A very specific "message board/forum" question

Does anyone have any recommendations for Message Boards/Forums that are CF based that are as close to being like phpBB as possible? I'm in the process of possibly being tasked to take over and redesign a site, and one of the things they've asked for is "message board/forum" continuity, and they're currently using phpBB. Now, the reason I want to find a CF alternative and hopefully port over their users, is because one of the things they're doing is creating lots of login type stuff sitewide, and I'm naturally going to use CFLogin and the CFLogin framework to validate users sitewide and provide security via that way, tying in session management for a shopping cart, little games, user persistence, etc, and I'd LOVE for the message board to be tied to that user persistence. I'm looking at this board www.phpbb.com and would love to hear from anyone in the CF community who has experience with a CF equivalent. Jeff

Jeff, AFAIK, there are none. I've looked into this several times with no luck. There's no fair comparison to most CF boards and the open source PHP boards like vBulletin or phpBB. I wish an entrepreneurial CF company would create a CF board that matched feature to feature and then some! I'd buy it. ~Che Does anyone have any recommendations for Message Boards/Forums that are CF based that are as close to being like phpBB as possible? I'm in the process of possibly being tasked to take over and redesign a site, and one of the things they've asked for is "message board/forum" continuity, and they're currently using phpBB. Now, the reason I want to find a CF alternative and hopefully port over their users, is because one of the things they're doing is creating lots of login type stuff sitewide, and I'm naturally going to use CFLogin and the CFLogin framework to validate users sitewide and provide security via that way, tying in session management for a shopping cart, little games, user persistence, etc, and I'd LOVE for the message board to be tied to that user persistence. I'm looking at this board www.phpbb.com and would love to hear from anyone in the CF community who has experience with a CF equivalent. Jeff

> Jeff, AFAIK, there are none. I've looked into this several times with no Well...crappity crap crap crap.

Why does it *have* to be CF? Seems like if a particular tool's perfect for the job, it should be used.  PHP isn't that big of a deal to learn if you're proficient in CF. Jeff Small wrote:

Che Vilnonis wrote: > > I wish an entrepreneurial CF company would create a CF board that matched > feature to feature and then some! I'd buy it. I started to with cfmbb (www.cfmbb.org)... but I went down a path I wasn't prepared to go down (making it multilingual) which caused the code to be REALLY hideous. It actually does support some of the phpbb features, but it's so very far from being good.  I just fixed the BBML support in it. Honestly, if I decided i wanted to go back to working on a message board, I'd probably scrap cfmbb and use Ray's Galleon Forums as the base product. Rick

Rick Root wrote: > I started to with cfmbb (www.cfmbb.org)... but I went down a path I > wasn't prepared to go down (making it multilingual) which caused the > code to be REALLY hideous. why? what were you doing that made i18n so hideous?

Paul Hastings wrote: well it's just ugly, but the worst part is that since the language is extracted into message files, it's very hard to tell in the code where things are being output.  Makes it very complex, because rather than: <cfoutput>You have been successfully unsubscribed</cfoutput> you get: <cfoutput>#Application.resourceBundle.getResource("message_topic_unsubscribe_success")#</cfoutput> Plus, I went down the road of building it so that you could have multiple completely separate message boards in one database... and looking back, I see that's REALLY unnecessary.  But what it did was require that all of my queries have an extra bit in the where clause, etc. Rick

Rick Root wrote: > well it's just ugly, but the worst part is that since the language is > extracted into message files, it's very hard to tell in the code where if you use groups as part of your rb logic it becomes cleaner though you'll get more rb to work with. there's a trade-off for what developers can remember though. > <cfoutput>You have been successfully unsubscribed</cfoutput> what's so nice about mashing up app text & code like that? > you get: > > <cfoutput>#Application.resourceBundle.getResource("message_topic_unsubscribe_success")#</cfoutput> or you could just load that into a var as part of an init process, application.messageTopic[session.locale].unsubscribeSuccess or whatever. in either case, i don't see this as unnecessarily complex or ugly. most i18n apps, especially java ones, are usually built this way.

I knew you'd pop in here sooner or later paul :) It's probably a matter of that being my first foray into the resource bundle, and not really knowing what I was doing. CFMBB was also my first attempt at a CFC-based application... I've learned a bit about things to do and things not to do, and you just taught me one thing about cleaning stuff up. Like var scoping the resource bundle inside the component so make the code easier to read.. that makes sense. even <cfset var getResource = application.resourceBundle.getResource> which would let me do #getResource(blah)# inside my component, right? That'd make things easier and prettier.

