Support for PHPBB 3x in RavenNuke?

Worker Joined: Jan 22, 2007 Posts: 104

Been awhile since I have been on the site, a testament to RavenNuke and the fact that it has been running so smoothly. A friend told me that the phpBB 3.x finally supports Forum Groups with SubForums (basically Forums with child Forums). I haven't verified if this is true (hopefully it is).

It looks like the 3.x was released last December. What are the plans for incorporating phpBB 3.x into a RavenNuke release?

registered · Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:57 pm

Yes its true - phpBB 3.0 supports multiple subforums

I don't know yet if we've decided, perhaps in the next major release

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 11:56 pm

That would be awesome! That's one of the main features I have been waiting for and will be a definite upgrade for me on both my RavenNuke sites when it's available.

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

Valdarez, welcome back and thanks for the kudos RavensScripts

It would be good to hear from other members what their feelings are for phpbb3 inclusion. This is not to be taken as a promise in any way Laughing

. Because, as Evaders stated, we haven't yet decided. What we have done, as of v2.30.00, is to remove the intimate dependency/integration of phpbb2 from RavenNuke(tm). The Forums module is now separated from other RavenNuke(tm) code and can be dropped if a user does not want to use Forums. Our long term goal is to offer a bridge/api so that other forums could be used in RavenNuke(tm) just as phpbb2 is right now. We are aware that there are already a couple of authors that have created their own "bridges" with phpbb3 but it is specific to phpbb3. We are looking at it more in the broader spectrum but I'm speculating if/when we take that leap it will probably be with phpbb3 as our main focus.

So, let's see what kind of response/feedback we get. Just as an FYI, I know that there is at least one other thread (if I remember correctly) where we had a discussion. But this will now be a more recent/current thread Wink

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:16 am

Here are some thoughts intended just for discussion. As Raven posted, we have reduced somewhat the integration between PHPBB and RN but they are still more or less joined at the hip. How about for PHPBB3 if we did this:

1. You would get the code from PHPBB3 (it would not be present in the RN distribution.
2. You would install PHPBB3 using whatever installation facilities they have but probably in the same database that you have your RN tables.
3. There would be a one-way users bridge that would run from RNYA to the PHPBB3 users table. Probably we would hack PHPBB3 enough to disable independent registration of users there ... if there is not some native way to turn it off in PHPBB3. The bridge program would come with RN and would be optional ... set by configuration in RNYA.
4. PHPBB3 groups would be entirely separate from groups in RN. We'd use Nsngroups to manage RN groups and PHPBB software to manage PHPBB groups.
5. We would totally eliminate the current RN theme approach to PHPBB templates. In other words there would be no /theme/forums directories in RN. You would run PHPBB using its built in templating.
6. Probably we would not even try to run PHPBB as a RN module. Just have a link to it and run it on its own. So you'd move back and forth from RN to Forums and vice versa by links.

These are just my personal thoughts on this and are intended simply for discussion purposes as I say.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:54 am

My personal opinion has always been nuke should create it's own forum that directly ties into the nuke users, groups and profile.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:25 am

Quote:

My personal opinion has always been nuke should create it's own forum that directly ties into the nuke users, groups and profile

With all due respect, why duplicate the functionality that another open source group has already created? You are talking many person years of effort to develop something with the functionality that PHPBB has. Life is too short and there are too many other priorities IMHO.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:27 am

nuken wrote:

My personal opinion has always been nuke should create it's own forum that directly ties into the nuke users, groups and profile.

Years ago, so did many.

Understood but that is no longer our long term approach. The long term approach is to not be directly tied to any forum but to offer an BRIDGE/API for any/all forums. That way you could create your own forum application, feed a few bridge settings to RN via the bridge/api methodology and VOILA!

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:31 am

True, but dealing with 3rd party maintained releases, you end up with what ever flaws in security that they have. Not saying phpbb has security issues. They have done a great job addressing security. You also have to deal with the changes to their code to port new versions such as phpbb2 to phpbb3.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:33 am

I like the bridge approach. That would meet everyones needs.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:51 am

That would allow for the latest and greatest releases to be used and not having everything so dependent on each other. Also would allow for multiple forums on one site. I can see why that would be the approach for the future of RN. Having such a focused approach to development is a strong point for Raven Nuke. Something that had been lacking in nuke.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 2:30 pm

Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!

