PfaBB vs other portals...

[marcnyc]

Ok guys, my eyes hurt, I have never read so much stuff off of one site at one time  

I have just finished reading ALL the posts of ALL the threads of the Portal Discussion board trying to understand what portal I should use...

First let me clarify my position...
I have been coding my own website http://www.chaindlk.com for a year now, changing stuff around every day, installing scripts etc...
I have recently installed YaBB SE (I had Gold for several months) and I live YaBB SE...
For news publishing I was using NewsPro (now called Coranto) which was nice but was Perl and flat text database as opposed to MySQL and PHP.
As my needs for total integration have grown I am starting to move away from Perl solutions and starting to get into all PHP solutions that use MySQL for faster performance (as opposed to text database). Also the need to have a unique log in for all the features has been bugging me for a long time...

I didn't even know about the existance of portals that accomplish the integration with YaBB SE and that would certainly be the solution, so when I find out, I've read it all, and now I am typing too!!! ;-)

Anyway, I have installed PHPNuke in the past and it did a lot, maybe too much... One of the things I personally don't like about portals is that they behave like Office on a Windows PC... They think that can or have to do everything and they end up getting you (or your PC with Office or you site with portals) in trouble... That is why I uninstalled PHPNuke...
I have installed Geeklog yesterday, which seems nice and I have heard is better coded than Nuke but it isn't integrable with YaBB SE...

Considering how nice Michele seems to be, considering the good things I have heard about PfaBB, considering that it integrates nicely with YaBB SE I think I will go for that (I admit, I also have been influenced by the fact that this is the first woman I see working her ass off in the developer's community )...

Anyway, my doubts before installing PfaBB are the following:

1. how big is the community around it? (I'd hate using a portal for which there are no people writing mods and fixing problems)

2. how easy is it to keep it working with YaBB SE when YaBB SE is updated? If I understand correctly it directly modifies YaBB SE files which would make it impossible to for me to update YaBB SE with new releases until PfaBB hasn't catched up to the new release, right? How fast is it usually between a YaBB SE update and the PfaBB update?

3. I don't want to use the news.php or the announcement boards for my news, I want normal news where people can add them. Is that the case?

4. Becasue I want a NEWS database system that has the same log ins as YaBB SE and because this is my top reason for having an interest in PfaBB I need to know about the following NEWS-realted features:

  a. can news be entered in separated categories and viewed/searched by category?
  b. can news be archived (and if so respecting the categories they are part of)?
  c.  can news be shared/syndicated via xml RDF standards?
  d.  can news be added by unregistered guests without allowing unregistered guests to post in the forum?
  e.  can news be commented by users (guests and registered)?

These feature are all very important to me and to many who look for news scripts so if they are not implemented I hope Michele will consider them feature requests or at least suggestions for future development!

I think that about covers what I have been looking for in a News script/Portal and I hope that PfaBB will offer me that, cause if it does I am sold to it and I will help as much as I can!

Thanks
Marc

[[Unknown]]

Ok guys, my eyes hurt, I have never read so much stuff off of one site at one time  

I have just finished reading ALL the posts of ALL the threads of the Portal Discussion board trying to understand what portal I should use...

Nice.  Always glad to see someone actually reads posts.  (instead of asking old questions.)

First let me clarify my position...
I have been coding my own website http://www.chaindlk.com for a year now, changing stuff around every day, installing scripts etc...
I have recently installed YaBB SE (I had Gold for several months) and I live YaBB SE...
For news publishing I was using NewsPro (now called Coranto) which was nice but was Perl and flat text database as opposed to MySQL and PHP.
As my needs for total integration have grown I am starting to move away from Perl solutions and starting to get into all PHP solutions that use MySQL for faster performance (as opposed to text database). Also the need to have a unique log in for all the features has been bugging me for a long time...

I always wrote my own.... never got into protals, although there are some great ones here.

I didn't even know about the existance of portals that accomplish the integration with YaBB SE and that would certainly be the solution, so when I find out, I've read it all, and now I am typing too!!! ;-)

Anyway, I have installed PHPNuke in the past and it did a lot, maybe too much... One of the things I personally don't like about portals is that they behave like Office on a Windows PC... They think that can or have to do everything and they end up getting you (or your PC with Office or you site with portals) in trouble... That is why I uninstalled PHPNuke...
I have installed Geeklog yesterday, which seems nice and I have heard is better coded than Nuke but it isn't integrable with YaBB SE...

I share your opinion.  To my knowledge, most of the portals here (ie. pfaBB.) have a nice interface that allows you to do more than just drink from the bottle.

Considering how nice Michele seems to be, considering the good things I have heard about PfaBB, considering that it integrates nicely with YaBB SE I think I will go for that (I admit, I also have been influenced by the fact that this is the first woman I see working her ass off in the developer's community )...

