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By shadex on
Recently some of my websites have been growing pretty fast. Especially a blog/community site which i ran on wordpress. It was fine for 1 blog, however multiple bloggers and forum requests, and this and that has been to much. I was pretty much going to say screw drupal as it seemed many of the devolpers wouldn't admit that the drupal forums suck, and there needs to be a temporary solution till they can get them up to code. I noticed there was a nice addon for phpbb. While the coding rather blows, it already has all the mods made for community forums, such as point systems and all that jazz. I plan to overhaul my website tomorow to incorperate the powerfull drupal system, with popular user favoret phpbb forums. Man, whoever did that mod is converting more people then katie homes at a gay rights parade. Kudo's to you.
I must say that i love the blog features and content management features, as they seem to be very flexable. The code is also very sleek. You can feel it in the end unit, though it would be nicer to have a bit more of a GUI, hence the control panel mod.
To the guys who want to make Drupal's forum and only drupals forum nice and good before finding any alternatives. You won't be able to have nearly the amount of mods as a preexisting forum. As a programer's perspective i completely understand. As a webmaster and buisnessman who's job is to give my viewers what they want, it's suicidial. You have probly THE best CMS in the game, it just hard to use and there arn't many good alternatives to the forums. Solve those, and the CMS race is over, you win.
Comments
what a stupid post
grow up!!!
Well...
I wouldn't say that it's stupid. His comments represent a definite viewpoint, and there are a number of people who agree with him regarding the need for integration with systems like PHPBB and vBulletin. There are several projects in place to do just that, and some folks have had great success with them. I'm glad those options are out there for those that want them.
The kind of inherent separation that occurs when you 'graft' two systems like that together, though, is not something to be taken lightly. It can work when there is a very very strict separation between the kind of user experience and the kind of content one finds in 'the forums' and the kind one encounters in the rest of the site. A magazine with a separate 'sandbox' for readers to chat amongst themselves, for example. For more integrated community sites, though, that doesn't work well.
For some sites, the solution is to add more modules onto a system like PHPBB. For others, it's to use Drupal's completely integrated forum system. There are pros and cons to both and there's definitely room for improvement -- but it's certainly an exaggeration to say that it's "suicide" not to integrate an existing forum package. Just as much as it would be to say that the developers of PHP are 'committing suicide' by not supporting Drupal plugin modules.
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Eaton's blog | VotingAPI discussion
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Eaton — Partner at Autogram
well
As someone who saves money by using Open Source software, you, yourself have the power to influence change. As a webmaster and businessman you can PAY for improvements in the Drupal forums module to add enhancements that you need or fund those very integration efforts whose code you currently hold in such disgust despite your preference for it's mods.
Of course, your post does seem to be in the best format and verbiage of a professional webmaster and businessman. As a contributor, I must say your post inspires me to continue not getting paid to help people. You sir, are an inspiration.
In the meantime, I draw your attention to a section of forum posting tips
Best of luck with your implementation. Youll find Drupal grows on you.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Assuming i'm going to pay
Assuming i'm going to pay for those improvements, it would be a decent idea if i tried something first isn't it? Second of all, most open source CMS's beat the hell out of paid CMS's. Though thats fine. I'm only stating 99% of what the people (not you or the other dev's) have said.
I think your missing the entire point steve, The object for a content management system is for the users to be able to manage there content in the way they choose. As a coder, sure, everyone wants only the sleek, perfect code, that is writen in binary that takes .000001 sec's to load and can do everything and make a cup of coffie. Why make it open-source if your only concerned about the code though? End result you want the best CMS out there right? You want a CMS that can seemlessly every type of content management avaliable right? The perfect CMS? Well, if 99% of the people are telling you that "hey i want to be able to plug in PHPBB forums", telling them there all wrong makes you look like an idiot. And thats what i've seen so far. A bunch of people telling the majority that there wrong, and that something thats extreamly popular request will not be added. Why? Because it seems like everyone wants to make there own little forum projects. End result? I'd rather have a forum that has some bells and whistles, because even though it doesn't run as well, it makes my users happy, and they pay me money. Giving them a sleek code perfect forum that can't even display an avatar without work, it makes them unhappy and they don't pay money.
