NEW FORUMS! - Which one to use?

Jive looks nice, althouh its a pity its commercial.

The jforums one looks iffy (the “home page” link redirects to its own forums - I’m suspicious of software that has no website :().

Can anyone recommend a java forums that they’ve tried to integrate with an external system? This is always the problem (especially with the commercial ones): a naive belief that integration with other systems is up to the user, and usually there’s no docs for it :(, or else it’s unfeasibly difficult becasue they never even considered shared logon with other systems etc >:(.

(I ask because if there IS one then we can try plugging it into JGF instead of having to write our own, which I know is a lot harder than it first sounds)

[quote]Jive looks nice, althouh its a pity its commercial.
[/quote]
They do have a free edition of some sort, but it is not allowed for commercial use, just open source & “free” sites. I’m not sure that JGO would qualify. That said, the Java Desktop guys already have it… so it is already in use within Sun organizations. Maybe that helps?

[quote]The jforums one looks iffy (the “home page” link redirects to its own forums - I’m suspicious of software that has no website :().
[/quote]
I don’t know why they do this… who knows…

But they are pretty confident in the software. We have a JUG (www.guj.com.br) that uses phpBB, and recently the admins started some tests to switch phpBB for jForum. And it is a pretty big community (the forum has more than 4000 registered users).

All,

Thanks for the feedback so far. To address a few concerns:
[]I would like to use a Java based forum package if it is functional, looks good, and is relatively easy to administer.
[] The best packages I have found so far are YaBB’s new version called Simple Machine, phpBB and vBulletin. Best meaning feature sets and “polish” Unfortunately, the Java forums I have found seem to be lacking a bit when compared to these.
[] If I am going to go throught the pain of migrating all of this data and getting a system set up for this community (yet again!) I want to make sure that it is set up so we don’t have to go through this excercise again That is why I am really trying to get a handle on what you want.
[] I will be reviewing jForum and Jive (again) and really would like to have a Java application here, but my primary concern is giving you what you want and need.

Keep the comments and suggestions coming!

-Chris

Ok, so here’s the dealio. If you got some new forums that provided:

[]A clean look (you have to admit that phpBB and YaBB have pretty nice templates)
[]Group boards into collapsable categories
[]Create child boards under other boards. (sub boards)
[]Ability to indicate new posts to child boards
[]Tracking of member’s online time in seconds.
[]Tracking of topics, messages, new members, and hits per day.
[]Individual member statistics accessible from their profile.
[]Send a topic to a friend function.
[]View printer friendly version of topics.
[]Show topics you’ve posted to.
[]Show new replies to your posts.
[]Self moderate your own posts.
[]Ability to view most recent messages.
[]Show all topics that have new replies since your last visit.
[*]Show unread posts since last visit.

would that address most of your concerns?

-Chris

[]censorship (for spam urls - not for badwords)
[]the current set of smilies (they are so cute), but ??? replaced with

[]nice code formatting
[]no annoying focus switching (the cursor jumps to the box were your mouse is over)
[]and uhm… some moderators (not me tho)
[]and of course the current color scheme - I’m really used to it

Looks like we should make a chart of how the various forum software stacks up against these criteria.

Should add:
[*]EMAIL notification that works.

Can someone post some URLs where we can see each of the suggestions in action… I’ve already posted http://Javadesktop.org for Jive. http://Puppygames.net uses phpBB. This place uses an old YaBB, where can we see the new one?
What about the others?

[quote]* censorship (for spam urls - not for badwords)
[/quote]
If I could figure that one out, I wouldn’t be here. I would be on my own island that I purchased by selling that solution to every hosting company on the planet Seriously, moderators are the only real way to address that issue.

[quote]*and uhm… some moderators (not me tho)
[/quote]
Well now, that’s no help! Seriously, we have a few moderators already and I want to give individuals moderation privs. for their own posts and overall moderators for each catagory.

-Chris

Nah… I mean a simple blacklist. Once posted blacklist it… we got for example ~5 of those ipod spams. Doing so works very well against those manual/dumbass pyramid scheme scams

IP ban might well accomplish that.

I’d, er, like to offer my services as an administrator too, as the moderation is far to thinly spread, and I’m, hm, always about

Cas

I’d like to recommend that whatever is used, it has a reasonably fast search feature, that’s one of the things killing yabb (for this board), many forums handle full text searching very quickly which far larger number of posts than this board does, and I doubt that’s all hardware. It’s pretty hard to find stuff that was said before even knowing what was said, I’ve even had a hard time finding some posts I made once when I wanted to go double check them… basically the search functionality, speed, etc on this forum suck fiercly (it’d only be worse if the search was done like the old UBB boards where each forum required a new page to be sent hehe).

Chris & team - great move! ;D Thank you.

While I like phpBB as it’s open source, yadda yadda, I will probably have gray hair and a copy of Duke Nukem Forever by the time version 2.2 is released (it’s been years). Version 2.2 has so many nice features already implemented in the beta (e.g. Sub forums!) that it’s annoying to use 2.0 which while very good, doesn’t have those great features.

I’m voting for vBulliten. It just feels very professional to use (no, I don’t really like the latest look but it is very solid) and has many features of the unreleased phpBB 2.2.