Kind of stands the discussion we are having here on its head. Interesting.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 3:48 pm

I'm all for options, I'm also all for having something that works which RavenNuke has historically built it's reputation. I would personally take something that works, over the potential of having more options. The bridge approach (API for integration) will require someone to write the linking code for each forum provider. Does this broaden the potential user base for RavenNuke, or, more importantly, greatly increase the feature set of RavenNuke? If it doesn't do either, then where is the ROI?

I know I have a vested interest here, but this would be my approach if I were product manager regardless of personal interest.

1. Get latest version of phpBB working since a major (point) release which doesn't happen often with phpBB and there are new features customers / users desire.
2. Design Bridge Architecture
3. Provide working example of Bridge Architecture with phpBB
4 Provide transitional code for moving to new Bridget Architecture from older versions of Raven Nuke / phpBB

Seems that the user / security is an ongoing issue. Out of curiosity, is there any concept of pre / post processing in php that could be utilized for page loading / method calls in the system? This was something that was added to the Java language a couple of years back and is very powerful when implementing authentication, authorization, and typed parameter validation (probably not relevant to php) on an existing code base.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 3:59 pm

Raven wrote:

Valdarez, welcome back and thanks for the kudos

There's nothing worse than waking up in the morning and seeing your site wrecked. Luckily I had a policy in place to back up my database once a day so not too much was lost. Still not a good thing, because not only do you have to restore, you then have to begin the long process of trying to determine how those suckers got into the site in the first place. This was life before RavenNuke. Wink

I can't tell you how happy I have been with the RavenNuke version of Nuke. I run a clan site, and a community site, and the clan site was hacked multiple times under the standard phpNuke installation, even though I tried to keep everything up to date. Since switching to RavenNuke (knock on wood) not a single hacking incident, though a LOT of captured attempts via Nuke Sentinel.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 4:12 pm

fkelly wrote:

Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login!

Kind of stands the discussion we are having here on its head. Interesting.

If I had just read the PHPBB blog entry and not the comments then one might agree. However, after reading all the comments I see not only what my initial reaction was when phpbb3 was released and this was one of their selling points, but even more.

I think you (the user) must decide before starting any site, is it more important to be forum-centric or portal/cms-centric? If your answer is the former then probably phpbb3 is a good way to go. But if your answer is the latter then the bridge/API is the way to go, imo.

Btw, I think what they have done is outstanding and I am in no way taking anything away from their outstanding product. It's just not for me, vis-a-vis RavenNuke(tm).

Involved Joined: Apr 06, 2008 Posts: 484

I have never liked the bridge approach because it makes the site separate and does not flow.Is there an alternative where we could drop the forum into a folder a bit like evo does for its wysiwyg editors?

most of the nuke site's I have seen have a big reliance on the forums, so there is a definite need for discussion on this.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 5:01 pm

testy1 wrote:

I have never liked the bridge approach because it makes the site separate and does not flow.Is there an alternative where we could drop the forum into a folder a bit like evo does for its wysiwyg editors?

most of the nuke site's I have seen have a big reliance on the forums, so there is a definite need for discussion on this.

Not sure I agree and that's probably okay because this is more a preference issue to me, but maybe not? Also, what you have seen is not, necessarily, what the RN Team will create Smile

. Especially taking all these comments into consideration. That's why, so to speak, we went "public" with this discussion Wink

The intention of a "bridge" approach (please don't get hung up on the terminology) is so that it is seamless and you can do exactly what you describe. Take phpbb2 that RN now uses. Technically there are still some remnants of integration in RN but that's just because we haven't taken the time to de-remnant (new word killing me

) them. But what we have done is to move all the scattered files needed for phpbb2 to continue to work and placed them all in a folder that you just drop into the /modules folder and activate the Forums module. That is a "picture" of what I am trying to describe for our long term vision. We will write the bridge, api, whatever-term and/or we will have a way for the user to cross-reference the data he/she needs from RN.