I appreciate that alot of you do this on your own free time. Getting pissy at me because i'm telling you what the majority of the users of YOUR product have already told you, is pretty stupid. It takes a marage of dev's and users and advertisers to make a product work. And unless you really expect to sit in the basement working on a brilliant system that no one will use, then perhaps you might think that working with the webmasters may infact be a common goal.
understanding open source communities
Seems you have a slight misunderstanding of what open source is about which is based more on a proprietary software model with consumer expectations. Open source is a collaborative means of producing software which allows people to work together to improve the code per their specific needs and interests.
The fact that the forums have not been more fully developed with additional contributed modules that would give you the features you seek is because no one has been willing to code it or pay to have it coded. So it's not about what people are clamouring for; it's about how it meets with the goals of those that are doing the coding, goals which are generally influenced by their clients' needs. As soon as some of the developers take on clients that want these features and are willing to pay for it, it will happen. Or if someone decides to do it on their own because it happens to be their particular interest or they think it will open up a niche market for them.
This may run counter to your expectations thanks to the seemingly altruistic nature of open source code being free to download (and those that promote that ideal). Code is open source because it facilitates that collaboration and allows people to make modifications and help the product grow (so that all developers benefit), not to serve the needs of the general users you describe. On the contrary, as I hope you can see from what I've said, development tends to support the needs of very specific users. But the trick is those users can be anyone willing to support development.
Meanwhile, I personally believe that the forums are fine and that given Drupal's particular architecture, it would be better to develop social networking and document management features to make it the "perfect CMS." We each have our own opinions :-)
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Charlie Lowe | cyberdash
Tips for posting to the Drupal forums
actually I'm not.
I'm not missing the point. I do think you may have missed mine though.
You state that Drupal forums 'suck'. That's not true. Drupal.org forums work fairly well at what they were designed and programed to do. Drupal.org uses it's own forums and has for years now. You can add additional modules to change and modify behavior if you so desire. You can add features, etc. In other words, they work just fine for the people who see fit to use them.
Now, if you want Drupal's forum module to be improved, someone has to code that. None of the regular developer/contributors has seen a need to do this. For free. At all. in years. Dries has on numerous occassions stated that as with ALL modules in core, he would be happy to review patches to improve forum modules. No one has contributed to this, or paid for anyone to do this. Many went off on various annoying rants and demands.
Now, one guy liked vbforums, but he was different. He actually produced code to use it. Of course, vbforum isn't free but that's all right, he worked to solve his own itch and arrived at a solution for his needs. He didn't rant at people he just met. He solved a need.
Introducing yourself to Drupal.org with the opening loaded salvo of Drupal forums suck and ranting on with faint praise is an ineffective method of introducing yourself and communicating yourself in general to the community.
You have also made an additional mistake with another of your assumptions. I am a site admin. Not a developer. I recently did learn how to use a php if else statement so that may be changing.
Drupal developers take UI considerations into account all the time. Lots of drawn out conversations and such. Oddly enough, pretty much all the developers are web masters too. Many have clients they sell services too and most donate a chunk of the code improvements, if any back into Drupal.
However, we are not here to sell anyone Drupal. There is no entity named 'Drupal' that makes money or is motivated to do any of this for a 'target market'. There are Drupal based shops, individual developers, hobbyist, etc though that do have an interest in making money. Many of them use Drupal to make their life easier and develop sites and solutions for their customers and friends faster..... In all those people doing this though... not one of them has seen the need to improve Durpal's forum module for free.
So, let's get down to basics. Can the forum module be improved? You bet. Please be the one to do so, either through code or funds. Rants are not productive. No one is going to do this because of lectures, rants and demands. No one so far in several years has decided to do so out of the goodness of their own heart. This is a voluntary projects. The code freeze for the next version is in a few weeks so now is the time to introduce improvements.
Demands and rants arn't useful or interesting. It's why I posted the hint from forum tips. I really want you to use Drupal.org's forums (ironically) effectivily to get help when you need it and post questions. Turns out reputation can have an impact. In all seriousness I hope you enjoy and benefit from Drupal and wish you the best of luck
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Try flatforum module?
Shadex, take a look at the flatforum.module (contributed project). It might be closer to what you need.