Help Needed

[admin]

I'd avoid PHP wherever possible, but that's something I try not to get into big online debates about

If you're going to use PHP anyway, is there a specific reason to avoid phpBB? Its security record seems about as good as any other PHP app, and everyone already knows how to use it.

Yes, we should NOT get into debates about PHP vs JAVA vs ROR vs C++ vs XYZ. Don't even bring up databases. We're all old enough to know that leads nowhere.

phpBB is fine for the time being. I agree it has got many good things going for it. It needs to be integrated more into the main site, that could be one task for someone. Like I said earlier, it is one of the dogs bollox of internet forums - the other being vBulletin. Its just that they are both overkill for a site which has only 4 categories and about 200+ posts. As for users knowing how to use it - you got me there, its gonna be real hard for them to switch to another forum

Attention should be focused on the main site and the fundamental features. Not just features but the user experience, encouraging them to upload content. Before that happens I think we need the admins blessing...

[sixxie]

I'd avoid PHP wherever possible, but that's something I try not to get into big online debates about

Yes, we should NOT get into debates about PHP vs JAVA vs ROR vs C++ vs XYZ. Don't even bring up databases. We're all old enough to know that leads nowhere.

Quite so. And I wouldn't argue in favour of any of those - especially XYZ - it's horribly object orientated, which makes it a pig to security check

As for users knowing how to use it - you got me there, its gonna be real hard for them to switch to another forum

Heh, well, I meant from an administrative perspective, but I guess Simon's not exactly clueless here

I completely support your suggestion of implementing only what's needed. I remember the old forum software on the site I (was part of a team that) administered - part of its requirements spec was "be Oracle back-ended". When the guy who specced that left we rewrote it to use an NNTP backend - much more suited to the task. I think it's all been replaced by something else now, but suspect that's more a case of new people coming in and what they know how to use. Probably replaced it all with a "clicken-zie-here" interface.

Attention should be focused on the main site and the fundamental features. Not just features but the user experience, encouraging them to upload content. Before that happens I think we need the admins blessing...

Indeed, and:

Once that happens I will allow trusted members the ability to mirror the content, just in case..

This is essential for something like this. I like. I've certainly been tempted to document stuff only on my own site purely because then I "know" it will stay there.

BTW, admin, we all know who you are but newcomers may not - maybe worth putting a name in the account's profile page?

[admin]

I'm happy to set up a test area for this work to start.... This is currently all via a hosted system, not a dedicated server so we have to live with the restrictions... MySQL is the database provided, so no choice their.... as for anything else, thats probably quite open.

Would be good to retain phpBB, certainly for now and focus on the rest of the site basics -

How do we structure the site
How do we record useful "collector" information about the dragon (makes, models, peripherals, history, pictures etc)
How do we structure and offer downloads - collate screenshots and instructions/inlays with the files
etc

Would love to sort this out and be in a position to support mirroring for redundancy so that if things do go tits up over here and I need to stop hosting, somebody else can bring it all online again.

Drop me an email on SimonHardy72@yahoo.co.uk and I will setup an area on the server and we can play with access rights etc until we get it right so that you should have full FTP upload capability (not sure if delegating MySQL is supported, but will look into it) - I can always import SQL statements if required (or you can code a quick and dirty method of doing this as the MySQL servers are only visible to the web hosts not the entire internet!).

[admin]

Aha! We didn't scare you off!

I'm sending you an email now!

[admin]

All,

In an attempt to make something of this I have now created a new sandbox area for the development process. If you are serious about this, then please lets discuss - details of the development area will only be provided privately via e-mail for obvious reasons.

"qwerty" aka ZAF already has the details so is free to start playing once the hosting end gets up to speed.

I will create some subdirectories in this area with the site content (pictures, screenshots, files etc) - This is purely to give us some "data" to work with...

[admin]

Thank you Admin.

The raw data is in place so we are ready to go.
I'll post URLs whenever there is an update.

[admin]

I have been playing around.... /archive will present the entire downloads area in a PHP based directory browser (AutoIndex) with customisable templates so it can be themed to integrate - might save a bit of work and /simon is where I'm messing around so just ignore it !