Are any of you familiar with SMF - Simple Machines Forum?

http://www.simplemachines.org/

I regularly visit one site where it is used. It's very, very good. It's open source and free. Better than vBulletin in my opinion. I believe it could be hacked so that credit and RAC could be shown under username. It would allow previewing, private messaging and subforums for teams and lots of other options currently missing.

If there is someone with programming skills, who would have time to research, how it could be made to interact with rosetta stats to include credits under username, could that person possibly please do so?

What are your opinions? I believe majority would be happy to make switch to better a forum.

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There are several other third-party forum software that are arguably better than BOINC's own software. Perhaps the biggest issue with using them is hooking the authentication in so that users don't have to register again to use the forum.

My personal preference is phpBB, but that's because I've used it and coded for it so much. SIMAP and RieselSieve both use phpBB for their forums. I think I could probably make phpBB work with BOINC without having to re-register.

The other big thing that the BOINC forum software gives is uniformity across most projects. It could get quite confusing if every project using different software for their own forum.

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Perhaps the biggest issue with using them is hooking the authentication in so that users don't have to register again to use the forum.

I assume that some "server side includes" function of SMF would provide a way to port the data so no separate registering would be necessary.


phpBB is really crappy and simplistic compared to SMF (opinion).

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I certainly think a lot of people would like to see improvements in the forum GUI.

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Not all Czech`s bounce but I`d like to try with Barbar ;-)

Make no mistake This IS the TEDDIES TEAM.

I certainly think a lot of people would like to see improvements in the forum GUI.

Yeah! I totally agree. I would definitely love to see that happened.

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The forum code is open source so all it needs are some developers to come along and improve it but so far no one has.

I think it would be a mistake to change the forum to another type, as this forum enables you to look at peoples user accounts on Rosetta quite easily if the computers are not hidden and you also get to view peoples Rosetta profiles, all things that are not hard coded into any other type of forum software

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Open source being the key phrase. BOINC developed their own forums so they could assure they, and the projects that join BOINC, don't have to pay any royalties to anyone. There are many good forum applications out there... are any of them open source? And even if they are, someone pointed out they don't necessarily STAY open source. Not sure how you can pull back on that, but sounds like it's happened before. So, by doing it themselves, BOINC assures there's no licensing issues there.

All of the BOINC source code is available for download. It just takes someone with some time and the right skills.

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I think it would be a mistake to change the forum to another type, as this forum enables you to look at peoples user accounts on Rosetta quite easily if the computers are not hidden and you also get to view peoples Rosetta profiles, all things that are not hard coded into any other type of forum software

That's just linking your username to the Rosetta site with your profile - having your username link to somewhere shouldn't be an issue with any forum software. I don't see why total credits and RAC couldn't be added to another forum type the same way they were added here.

Open source being the key phrase. BOINC developed their own forums so they could assure they, and the projects that join BOINC, don't have to pay any royalties to anyone. There are many good forum applications out there... are any of them open source? And even if they are, someone pointed out they don't necessarily STAY open source. Not sure how you can pull back on that, but sounds like it's happened before. So, by doing it themselves, BOINC assures there's no licensing issues there.

All of the BOINC source code is available for download. It just takes someone with some time and the right skills.

phpBB is open source and I don't see how they could go back on it - you can't just have volunteers improve your code, then claim it as your own and start charging for it ;)

I'd imagine it's the same for all the other popular forum kits, chances are their popularity comes from being available at no cost :p

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There is still no point changing to a new forum, this one works fine for what the project needs, the only way it will get better if is php developers will come forward to tweak all the forum code

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The old points system worked for the projects needs.

The trouble is you`ve been used to this asylum and know it all too well. Come here as a newbie and the look is different. Once you get your medication and get used to the place you can find your way about....just, but it`s not good. Take for example the night it disappeared for the new points system, many people missed that line in the news section and hundreds were running around like headless chickens.

It`s lacking in sections, there should be a whacking team section where teams live within the project, instead they`re outside you don`t know what they`re doing and vice versa.

There`s loads wrong here with the forum, but it`s comfortable for those inhouse few, who really don`t care about making others feel comfortable.

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Not all Czech`s bounce but I`d like to try with Barbar ;-)

Make no mistake This IS the TEDDIES TEAM.

It`s lacking in sections, there should be a whacking team section where teams live within the project, instead they`re outside you don`t know what they`re doing and vice versa.

Then sections can be added its not exactly hard to do that

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UBT, I`d like to agree with you, cos I`m that sort of bloke....but...

It is obviously hard cos many of us asked for eon`s, now had we asked for something really hard like a fair points system...<whistle>

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Not all Czech`s bounce but I`d like to try with Barbar ;-)

Make no mistake This IS the TEDDIES TEAM.

UBT, I`d like to agree with you, cos I`m that sort of bloke....but...

It is obviously hard cos many of us asked for eon`s, now had we asked for something really hard like a fair points system...<whistle>

Nice and simple to do don't know why they will not listen to the users for more sections to be added?

I suppose that is another story ;)

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This forum is by far ugliest and most inconvinient one I use at the moment. phpBB, vBulleten, Simple Machines and 3-4 inhouse developed - all are better. And yes - phpBB is open source, and way more advanced, and there is no possible way open source project could close source.

Someone think this forum serve the need of project? If there is convinient, neat and fast way, and inconvinient plus ugly one, wich would serve project needs better?

Plus SIMAP switched phpBB already. And, phpBB is not only choise.

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SIMAP had phpbb from the start, abandoning the BOINC forums is not the way to go, finding volunteers to re-code it is the best way to go.

Hell the Dev's here can even tweak it to there liking if they so wish (but they don't seem that interested in the forum side of it)

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You all really should take this discussion over to the BOINC message boards.

The forum software is provided by BOINC as part of the project server package, and is integrated with the project's database.

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

Angus, we don't need to go to BOINC about something that Rosetta@home can change.

I don't see the point in tinkering on the current forum - no need to reinvent the wheel.

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Angus, we don't need to go to BOINC about something that Rosetta@home can change.

The forum software is BOINC-provided. If you want it changed, convince BOINC to change it.

It works fine now - why change it anyway?

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Proudly Banned from Predictator@Home and now Cosmology@home as well. Added SETI to the list today. Temporary ban only - so need to work harder :)



"You can't fix stupid" (Ron White)

Angus, we don't need to go to BOINC about something that Rosetta@home can change.

The forum software is BOINC-provided. If you want it changed, convince BOINC to change it.

It works fine now - why change it anyway?

SIMAP is a boinc project, it uses phpBB - there's no one forcing Rosetta@Home to use the provided forum software.

The current system has a great many shortcomings, to list only a few:

No private messages
No preview function
No attachments
No user selectable theme
No thread subscriptions (closest is an e-mail if someone makes a post, only useful if you watch your e-mail all the time)
Very limited quoting


And did I mention no preview function? ;)

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