Upgrade The Forum With phpBB Software!

ID:122189
 
Dec 24 2011, 3:19 am
Redundant
Applies to:Website
Status: Redundant
This feature has already been implemented, or is already achievable with existing methods.
Overall, I have not found the BYOND developer forum to be very user friendly and it's also a bit hard to read what everyone is posting. Every time you want to read about a topic, you have to click the show all button to see the replies. People that are new to the community might not even notice the button for a while, and even then they would likely be annoyed by it. Another issue is that HTML code is not very straight forward. I understand that the development community here is more than smart enough to code in HTML, but it would certainly help to have your mind free to think about other things, like Dream Maker coding instead. My point is that the current forum system here is not nearly as streamlined and efficient at exchanging information as today's standards. I believe this also prevents the community from reaching its full potential. I think BYOND would become so much more popular with an improved forum system. Also, why restrict it by calling it a "Developer" Forum? Perhaps regular players and users of BYOND would also like to give their feedback on the software.

I think the obvious solution here is to switch to phpBB or some other kind of forum software. With a Bulletin style forum everything would become so much easier. You can view posts immediately, without having to worry about how it will list them. You can create new topics and reply using the much more intuitive BBCode. BBCode is also far more secure than HTML. I could go on and on about how much better it is to use software like phpBB, but the point is, there shouldn't be any reason not to use Bulletin Board type software, as long as the server here at byond.com can handle it. I suggest using the phpBB software simply because it is free and open source. The only thing it would cost to make this change is time and effort. I am only advertising this software for the sake of improving BYOND's community.

I believe that if this were implemented, the community would grow and reach a whole new level over the long term. I predict that when the flash client capability is finished, BYOND will receive an explosion of popularity, so I think we should plan for it!



Dec 24 2011, 11:55 am
I don't think you've given an actual reason to switch to phpBB. The current forum style has worked fine for like, 10 years.
Dec 24 2011, 3:48 pm
I don't find your argument in favor of BBCode, and against HTML, to be very compelling at all. HTML is quite straight-forward, and furthermore, most browsers still support legacy HTML tags that BBCode attempts to emulate. It is also quite easy to secure, as the most "insecure" thing one can do with HTML is link to disgusting or disturbing images, something BBCode does not the least bit mitigate.

Also, I personally hate phpBB and other similar bulletin-board style forum software. Not only are they typically very ugly in how they're implemented, but on top of that the bulletin board view of threads typically forces conversation to go one way, which is the most popular topic of conversation. A fully-threaded view allows for multiple paths of conversation. This is definitely a plus in a community like BYOND's, as it allows for multiple replies directly to an initial post with varying ways of implementing something, or fixing a feature. For other websites like this, particularly for programming, see Stack Overflow.
Dec 24 2011, 10:53 pm
Granted, the default BYOND forum layout is horrendous, but they don't really need to implement an entirely new system to fix it. For the most part, you can make the forums functional by going into preferences and changing the settings to Topic View, All Messages, 100, 25. Which should be the default, but as usual simple improvements are flat out shot down by the BYOND staff, and argued against by the incompetent community.
Dec 24 2011, 10:55 pm
I hate phpbb forums.
Dec 24 2011, 11:01 pm (Edited on Dec 24 2011, 11:15 pm)
SuperAntx wrote:
I hate phpbb forums.
Well, that is some informative reasoning that we should take into account...?

Considering every legitimate website in the known universe (Steam Forums, WoW Forums, Google/Youtube Forums) uses a forum layout similar to what phpBB provides, I would say that it has a major advantage if for nothing other than user familiarity. The default BYOND forum layout is horrendous to the point of being unusable, I really have no idea how anyone is in support of it. Seeing a spam list of 30,000 identical titles from posts in the same topic isn't exactly informative, intuitive, or quick and easy to use. Neither is showing only a single message at a time...
Dec 24 2011, 11:19 pm
The Steam forums are a cluttered mess, the WoW forums used to be nice looking but now they look boring and brown, and the Google forums have 60% of the screen space devoted to useless stuff and empty space.

The BYOND forums in comparison are simple, streamlined, and easy to read. You can tell exactly who's replying to who, there's a thread tree, and you can jump through the discussion with the Post/Parent/Next ID's. There are no signatures, there aren't RSS buttons everywhere, and it's not cluttered with meta info about new registrations or birthdays. Most importantly there isn't some crappy rich text editor garbling up my text. I enter my message and/or HTML and the post looks exactly as I intended.

The only shortcoming is the lack of sticky posts.
Dec 24 2011, 11:21 pm (Edited on Dec 24 2011, 11:34 pm)
I'm not saying that they should add all of the fluff features that phpBB forums usually have. Just change BYOND's default forum preferences to the ones that I mentioned below, which provide a vastly superior and far more familiar layout.

SuperAntx wrote:
The Steam forums are a cluttered mess
I don't see how anyone could possibly describe the version on the right as a "cluttered mess" compared to that list on the left.

> I enter my message and/or HTML and the post looks exactly as I intended.
This isn't exactly the case, since the BYOND forums interpret both HTML and plain text literally. Making posts with line breaks difficult to write with readability.

> You can tell exactly who's replying to who, there's a thread tree, and you can jump through the discussion with the Post/Parent/Next ID's.
This could be a legitimate argument, except that there are far more intuitive methods of displaying such information. Like indenting the actual posts, instead of just their titles in a giant, uninformative list.
Dec 24 2011, 11:34 pm
Yes, switching the defaults around would definitely help. I think the worst offender is the single message display, that should default to all messages.

As for the thread view, I still think that's the best way to browse the forum. Usually there are 2-4 large discussions going on, it's better to see the discussion trees for those topics rather than a list of 100 stale topics.

Lowering the Maximum Thread Depth will fix the problem where one single mega thread starts causing line breaks all over the place.
Dec 24 2011, 11:36 pm
I honestly don't know what some of you have against phpBB style forums, as they are much more organized and easy to read than what we have here at BYOND. They can be organized into subforums, threads, and topics, etc. That's not to mention how much nicer forums look with custom stylesheets and such.
Just take a look at these nice examples of what a programming forum can look like with BBCode.
technicaltalk.net

cboard.cprogramming.com

BYOND's current developer forum looks and feels more like a blog than it does a forum, and I think implementing a BBCode style forum would solve that.
Dec 25 2011, 12:09 am
Another issue the BYOND forum has is the design of the topic creation area. Replying to topics is even less fully featured and is very blog-like.

With BBCode, you can have a nice topic creation and reply interface such as this example:

Dec 25 2011, 6:13 pm
We're finishing up a major site upgrade that will bring the forums more in a phpBB-like direction, which should improve readability and the user experience considerably. The main driving force for this is what you said in your last paragraph: We believe this should be a big improvement once the Flash is ready.

We will not, however, be implementing BBcode. I too am unimpressed by the arguments in favor of BBcode. Anyone who can figure out BBcode can figure out basic HTML.
Dec 26 2011, 12:03 pm
Lummox JR wrote:
Anyone who can figure out BBcode can figure out basic HTML.
That's not necessarily true. Inserting an image, for example, isn't exactly an intuitive process with HTML. phpBB also includes buttons to format posts (as seen in that screenshot below) which would probably be beneficial to BYOND; especially one for inserting DM tags around selected code.