Rick Root wrote: > It's probably a matter of that being my first foray into the resource > bundle, and not really knowing what I was doing. well from that snippet you seemed to get the gist of it. > even <cfset var getResource = application.resourceBundle.getResource> > which would let me do #getResource(blah)# inside my component, right? that method was ray's idea ;-) we usually init the rb into a shared scope & dish it out from there, mainly because we're often running multiple locales against one site. ray's blog is one locale, one site. and i have a bias about extra overhead even when it's mainly in my head.

Ray, Allow me to submit my solution to the Challenge. http://www.opensourcecf.com/forums/galleon_1_5_bbml_changes.zip Here's an example thread with all the BBML in use, along with a description of the changes made is here: http://www.opensourcecf.com/forums/messages.cfm?threadid=8ED431FF-AFAE-691A-CF53BC26B35FF3E0 Rick

As a general FYI to all (all who care about Galleon), I'm going to try to get this into Galleon sometime this week or next. It may be delayed a bit since I'll be off for Mardi Gras. On 2/21/06, Rick Root <rick.root@webworksllc.com> wrote:

I'm all for using the best product as well... but it would be *cool* if it were CF. And honestly, I'm kind of surprised that none exist. The fact that there is no equivalent to phpBB or vBulletin may demonstrate the fact that there is no market for one. And yes, Ray's Galleon rocks! Che Vilnonis wrote: > > I wish an entrepreneurial CF company would create a CF board that matched > feature to feature and then some! I'd buy it. I started to with cfmbb (www.cfmbb.org)... but I went down a path I wasn't prepared to go down (making it multilingual) which caused the code to be REALLY hideous. It actually does support some of the phpbb features, but it's so very far from being good.  I just fixed the BBML support in it. Honestly, if I decided i wanted to go back to working on a message board, I'd probably scrap cfmbb and use Ray's Galleon Forums as the base product. Rick

It isn't a PHPBB equiv, but I do think it is a strong product: ray.camdenfamily.com/projects/galleon I tended to focus on relevant features and have skipped stuff like smilies. On 2/21/06, Jeff Small <jsmall@lhwh.com> wrote:

Raymond Camden wrote: > It isn't a PHPBB equiv, but I do think it is a strong product: > >  ray.camdenfamily.com/projects/galleon > > I tended to focus on relevant features and have skipped stuff like smilies. That's the kinda crap that makes phpBB popular. There are two things I'd add to galleon if I found the time.. #1 - implement BBML via the BBML UDF I wrote based on The Depressed Press's BBML custom tag. #2 - implement private messaging. And I may get around to it soon. =) I'm thinking of encrypting the code and calling it RapidGalleon ;) Rick

Heh, I know - everyone bugs me to add BBML, which I think is disgusting. ;) But yes, if you write it, I'll do a quick QA and add it - reluctantly - to Galleon. On 2/21/06, Rick Root <rick.root@webworksllc.com> wrote: -- ======================================================================= Raymond Camden, Director of Development for Mindseye, Inc (www.mindseye.com) Member of Team Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/go/teammacromedia) Email    : jedimaster@mindseye.com Blog     : ray.camdenfamily.com Yahoo IM : cfjedimaster "My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." - Yoda

Raymond Camden wrote: > Heh, I know - everyone bugs me to add BBML, which I think is > disgusting. ;) But yes, if you write it, I'll do a quick QA and add it > - reluctantly - to Galleon. I accept your challenge, Jedi. Actually, it's very simple to implement... I've already done and here's an example: http://www.opensourcecf.com/forums/messages.cfm?threadid=8ED431FF-AFAE-691A-CF53BC26B35FF3E0 Took about 10 minutes.. of course, there are a few additional things that would need to be done.. like making BBML an administrative option, and possibly a post-by-post option. so I'll work on that stuff tonight and finish it for tomorrow =) Rick

> From: Jeff Small [mailto:jsmall@lhwh.com] > I'm looking at this board www.phpbb.com and would love to > hear from anyone in the CF community who has experience with > a CF equivalent. There really aren't any equivalents to the big PHP based forum apps. FuseTalk is a CF based forum app as is Galleon (Ray Camden's project). In my opinion FuseTalk lacks the familiar feel that the PHP apps offer and hasn't really peaked my interest (for a variety of reasons, one of which is cost). Galleon, is a simple, no frills, no BS app which is pretty slick; but again, not close to PHPBB in terms of that familiar look, feel, and feature set. Your best bet is to interface with one of the PHP apps or join the CFBB team and help finish that project... oh wait, that is dead in the water. :-) I have interfaced with vBulletin (another PHP forum app) and found it pretty easy to do. So many people ask this question which usually results in a group of people saying they want to create a CF based app that can rival the PHP ones, it has yet to happen. Tango.

