life there is limited to the messageboard. LiveModern aspires to do much more.

If not then we are not reinventing the wheel - there is no wheel like the one we've got.

[quote:lavardera format=text/plain]Do any of these other solutions offer the ability to be integrated into the overall site layout the way the Plone solution does? I mean site wide links at the head, personalized favorites and messaging at the margins, etc? My experience is that these other forum products have their own messaging system built in and it would not integrate with the other features tied into the rest of the community pages - blogs, photo albums, personal web pages.[/quote]
You are comparing apples to oranges here. Of course other forum softwares do not offer the overall site layout that plone does. Thats because plone is a CMS (Content management system) and a forum software is just that.. a forum. No one here has ever argued that livemodern should ditch plone (although there are other CMS systems around today that definately are better). What has been argued is that livemodern not spend $3000 to try and patch a forum software into plone when a standalone could do the same, probably much better for free. That takes us to your next comment...

[quote:lavardera format=text/plain]I don't want the experience to be that when you go to visit the forums you click out of the community site and into the messageboard site, for instance as you do at Fabprefab. Its a different interface, different layout, it feels like a different site. I am not knocking Fabprefab - what they are doing works very well for them, but community life there is limited to the messageboard. LiveModern aspires to do much more.[/quote]

This feeling of leaving the communtiy has nothing to do with the forum software, but rather the webdesign of the site. Forums (as well as CMS systems, blogs etc) are all template or theme driven. You can completely change the look of the site without changing the software it is running on. Because of this it is very possible to have a forum, a CMS and even a blog like wordpress all coexist as seperate installs and look seemless. For an example off the top of my head, look at http://www.joomla.org a website for a popular CMS. Click on forums and you will go to their SMF forums, although the look of the site doesn't change at all. Still feels like you are in the same place. They even have a Wordpress blog integrated as well. The difference to the user between an integrated and standalone install is this (as far as I know, Marshall may have reasons I don't know about) if the forums were not integrated into the plone software, a user would have to login seperatedly to post to the forums and to post to the blog section (and there are actually plenty of workarounds for this out there too.) To the majority of us that only use the forums there would be no difference, only faster, less buggy forums and an extra $3000 to put towards whatever else livemodern needs (better webdesign, server upgrades, whatever).

[quote:lavardera format=text/plain]If not then we are not reinventing the wheel - there is no wheel like the one we've got.[/quote]

There actually are tons, CMS plus forum is very common these days.

Whatever happens its great to see that the livemodern community is so generous, we trust that Marshall will use that generosity in the best way he can. I hope that I don't sound like I am bashing the site, I have just been doing a lot of research lately getting ready to make some changes to my site, so I have a limited knowledge of this stuff.

creede, is correct, any good forum software can be themed to match the site exactly.

e107 is a fast CMS/forum solution that is all-in-one, though I think it is too complicated for this situation.

I highly recommend SMF + Wordpress as I said, this will result in a fast and efficient site with tons of features and very easy to administer.

(Joomla is way too slow, inefficiently coded and buggy.)

Writing new forum software is like reinventing the wheel- there are many great packages out there.

Fabprefab could theme their forum if they had a savvy person with an hour or so to spend and it would feel just like the rest of their site.

I am just trying to save this site from going from bad to worse with a poor choice, I am a big fan!

We just moved to Wordpress for our new site:

http://www.dvcreators.net/ws/

Check the forums and the integration (we are using vBulletin, a fee-based system, for legacy reasons, but will switch to SMF when I get around to it )

I agree with everyone so far about using an existing, proven, forum solution. I've worked with a few CMS setups (postNUKE, Mambo, etc.) and from my experience using CMS software such as these and integrating with a messageboard system like SimpleMachines, PHPBB, Invision, and so on, is relatively easy to do.

And I would imagine that virtually all of the features on this site exist as either built-in functions, or easily added and modified 3rd party modules on most all of the top free CMS systems out there.

But I'm no expert, I just know I've been browsing this site for a little over a year now, and it has ALWAYS been slow and finnicky. Just getting to this thread took a good full minute of load time, and my bandwidth on this end is something on the order of 5000kb/sec or more. I love this site, but man, it is exceedingly frustrating to browse. I just click a couple times and that's it, I've had it.

I'm not discounting the hard work that's been done here, I just hate to see time and money wasted if there's a viable and less taxing alternative available.

Strain,

I hear 'ya, and we're working on it. Since the fundraising went well in February and March, the plans to move forward are in overdrive. So, look for big improvements later this spring.

Marshall