Sub-Forums are very useful. They may not sound like much but think: You can have several forums in one WITHOUT cluttering up the front page. Xith3D for example could have say 4 extra forums dedicated to various different areas. Physics could have a dedicated Odejava forum. An example of sub forums put to good use is: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/index.php

The current problem with the JGO forums is that people object to adding new forums due to front page bloat but that means that some people miss out. Sub-forums can give us the best of both worlds.

Cheers,

Will.

Would anybody prefer an applet based forum? With realtime, threaded HTML formatted replies, arbitrary forum creation and moderation, etc?

Cas

Applets work fine on my homemachine. But from my university they crash badly or run super slow. Older browsers have lots of trouble with applets.

I would like simple HTML… no fany stuff requiring 1000 of plugins.

[quote]All,

Thanks for the feedback so far. To address a few concerns:
[]I would like to use a Java based forum package if it is functional, looks good, and is relatively easy to administer.
[] The best packages I have found so far are YaBB’s new version called Simple Machine, phpBB and vBulletin. Best meaning feature sets and “polish” Unfortunately, the Java forums I have found seem to be lacking a bit when compared to these.
[] If I am going to go throught the pain of migrating all of this data and getting a system set up for this community (yet again!) I want to make sure that it is set up so we don’t have to go through this excercise again That is why I am really trying to get a handle on what you want.
[] I will be reviewing jForum and Jive (again) and really would like to have a Java application here, but my primary concern is giving you what you want and need.

Keep the comments and suggestions coming!

-Chris
[/quote]
I dug around for some other open source Java based forums. The more promising ones I found are:

http://www.mvnforum.com/mvnforumweb/index.jsp

http://www.jzforum.org/

http://yazd.yasna.com/

I haven’t tested any of them though. At work, I’ve been doing similar things for some CMS software - talk about tedious…

The ironic thing is that I helped a friend work on a Java based forum:
http://www.aceshardware.com/forum/

I did most of the optimisations However, it’s pretty light on options…

[quote]I’d like to recommend that whatever is used, it has a reasonably fast search feature, that’s one of the things killing yabb (for this board), many forums handle full text searching very quickly which far larger number of posts than this board does, and I doubt that’s all hardware. It’s pretty hard to find stuff that was said before even knowing what was said, I’ve even had a hard time finding some posts I made once when I wanted to go double check them… basically the search functionality, speed, etc on this forum suck fiercly (it’d only be worse if the search was done like the old UBB boards where each forum required a new page to be sent hehe).
[/quote]
Agreed. YaBB is easy to administer but is a resource hog and is flat file. The new forum will be database driven and MUCH faster.

[quote] Sub-Forums are very useful. They may not sound like much but think: You can have several forums in one WITHOUT cluttering up the front page. Xith3D for example could have say 4 extra forums dedicated to various different areas. Physics could have a dedicated Odejava forum. An example of sub forums put to good use is: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/index.php

The current problem with the JGO forums is that people object to adding new forums due to front page bloat but that means that some people miss out. Sub-forums can give us the best of both worlds.
[/quote]
I think they are very useful as well! This will allow for discussion around particular issues, games, projects, etc. to occurr and stay on topic.

[quote]Would anybody prefer an applet based forum? With realtime, threaded HTML formatted replies, arbitrary forum creation and moderation, etc?
[/quote]
The goal from my side subscribes to the KISS method I need to maintain something that is flexable, provides most of what most here need and is EASY to administer, as my time is already compressed as is.

Thanks to all who responded!

-Chris

Whatever forum software you choose, please pick one with the ability to read and post via NNTP and open up that port.
I prefer to read discusions in my newsreader, where I have a nice and usable interface and a good editor instead of this clunky browser based interface.

I posted this in the suggestions topic yesterday, do any of the listed forums support RSS feeds?

Or as the previous post suggests, on that works with NNTP would also be cool.

I don’t like the idea of applets, and I have no real need for a real-time chat feature (I live in Sydney so I’m always in bed when you lot are on here).

Ideally the forum would be written using JSPs (eating our own dogfood etc), but choosing one that does the job should ultimately be chosen.

Oh and new posts since you were last here would be nice, and that shouldn’t be based on some cookie on my PC, since I browse theese forums from 2 places (work and home), so it should be a server side flag.

Keep up the good work.

Andy.

Anyone read the latest JavaLobby email?

[quote]The Pain and Joy of Upgrading
At the end of last week, Jive Software finally released version 4 of their excellent forum software (which powers Javalobby). I?ve been eagerly awaiting this new version for some months now and it couldn?t have come at a better time. We?re smack in the middle of our redesign and fortunately we saved the forum skin for the end. This new version is loaded with new features including polls, private messaging, batch emails for watches, sticky announcements, and the ability to expose forums as NNTP newsgroups. In addition, they have an Expert Edition that lets users have statuses similar to other message boards and deeper integration into the Knowledge Base. …
[/quote]

[quote]Anyone read the latest JavaLobby email?
[/quote]
Jive can’t be that bad. Also the official Java forum is powered by “Jive Forums”. (At least there’s such a button on the bottom): http://forum.java.sun.com/