Talk:Comparison of Internet forum software (PHP)

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With forums updated constantly, this is going to be a difficult page to keep up to date.

For example, Vanilla has been udpated recently, and can do most of what, the wiki says it can't

no suggestion, jsut an observation

Yes, definitely. The old article was even more difficult to keep up to date, though, before I split it. Wrldwzrd89 12:53, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Programming language 2 Removal of Acmlmboard? 3 Stable version? 4 Broken homepages 5 How about DOCUMENTED security issues column count 6 UTF-8 support information lacking 7 Tuxxedo Forums 8 Sylphagora 9 Notability on a lot of these. 10 Removal of Access in Database compatibility list?

[edit] Programming language

what is the need for the Programming language column - they are all php as described by the name of the page --84.67.144.10 16:14, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. Wrldwzrd89 17:01, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

We should have had a "Database" column instead, not all PHP boards use MySQL, some use Flatfile. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.150.250.105 (talk) 23:25, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

That's what this part of the article is for. --Detruire 05:19, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Acmlmboard?

Should the Acmlmboard software be shown here? The original Acmlm's Board is gone, the two successors (||board and board2) use new boards recoded from scratch, and the Acmlmboard software featured here is only used by a few splinter boards... it seems too minor and irrelevant for an encyclopedic page. --71.124.173.134 02:39, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree - I went ahead and removed it since the board author mentions on his page that the board software is not production-quality. Wrldwzrd89^talk 16:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stable version?

How are we defining a stable version? Some of the software on the page has the latest version labeled as 'Alpha'. Wiktionary states an 'alpha version' as being possible unstable. Basically what I'd like to know is: should I stick to versions not labeled 'Alpha', 'Beta', 'Gamma', 'RC', etc. or just use such version numbers anyway? Detruire 03:43, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Broken homepages

Both Sylphagora [1] and Monkeyboards [2] have broken home pages. Should should I remove the links to the home pages? Detruire 04:08, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Monkeyboards is fine now. But Sylphagora still needs to be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.150.250.105 (talk) 23:35, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

That's odd. Monkeyboards gives me a lovely 404 reminiscent of bad permissions or a missing directory. Detruire 10:36, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

aterr url link doesn't work either maybe it should be removed feb 29 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lazyb (talk • contribs) 18:13, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up. I went ahead and removed Sylphagora, Monkey Boards, and aterr. Wrldwzrd89^talk 19:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How about DOCUMENTED security issues column count

for each of these products - know there are several - and many have issues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.207.239.128 (talk) 20:13, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

First, what do you mean with a count of security issues? The total amount of issues found or the current number of unpatched? Security issues are found and fixed all the time. Second, apart from the huge amount of work this would require, some projects do not always disclose security information or even a decent changelog. If you want (somewhat) trustworthy information, consult Bugtraq and similar websites. --DietrichM 16:04, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It would, indeed, be far too much work for many of us to manage. We'd have to scour the net looking for vulnerability reports. Many of which are double-ups, or cannot (notably) be replicated by others. For the additional work involved, not enough benefit is provided. Detruire 06:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, what would it tell people? Just numbers outright are pointless. For example, phpBB 3 has had 0 issues according to Secunia. vBulletin 3.x has had 16 issues. Alone, that makes it look like phpBB is more secure. However, vB 3.x is ~3 years old, while phpBB 3 hasn't even hit gold yet. People who push vuln numbers normally have an agenda; alone they are useless metrics. NeoThermic 16:33, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UTF-8 support information lacking

Running a multi-national web community requires UTF-8 support. Even if you restrict communication to English or some other lingua franca, still the names and places contain characters outside the range of one single ISO 8859 chart.

In Europe, for instance, having German, French, Czech and Hungarian community members in a single database requires that it is coded in UTF-8. Using ISO 8859-1 you can spell German and French but not Czech an Hungarian words, while using ISO 8859-2 you can write Czech and Hungarian but not German. Not to mention Scandinavian, Baltic, Greek, Russian and so on.

The growing need for UTF-8 support is reflected in emerging new software versions like phpBB V. 3. It is therefore desirable to find information whether or not the various Forum systems support UTF-8.

--Liberatus 17:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tuxxedo Forums

The link given for this as-yet unreleased forum software doesn't work (404 Not Found), plus I can't get their website to load in Safari 3 for Leopard by getting rid of the directories. Wrldwzrd89^talk 23:36, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

After doing some more poking around, I determined that the Tuxxedo website is simply unfinished at this time, thus explaining why I couldn't load it. Wrldwzrd89^talk 17:11, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The Tuxxedo forums software is incomplete and I doubt it will be ready for a while. It can be added when it's completed. RedSHIFT (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sylphagora

The link for Sylphagora is dead. What should I do with the entry? Remove the link? Delete it altogether (a Google search turned up no alternative working links)? Wrldwzrd89^talk 20:05, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability on a lot of these.

Is it just me, or has this page become somewhat of an advertisement space for people who are starting up their own forum software projects?

I think we should go through the entire thing and remove software that lacks reasonable recognition. "Free BB" for instance, why on earth is that in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.56.253.15 (talk) 03:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

You're right there, I'll start to remove a few of these. RedSHIFT (talk) 16:04, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed all of the dead-links, however I noticed some of the tables weren't synced with each other - missing rows etc. Looking through the websites of these I also noticed that many of these (to me) weren't exactly notable. Is there a Wikipedia policy on software notability? Number of users perhaps? RedSHIFT (talk) 16:23, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a guideline for list articles, WP:SAL. Basically it says that items in a list like this should have their own wiki article as a baseline for inclusion. Ham Pastrami (talk) 14:03, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Access in Database compatibility list?

Previously one forum had a 'yes' in the Access list, that was phpBB 2.0.x. Since it has been replaced by phpBB 3.0.x which removed Access database support, no forum on the page has support for Access databases anymore. Should that section of the Database Compatibility list be removed? NeoThermic (talk) 11:38, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I say yes, it should. If no forums support a feature, why include it in the listings? Wrldwzrd89^talk 21:50, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

The change has been made. Wrldwzrd89^talk 14:00, 11 June 2008 (UTC)