http://www.rinium.com/ is very cool. I was going to do integration with it but haven't had the time yet. Worth looking at. Jeff, AFAIK, there are none. I've looked into this several times with no luck. There's no fair comparison to most CF boards and the open source PHP boards like vBulletin or phpBB. I wish an entrepreneurial CF company would create a CF board that matched feature to feature and then some! I'd buy it. ~Che Does anyone have any recommendations for Message Boards/Forums that are CF based that are as close to being like phpBB as possible? I'm in the process of possibly being tasked to take over and redesign a site, and one of the things they've asked for is "message board/forum" continuity, and they're currently using phpBB. Now, the reason I want to find a CF alternative and hopefully port over their users, is because one of the things they're doing is creating lots of login type stuff sitewide, and I'm naturally going to use CFLogin and the CFLogin framework to validate users sitewide and provide security via that way, tying in session management for a shopping cart, little games, user persistence, etc, and I'd LOVE for the message board to be tied to that user persistence. I'm looking at this board www.phpbb.com and would love to hear from anyone in the CF community who has experience with a CF equivalent. Jeff

> http://www.rinium.com/ is very cool. I was going to do integration with > it but haven't had the time yet. Worth looking at. Okay...theoretically...can you somehow tie sitewide user persistence that's managed with CF into a phpBB? What road would one wander down if one were to consider persuing such a quest?

aha! disregard last message.  :) Jeff Small wrote:

Last I heard, someone on the list was working on a direct Open Source port of phpbb to CF. I believe it was being called cfmbb or cfbb or something like that. Not sure what the status is or if it's being continued, but it was an idea at one point. John Burns Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Wyle Laboratories, Inc. | Web Developer Does anyone have any recommendations for Message Boards/Forums that are CF based that are as close to being like phpBB as possible? I'm in the process of possibly being tasked to take over and redesign a site, and one of the things they've asked for is "message board/forum" continuity, and they're currently using phpBB. Now, the reason I want to find a CF alternative and hopefully port over their users, is because one of the things they're doing is creating lots of login type stuff sitewide, and I'm naturally going to use CFLogin and the CFLogin framework to validate users sitewide and provide security via that way, tying in session management for a shopping cart, little games, user persistence, etc, and I'd LOVE for the message board to be tied to that user persistence. I'm looking at this board www.phpbb.com and would love to hear from anyone in the CF community who has experience with a CF equivalent. Jeff

Only other thing to consider is the hosting environment. If your host doesn't offer it, you're screwed. If you control your hosting environment, it's one more thing to keep patched, secure and up-to-date. John Burns Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Wyle Laboratories, Inc. | Web Developer Why does it *have* to be CF? Seems like if a particular tool's perfect for the job, it should be used.  PHP isn't that big of a deal to learn if you're proficient in CF. Jeff Small wrote:

> Not directly, but I got pretty well aquainted with it trying to install > it, never installed PHP directly > and ran into a few issues. I have done what I have talked about with other > systems, ASP comes > to mind. Run any questions you have, I'm sure we can figure out how to > make it work without > you having to find a new solution then run into a headache of moving data. Yeah, after reading some of the responses here, and poking around, it actually doesn't seem like it's going to be that hard to do. I'm going to go off and ponder this and see what everyone else wants to do. It might be a decision that's out of my hands at this point. Thanks for all the quick replies and great info. Appreciate it all.

Get (and pay for) vBulletin - another php app, but heads and shoulders above phpBB.  I'm sure there must be data migration scripts from php.  Use the vBulletin database as your site's user base.  You can authenticate user logins from CF against the vBulletin user database and you can take registrations and create new users within the vBulletin database from your CF apps.  There's likely little that you'd want in a forum that isn't already in vBulletin.  The only thing you'll probably want to do is skin it, which is fairly trivial. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeff Small" <jsmall@lhwh.com> To: "CF-Talk" <cf-talk@houseoffusion.com> Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 1:53 PM Subject: Re: A very specific "message board/forum" question...

