Oh where oh where can the developer be ?!

Progress reports and musings from the developers on the current gaming tools.

Moderators: dorpond, trevor, Azhrei

User avatar
TK
Giant
Posts: 162
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2008 12:02 am

Post by TK »

Yes, I think proper unread post tracking is #1, and sub forums are #2. Any other features are mainly gravy (but still fun none the less).

jsharen
Giant
Posts: 196
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 3:39 pm

Post by jsharen »

If we go vBulletin I'll toss in $20 into the pot. I can also be available for any questions, I've done some relatively extensive work with it on my own forums.

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Post by Azhrei »

I would like to be able to keep the existing posts, so I want any new forums software to have a migration path for existing phpBB2 installations. (Which I assume phpBB3 will have.)

I don't care so much about RSS feeds any more (I have a Mac :( so I don't have my Kontact and Aggregator programs that KDE has). Bummer actually, since I love(d) using RSS.

I have a phpBB2 web site for my stalled RttToEE campaign. If we can wait a few days, I will convert that site to phpBB3 and post a summary of how much work was involved. With luck it will be completely painless. (I think my site is at phpBB 2.0.22, IIRC.)

And just FYI, the problem regarding tracking of unread posts is not having a session and leaving the site. The problem is leaving the site for long enough that the session times out. I just wanted to be clear. (And I checked the Profile page to see if the timeout was user-specified, but it doesn't appear to be.)

User avatar
cubeblue
Cave Troll
Posts: 95
Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2008 12:50 pm
Location: Washington, DC

Post by cubeblue »

I've done a phpbb2 to phpbb3 migration before, it's pretty painless and of course all messages and users came over fine. However, I'm running a family and friends forum for like, 30 people max.

I must say, a lot of the advantages for phpbb3 (over phpbb2 at least) are on the Admin side. The new admin control panel is smart, especially compared to phpbb2's admin panel.

For free, it's a pretty tight package, although RSS support doesn't come built-in (there are apparently a number of mods to add it).
& So Forth a blog about dungeons & dragons & so forth. With a particular eye for virtual table-top play, 5e, and OSR themes.

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Post by Azhrei »

The big issue I've seen with RSS for a forum regards having to log in to the forum. Basically, the forum doesn't know what you've read and what you haven't unless you're logged in, i.e. there's a session cookie active in the client. Many RSS readers don't send browser cookies (gee, what a surprise! :)) so you end up either hard-coding a session ID into the url of the feed (something like ";phpsessionid=xxxxx" for a PHP-based session manager) which of course eventually times out and no longer works, or you hard-code the url to send login information with each connection (which potentially exposes user/pswd information).

Don't get me wrong -- I love RSS and Atom feeds. But I haven't found a 100% solution yet in regards to RSS and forums...

User avatar
Amaril
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1058
Joined: Sun Nov 26, 2006 11:44 am
Location: Atlanta, GA
Contact:

Post by Amaril »

Azhrei wrote:The big issue I've seen with RSS for a forum regards having to log in to the forum. Basically, the forum doesn't know what you've read and what you haven't unless you're logged in, i.e. there's a session cookie active in the client. Many RSS readers don't send browser cookies (gee, what a surprise! :)) so you end up either hard-coding a session ID into the url of the feed (something like ";phpsessionid=xxxxx" for a PHP-based session manager) which of course eventually times out and no longer works, or you hard-code the url to send login information with each connection (which potentially exposes user/pswd information).

Don't get me wrong -- I love RSS and Atom feeds. But I haven't found a 100% solution yet in regards to RSS and forums...
I never found any of that necessary. My only desire for RSS in a forum is to identify new threads. If a particular thread is of interest to me, I subscribe to it via notifications. What more is necessary?

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Post by Azhrei »

Sounds like we differ there, then. I generally don't use notifications.

I have/had RSS feeds for some pretty large sites. The obvious ones, like Digg and Slashdot, but also developerWorks, alphaWorks, and a bunch of others that I don't recall right now.

Because of the variety of stories on Digg, I want to filter them. I don't filter Slashdot much any more as the volume there seems to have gone. Or at least, it looked that way the last time I was there, which admittedly has been quite some time...

User avatar
Amaril
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1058
Joined: Sun Nov 26, 2006 11:44 am
Location: Atlanta, GA
Contact:

Post by Amaril »

Azhrei wrote:Sounds like we differ there, then. I generally don't use notifications.