Anyway, my doubts before installing PfaBB are the following:

1. how big is the community around it? (I'd hate using a portal for which there are no people writing mods and fixing problems)

I'm always willing to help out with pfaBB problems too.  And, if you want a mod, chances are it will work well on both.

Any mod I write, I will be willing to rewrite for pfaBB.

2. how easy is it to keep it working with YaBB SE when YaBB SE is updated? If I understand correctly it directly modifies YaBB SE files which would make it impossible to for me to update YaBB SE with new releases until PfaBB hasn't catched up to the new release, right? How fast is it usually between a YaBB SE update and the PfaBB update?

It seems like pfaBB is keeping up pretty well with my releases.  When 1.5.1 final is out, I'm sure it will be up to date almost right away.

PS: Michele, I can try to PM you with changes (boardmod style) I make, if you'd like.

3. I don't want to use the news.php or the announcement boards for my news, I want normal news where people can add them. Is that the case?

I would think so, but I'm not sure.  Hopefully she will see your post and reply soon.

4. Becasue I want a NEWS database system that has the same log ins as YaBB SE and because this is my top reason for having an interest in PfaBB I need to know about the following NEWS-realted features:

  c.  can news be shared/syndicated via xml RDF standards?

If not, I would be willing to write it as a mod.  AFTER 1.5.1 is final.  I already wrote something for my own site.

  d.  can news be added by unregistered guests without allowing unregistered guests to post in the forum?

I'm going to guess... no.  If you really want this, it wouldn't be hard to change.

  e.  can news be commented by users (guests and registered)?

Yes.

These feature are all very important to me and to many who look for news scripts so if they are not implemented I hope Michele will consider them feature requests or at least suggestions for future development!

I think that about covers what I have been looking for in a News script/Portal and I hope that PfaBB will offer me that, cause if it does I am sold to it and I will help as much as I can!

Thanks
Marc

I hope my replies answered at least some of your questions to your satisfaction.

-[Unknown]

[marcnyc]

Hi Unknown, your replies answered a few questions (except for 4a -and related b-, which is/are maybe the most important and choice-discriminating one to me right now)...  

You keep telling us (I have read it in at least 4 or 5 posts from you) that you wrote your own to make it better than the others... so will you make it available or what?  

And yes, for your pleasure and for the pleasure of all administrators, I did read the whole thing and it was very tiresome, especially after riding the bike for 2 hours in the cold streets of nyc at something like 10 degrees...  

Hope to hear from Michele soon... most of all hope to hear good news from her!

[[Unknown]]

Well, I always write my own little CMS/portal-ish things.  I find it fun.  However, I almost always make them have a few dedicated features.

The project I keep talking about is a big one I'm working on that basically speeds up and improves functionality.  It's not done yet, so you'll have to wait a bit.

-[Unknown]

[marcnyc]

Well I would have to install pfabb and then 2 weeks later find out that yours is so much better and have to change everything again...

what is the status of the project and what features will it have?

I am really afraid of what Michele's answer to my post is going to be because I fear she didn't think about the category thing and that is like the most important thing I can think of when it comes to news!

Her site is now accessible to me and I see that the news don't seem to be in the forum (which answers Q3) and I even find it pretty neat that she provided for commenting system that is actually based on YaBB SE... but I am so afraid to find out she didn't get us the categories feature for the news  
that would be so bad  

if she's got categories, archiving in multiple categories and rdf news syndication I am so gonna marry that woman  

[[Unknown]]

Well I would have to install pfabb and then 2 weeks later find out that yours is so much better and have to change everything again...

Please note that the project I speak of is NOT a portal or CMS.  It is simply an improvement upon YaBB SE.  Sorry for not clarifying that.

if she's got categories, archiving in multiple categories and rdf news syndication I am so gonna marry that woman  

Good luck.  May I be invited to the wedding, if one such takes place?

-[Unknown]

[mephisto_kur]

PfaBB separates news in to categories.  As for archiving with categories, PfaBB uses an announcement board for its news.    You can keep however many messages you want in that announcement board, and they are searchable just like the rest of the forum.  As for searching BY category, that is not a feature yet, but the user can choose which category to view on the frontpage by clicking the icon associated with that category.

[marcnyc]

Thanks to all you people for answering my questions.

I don't want a news script that uses the YaBB SE board announcement board feature because I don't like that feature for a number of reasons...
What I see on this page:
http://pfabb.lunabyte.com/index.php?op=ncat
is what I like and what I want (a subject, date, poster, links automatically converted into links and possibly the possibility of uploading an image, and comments).
If that is the way she handles news that's perfect for me, but I cannot see any categories there (I would need the script to tell me next to the subject what category the news is from and I wanna be able to view news from just one specific category). I can give up (until there is a mod) the possibility to have news archived in separate categories but at least I need archiving because I'll have tons of news...

I also have a technical question... These news, will they be in the same database used by YaBB? Will this/they slow down YaBB SE? I ask because I know we are gonna have tons of news and I don't want the forum to suffer from that...