There's definitely a market. Just no one has stepped up and met the need. John Burns Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Wyle Laboratories, Inc. | Web Developer I'm all for using the best product as well... but it would be *cool* if it were CF. And honestly, I'm kind of surprised that none exist. The fact that there is no equivalent to phpBB or vBulletin may demonstrate the fact that there is no market for one. And yes, Ray's Galleon rocks! Che Vilnonis wrote: > > I wish an entrepreneurial CF company would create a CF board that > matched feature to feature and then some! I'd buy it. I started to with cfmbb (www.cfmbb.org)... but I went down a path I wasn't prepared to go down (making it multilingual) which caused the code to be REALLY hideous. It actually does support some of the phpbb features, but it's so very far from being good.  I just fixed the BBML support in it. Honestly, if I decided i wanted to go back to working on a message board, I'd probably scrap cfmbb and use Ray's Galleon Forums as the base product. Rick

I have to say I'm really surprised by this. I don't mean to say my product is the best, there are other good forums apps out there. But do folks truly think that the only good CF forum would be a phpBB clone? Maybe it's just personal bias, but I've never liked forums built upon it. I don't think they are bad per se - just a bit over complicated. On 2/22/06, Burns, John D <john.burns@wylelabs.com> wrote:

>From a business perspective, I would have to disagree. I count on my forum members to help generate additional advertising revenue on several of the sites I have built through the years. And my forum members are clear when they say that they *love* the 'bells and whistles' on my forums that have 'bells and whistles' and demand them on forums that don not have them. >From a programmers perspective, I agree with you Ray... less *is* more. ~Ché I have to say I'm really surprised by this. I don't mean to say my product is the best, there are other good forums apps out there. But do folks truly think that the only good CF forum would be a phpBB clone? Maybe it's just personal bias, but I've never liked forums built upon it. I don't think they are bad per se - just a bit over complicated. On 2/22/06, Burns, John D <john.burns@wylelabs.com> wrote:

Raymond Camden wrote: > I have to say I'm really surprised by this. I don't mean to say my > product is the best, there are other good forums apps out there. But > do folks truly think that the only good CF forum would be a phpBB > clone? Maybe it's just personal bias, but I've never liked forums > built upon it. I don't think they are bad per se - just a bit over > complicated. phpBB is by far the most popular out there.  It doesn't have to be a clone but phpBB has certain features that make it popular amongst people who use message boards in a social environment.  We're not talking about us programmer geeks here as the target audience.. it's the teens and 20-somethings sharing fan fiction, discussing their favorite bands, or talking about their favorite TV show.  It's also the sports fans talking about their favorite teams. People use phpBB because of it's power... you don't HAVE to use private messaging, but nearly every phpBB board out there does.  It lets board members communicate with each other without having to share email addresses. BBML lets people do things to make their posts look different... you'd be amazed at how many people I know on some message boards that change the color of the font on all their posts.  If they wanna be LOUD they change the font size to 25. BBML is also intended to be implemented so people can't break the rest of the page.. ie, if you put a [b] tag without an end [/b] tag, none of the code will be bolded.  It forces validity on the BBML.  You can't even do this:  [b][i]hi there[/b][/i] It lets people put image files in their signatures, which almost *EVERYONE* participating in the Carolina Hurricanes message boards does.   Heck, people there ask people with cool signatures where they got their image and they'll go have someone make THEM a cool signature too. Avatars gives users another opportunity for people to express themselves, to make themselves unique. In one case, a bet was made between an Ottawa Senators fan and a Carolina Hurricanes fan.  The bet was, if the Canes win, the ottawa senators fan has to change his avatar to something like the Canes logo and the words "CANES ROCK", and something similar the other way around. These things build community and allow for individual expression, and *THAT* is what makes those features popular. I don't think anyone necessarily wants a phpBB clone, but we want all the features that phpBB has. Rick

I'm slowly getting convinced. And with your work on BBML almost done, it will be in Galleon soon. On 2/22/06, Rick Root <rick.root@webworksllc.com> wrote: -- ======================================================================= Raymond Camden, Director of Development for Mindseye, Inc (www.mindseye.com) Member of Team Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/go/teammacromedia) Email    : jedimaster@mindseye.com Blog     : ray.camdenfamily.com Yahoo IM : cfjedimaster "My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." - Yoda

> -----Original Message----- > From: Rick Root [mailto:rick.root@webworksllc.com] > > I don't think anyone necessarily wants a phpBB clone, but we want all > the features that phpBB has. > > Rick Or at least the option to have the features to turn off. ;-) --- Kevin Graeme Cooperative Extension Technology Services University of Wisconsin-Extension

Why use BBML when you can use something like tinyMce? If you are worried about security, it is easy to block certain tags (which we should all do anyway). I use tinyMce in the Aftershock Forum with a basic set of tools which I believe does everything BBML does and more. Also, from a user point of view it is much easier to use tinyMce than BBML. I just looked at this page showing the BBML core tags: http://david.smigit.com/bbcode/. Is this a complete list?

