Is there room?

spl1nter · 03-09-2004, 02:12 PM

I am developing a new PHP/MySQL based forum. I am hoping to make it extremely easy to customize, accessable for people with disabilities and expandable so that it can run not only forums, but whole sites.

I am hoping to release a commercial and freeware version.

Do you believe there is enough need for this?

I am not relying on it to provide a stable income and I am mainly creating it to see if I can, but I just wanted your opinions on this.

**LazyJim** · 03-10-2004, 05:42 AM

I say go for it!

spl1nter · 03-10-2004, 04:33 PM

Yay!

Thanol · 03-10-2004, 06:51 PM

Yea if you're just doing it for fun go for it.

robert adams · 03-10-2004, 08:19 PM

have you looked around to see what is there . try http://phpbb.com
phpbbhacks.com
not to mention all the others, vbulletin, phpnuke, etc.

If you can write one that fixes some of the problems with the rest of them, you should have a winner on your hands.

luck,
robert

Brian · 03-10-2004, 09:11 PM

There are currently the big three - phpbb, ipb, and vbulletin. They all have flaws and lack things that the user needs. If you could create a forum that had what the users needed, as well as support, a nice skin, and good code, then go for it. The only hard thing is making the software popular.

CrAg · 03-11-2004, 12:03 AM

If you want to see what you can do the go for it.
I do not think there is much need to create one because there are things like: InvisionBoard, PHPBB, vBulleting...

I wish you to create something better than those boards.
In case if you come up with something better then I would like to try it out.

**LazyJim** · 03-11-2004, 04:00 PM

Personally I would make it in XML-XSLT (with PHP translation backup), XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, MySQL and PHP.
But still function fine with just HTML (and PHP).

The DB would have to be well designed to meet users' funtional needs AND speed requirements. at the same time!

I only say use MySQL because I guess it would be faster at searching, storing and fetching. Would I be correct in that assumption?

spl1nter · 03-11-2004, 04:47 PM

I am using MySQL because it is extremely fast and it is the only database I have had any experience with.

**LazyJim** · 03-12-2004, 03:28 AM

It's also the most common db and widely supported on web hosts - making your web software compatible with as many people's hosts as possible (without adding support for multiple db's which would also be possible I imagine).

spl1nter · 03-23-2004, 11:12 AM

I've nearly completed the main design

Still got a bit of work to do.

I've been having fun seeing how much I can alter the site using just the CSS. I've created whole new sites in 10 mins. It's great fun

greg · 03-23-2004, 11:28 AM

as far as making it popular, as Brian said, the key is just getting a few sites with decent traffic to agree to use your software. That is the best way things spread. They look down at the bottom of the site and see that it is running whatever it is that you made, and people like that.

Has to be able to be heavily customized, has to look good, have a good code base behind it, and easy to use. If you can do all that then you have a winner. Like Brian said, the big 3 in forums all have major flaws, find a way to fix them all and combine the strengths of each and you have a good forum.

jadzia · 03-23-2004, 12:23 PM

When you have it done, I'd love to see it.

What you're proposing is pretty much what I've been looking for. Keep us updated on your progress.

spl1nter · 03-23-2004, 01:33 PM

I'm planning on submitting several copies to fairly large sites. Obviously they probably won't want to change if all the messages get deleted so I'm planning to include some database update scripts. This means that the databases used by phpBB, Invision etc. etc. will be transfered to my forum.

You can take a look at how the site is shaping up by clicking here: http://home.graffiti.net/spl1nter:graffiti.net/

Don't expect it to end up looking like that though

The site has gone through several major changes in about a month.

jadzia · 03-23-2004, 02:05 PM

Looks like its shaping up pretty nicely for you. Keep up the work.

SVB · 03-23-2004, 03:37 PM

Cool :-)

spl1nter · 04-01-2004, 03:52 PM

I have a question. Since the design is all in the CSS that's going to produce a large file (currently about 15Kb but this is unoptimised). Each page has it's own section in this file. Should I create multiple CSS files that are used by each individual page? There would be one general CSS file and one for the forum's main page, one for the inbox etc. etc.

This would also make each CSS file less daunting to hand-edit for the users.