All this feedback is great! Keep it coming. But also allow us some wiggle room as we don't yet have our design, well, designed. All this valuable input will help us to formulate what we will do, should we decide that there is merit in doing it one way or the other Wink

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:12 pm

I guess at the end of the day, as long as the site looks complete and as one it really only comes down to, advantages, disadvantages, secure, un-secure

maybe Im still stuck in the old pattern where to be right the module must be fully integrated Sad

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 9:46 pm

Im sure some of this has been thought over but I have to post my two cents. Ive also thought of the 2 being totally integrated, so the site was seamless. I think if you wanted to use another forum, that wouldnt be a problem, as there are so many other ports out there for smf etc and you could easily disable phpbb but then I havent tried because phpbb 2 does what I need it to.

As for moving to phpbb 3 I see that going in a different direction, I see their forums taking a whole new format altogether making phpbb just another cms...

Dont take it personally about phpbb, Im just more for *nuke, I started with phpbb and amod with some other ports, and was soon spread around the spam sites, but maybe something like removing phpbb but having a module system in place that allows for integration of whatever bridge you chose to use, like ez-mod with bb. RN could have its own ez mod system where it comes with/or you download seperatley all the bridge files for the mod. Just some thoughts.

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:32 pm

The more I think about it the more I believe this is the best approach. The benefits so out way any disadvantage. The end user gets to decide what forum/blog system the want. They get to use the latest releases, can use available mods without hours of changes, etc... The best advantage would be the systems are not so dependent on each other.

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:43 pm

There's a distinction between being able to plug and play forum providers, and being able to transition between them after a site is launched. If you provide a bridge API, the only advantage you are giving the end user is the the ability to choose their provider before they launch their site. To provide the ability to plug 'n play throughout, would require transfer functionality to be in place as well. I could be wrong, but doubt that's something the RavenNuke team wants to assume responsibility for as the transition logic would be a prime factor based on the number of forum providers available. If there are 5, then your number of transfer scripts would be 20 to 30 scripts (yikes!).

Out of curiosity, how many forum providers are out there that makes the bridge so desirable?

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:35 pm

The "bridge" has nothing to do with the number of forum providers. It is to facilitate an easy upgrade when PHPBB or whatever releases and update. The ultimate goal would be for when PHPBB releases an update you can just install it without any modifications. The idea of being able to use different forums is just icing on the cake.

Regular Joined: Sep 12, 2006 Posts: 58 Location: Dsm, IA

Just a thought, maybe not something you're interested in, but in terms of that post on phpbb. Would it be possible to "remove" the whole "profile" part of nuke in terms of it being separate, as it is now, but integrate the account management from whatever forum you use into the nuke part via the "bridge"? What I mean is essentially having the nuke part simply a setup with the modules, etc, but use the forums session management to control access instead of a built in nuke user management. Sort of similar to what tinyportal is. It's essentially module/portal control built around smf.

Everyone has an idea of what they'd like to see, and I think that would be ideal for some. I know there's a portal designed for phpbb3, but it doesn't have anywhere near the modules designed for it, nor does it have the extra security something like sentinel provides. I do realize the potential huge problems with that though. You'd have to design it to take advantage of several different forums via the "bridges" which would probably take a huge amount of coding and complication. And then there are those that may not want any forums for their site so then you'd likely have to create a built in user management system into the nuke part that could be turned on or off depending on whether the person running the site is going to use a forum when they start building the site.

Just adding my thoughts, although looking at it after writing it it's seeming much less feasible then before. Laughing

Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:04 pm

"Git 'er Done!" - Keep those cards and letters coming Smile

. Again, thanks to everyone for their opinions, assessments, ideas, and candidness Wink

registered · Posted: Fri Feb 13, 2009 6:08 pm

999, yup, a nice object-oriented design could produce some really nice integration interfaces. One day you decide to switch from phpBB3 to Simple Machines, replace the "adapter" as an example.