One thing to consider will be what the users of the system are used to having.  Ultimately it would be nice to just have an option between using something like BBML or tinyMce, doesn't vBulletin offer some sort of option like this? On 2/22/06, Stan Winchester <stan@aftershockweb.com> wrote:

Stan Winchester wrote: > Why use BBML when you can use something like tinyMce? HTML editors cause a couple of problems: #1 - you can break the HTML. #2 - you can PASTE IN any html you want into tinyMCE.. you'd have to parse out the tags you don't want.. and it could still be broken html. #3 - wysiwyg html editors are slow loading, evne at their most basic. #4 - wysiwyg html editors very browser dependent. Take a look at what I just did to this particular thread: http://www.aftershockweb.com/forum/messages.cfm?ThreadId=52 allowing the general public to use *ANY* html editor is a BAD BAD idea. Feel free to delete that topic. Rick

> HTML editors cause a couple of problems: > > #1 - you can break the HTML. > #2 - you can PASTE IN any html you want into tinyMCE.. you'd have to > parse out the tags you don't want.. and it could still be broken html. > #3 - wysiwyg html editors are slow loading, evne at their most basic. > #4 - wysiwyg html editors very browser dependent. I agree with #3 and #4, but the first two are implementation problems. Tidy can ensure that HTML is well-formed, and well-formed HTML can (and should) be swept for naughty bits relatively easily. -- Roger Benningfield

> People use phpBB because of it's power... you don't HAVE to use private > messaging, but nearly every phpBB board out there does.  It lets board > members communicate with each other without having to share email addresses. Rick: The forum bits of JournURL do all of that, and I've waffled back-and-forth about releasing it as a stand-alone app over the years. But that would leave me doing a number of things: (1) Radically cleaning up the admin UI. (2) Figuring out an installation procedure for mere mortals. (3) Deciding whether or not to strip out all of the non-forum stuff. (4) Removing dependencies on various bits of code that I don't have the right to redistribute, or can't redistribute without running into GPL issues. (jTidy, for example.) Finding the time and will for all of that can be kinda difficult. :D -- Roger Benningfield

Ray- Sorry, I didn't mean to bash yours. Personally, I think yours is great. The issue that I have is that I have clients who have used PHPBB, YABB, etc. for years and think that's how a forum SHOULD look and act. Anything outside of that, they think it's wrong. Even other PHP boards get scoffed at from the people I deal with.  The UI is the biggest piece. I agree with you about not putting all of the frills and the stupid rankings and stuff on the boards, but they seem to find that stuff important, even if it is over complicated. John Burns Certified Advanced ColdFusion MX Developer Wyle Laboratories, Inc. | Web Developer I have to say I'm really surprised by this. I don't mean to say my product is the best, there are other good forums apps out there. But do folks truly think that the only good CF forum would be a phpBB clone? Maybe it's just personal bias, but I've never liked forums built upon it. I don't think they are bad per se - just a bit over complicated. On 2/22/06, Burns, John D <john.burns@wylelabs.com> wrote:

Burns, John D wrote: > > piece. I agree with you about not putting all of the frills and the > stupid rankings and stuff on the boards, but they seem to find that > stuff important, even if it is over complicated. On the Carolina Hurricanes message board, I just achieved the rank of "Captain".  I started out as a Zamboni Driver =) Rick

Heh, Galleon has 'ranks' too. Now that I think makes sense. It's almost like being in a RPG. ;) On 2/22/06, Rick Root <rick.root@webworksllc.com> wrote: -- ======================================================================= Raymond Camden, Director of Development for Mindseye, Inc (www.mindseye.com) Member of Team Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/go/teammacromedia) Email    : jedimaster@mindseye.com Blog     : ray.camdenfamily.com Yahoo IM : cfjedimaster "My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." - Yoda

John, trust me,I didn't think you were bashing my forums. I'm just more surprised by the overwhelming support of phpBB. :) On 2/22/06, Burns, John D <john.burns@wylelabs.com> wrote: -- ======================================================================= Raymond Camden, Director of Development for Mindseye, Inc (www.mindseye.com) Member of Team Macromedia (http://www.macromedia.com/go/teammacromedia) Email    : jedimaster@mindseye.com Blog     : ray.camdenfamily.com Yahoo IM : cfjedimaster "My ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is." - Yoda

Ya know I guess you really have think like a hacker. You would think blocking bad tags was enough. I guess the only way to provide a WYSIWYG such as tinyMce would be to offer it to trusted uses only like moderators or administrators, but to regular members they should only use BBML or just offer them line breaks. >As a general rule, yes. Providing HTML editing in any publicly accessible >part of a web app is one of those "bad things" you typically want to avoid. >Here's just one example of why: > >http://www.betanews.com/article/CrossSite_Scripting_Worm_Hits_MySpace/112923 >2391 >