I have/had RSS feeds for some pretty large sites. The obvious ones, like Digg and Slashdot, but also developerWorks, alphaWorks, and a bunch of others that I don't recall right now.

Because of the variety of stories on Digg, I want to filter them. I don't filter Slashdot much any more as the volume there seems to have gone. Or at least, it looked that way the last time I was there, which admittedly has been quite some time...
Filtering to me isn't a big deal. I subscribe to a lot of news sources, and while the feed articles do build up, Google Reader makes it easy for me to skim through the titles or search for certain keywords within a specific feed.

I'd also like to add that I'd like to be able to subscribe to an RSS feed for an individual thread like on Paizo's forums.

User avatar
Orchard
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1852
Joined: Fri May 09, 2008 10:45 am
Location: Doylestown PA
Contact:

Post by Orchard »

Azhrei wrote:Sounds like we differ there, then. I generally don't use notifications.

I have/had RSS feeds for some pretty large sites. The obvious ones, like Digg and Slashdot, but also developerWorks, alphaWorks, and a bunch of others that I don't recall right now.

Because of the variety of stories on Digg, I want to filter them. I don't filter Slashdot much any more as the volume there seems to have gone. Or at least, it looked that way the last time I was there, which admittedly has been quite some time...
Yeah, Slashdot volume is down, and I've pretty much quit digg.
0+0=1, for very unstable CPUs.

mnology
Kobold
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:42 pm

Post by mnology »

RSS for me just sits in the background and collects. I've got filters locally that I worry about, no need for maintainers to try to determine what I want to see. Just give me everything, I'll decide. I've been using RSS for quite some time, and with the advent of Yahoo pipes and finally a good server side RSS aggregator I'm as happy as can be.

And as far as aggregators on the Mac, well that's where all of the standards for aggregators every one else is snagging from are coming from. Way earlier adoption in the Mac community for RSS subscription. That and the platform independant Google Reader it's not understandable why forum software is still so archaic. I hated having to create a feed that scoops the myriad RPG looking for group forums. I'm quite dismayed better community features haven't made it to the RPG community yet and are still dependant on forum browsing.

User avatar
Azhrei
Site Admin
Posts: 12086
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 1:20 pm
Location: Tampa, FL

Post by Azhrei »

Orchard wrote:Yeah, Slashdot volume is down, and I've pretty much quit digg.
Well, I've quit them all, obviously. And I'm still alive. So obviously RSS and the sites themselves are not critical to my life and health. ;)

And the last few times I've been to Digg, it (somehow!) seemed even worse than when I was reading it regularly.

No, being without an RSS reader has certainly increased my available time! Now I can spend more time here on RPTools. ;)
mnology wrote:And as far as aggregators on the Mac, well that's where all of the standards for aggregators every one else is snagging from are coming from. Way earlier adoption in the Mac community for RSS subscription.
Well, not so much the Mac community as the Unix community. I've been using RSS regularly since ... sheesh, gotta be going back to the mid to late 90's. Always on a Unix platform, usually Linux.

User avatar
trevor
Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
Posts: 11311
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
Location: Austin, Tx
Contact:

Post by trevor »

TK wrote:Yes, I think proper unread post tracking is #1, and sub forums are #2. Any other features are mainly gravy (but still fun none the less).
This is the crux of the problem.

I'm wary of phpbb3 as I've such a poor opinion of phpbb2, but I imagine the upgrade path should be pretty easy. I'll install it on a sub domain and see how it goes.
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

User avatar
trevor
Codeum Arcanum (RPTools Founder)
Posts: 11311
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2006 4:16 pm
Location: Austin, Tx
Contact:

Post by trevor »

UPDATE

And back on topic, my workload is starting to ease up again, so I should be able to get a build out this weekend.
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

User avatar
Orchard
Great Wyrm
Posts: 1852
Joined: Fri May 09, 2008 10:45 am
Location: Doylestown PA
Contact:

Post by Orchard »

trevor wrote:UPDATE

And back on topic, my workload is starting to ease up again, so I should be able to get a build out this weekend.
WOOT!

And there was much rejoicing!
0+0=1, for very unstable CPUs.

User avatar
BigO
Dragon
Posts: 558
Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:23 pm
Location: Oshkosh, WI
Contact:

Post by BigO »

trevor wrote:UPDATE

And back on topic, my workload is starting to ease up again, so I should be able to get a build out this weekend.
I'll second Orchard's WOOT!
--O

I am a small and fragile flower.
http://maptool.rocks.andyousuck.com

Post Reply

Return to “Developer Notes”