I would still love to hear from Michele herself though...

[marcnyc]

Another very important thing for me, besides having the RDF feed and the categories, is to being able to include my news on a page on my server that is not part of the pfabb system... I am not planning to let pfabb or any other portal take over my site entirely, I just want it for the news and to have the same members database for news and forums, therefore I wanna be able to have news on non-pfabb pages... I hope all this is possible...

[Michele]

Marc, right now our News system does use the forums as its base, but it's not tied to the Announcement Boards (IOW, you can make any thread a news thread), so that is where you see the "Write Comment" from - it just brings you to the thread and the reply window. In fact, op=ncat is just a modified function based on News.php.

We've had several requests for a complex Article Management system though, and it may be something that would work for you. They also want user submission along with Reviews, etc. It's still in the planning stages, so your input would be helpful. Take a peek at the FAQ module which is much simpler version of it (and all MySQL).

Now, when you say "non-PfaBB" pages, do you mean custom pages that still use template.php? If so, you can simply "include_once" a page via Page Management and it will read that file into your center area. Or you can dump the whole html/php chunk of code directly into a "page" in PfaBB. The more complicated the page though, the more likely "include_once" is what you want to do.

As to the community, we're still small (about 100 of us on the site), but once YSE is out of beta and we can stop keeping up with the RC releases and concentrate on adding code, I expect we'll get bigger. We've been adding YSE mods that add non-forum features to PfaBB (with the author's permission of course), and will continue to do so. YSE has a great mod community!

As to releases... I had been releasing a new PfaBB within a day of each new RC release. But we're testing some new features, so I've held off on the last two RCs until everything is settled. My sites had been up/down a lot in the last two weeks (hence the move to a new host), and now that things are stable again, look for a new release shortly.

Let me know if I missed any questions.
Michele

[marcnyc]

I wasn't planning on using yabb se for the news but I could live with that as long as the op=ncat has the feature I need and as long as having tons of news won't make yabb se cave in...

I am on your FAQ pages as we speak but I am not sure what you are talking about.

What I need is a news management system that allows me to have different categories and read news from only one category, search news by category, archive news by date (possibly keeping them separate), display the latest news headlines on my home page (which will NOT be phabb/portal page and hence the need for the ability to include the news headlines on a non pfabb-page!) and that lets me syndicate my news via standard RDF feed.

I would be willing to help you with the development of this (I am not a good coder but I can give you suggestions, and maybe test stuff for you) but on the other hand I also need to find something suitable for my site asap... Let me know if you want me to write you an email, or post here, or post at your site...

To REALLY REALLY understand what we and many other sites are looking for, check out my current news system. It does pretty much everything I need (except for archiving the news in separate categories and except for the RDF feed). I wanna change because it isn't MySQL...

Let me walk you through:

If you go here: http://www.chaindlk.net/news/news.php3
you will see the ability to include news headlines and telling in the headlines what the subject is, what date it was posted on, by whom and in WHAT CATEGORY.
On the same page you can also see the news search engine (which works by date, and I'd also like it to work by category).
By clicking on any of those news you are brought to the actual news, but you will only see the last 30 days of news.
To view the news archived (older than 30 days), you would go here:
http://www.chaindlk.net/news/archives/newsarchives.php3

At: http://www.chaindlk.net/news/postnews.php3
you can post news as a guest or as a registered member. I wanna allow guests to post news but I don't want to allow guests to post on my forum.

Last but not least important, the ability to include these news headlines on my homepage at http://www.chaindlk.org (check it out just on top of the events)

Let me know if you think you could add all these features and how long it would take you so that I can decide if to wait for you or to go with a different portal.

[Michele]

What I meant was that FAQs had the beginnings of Article Management in it, especially Categories. For the FAQ, only the admin can add stuff, but for Articles, we plan on making it so members/guests can add stuff.

In order for News to do what you want it needs to be separated from the forums otherwise we'd have to rewrite half of YSE's code. So your News will be what we've been calling Articles. The ability for visitors to either post or submit for review, an article/news/story for the website. Allowing Guests to post too just means one more option available in the settings section for it.

You might want to head over to our site and post a complete list of what you want it to do. I believe there's an Articles thread in Features already started. If someone   get's their you-know-what in gear, it shouldn't take more than a few days to have a copy ready for testing.

[[Unknown]]

Thanks to all you people for answering my questions.

I don't want a news script that uses the YaBB SE board announcement board feature because I don't like that feature for a number of reasons...
What I see on this page:
http://pfabb.lunabyte.com/index.php?op=ncat
is what I like and what I want (a subject, date, poster, links automatically converted into links and possibly the possibility of uploading an image, and comments).
If that is the way she handles news that's perfect for me, but I cannot see any categories there (I would need the script to tell me next to the subject what category the news is from and I wanna be able to view news from just one specific category). I can give up (until there is a mod) the possibility to have news archived in separate categories but at least I need archiving because I'll have tons of news...

I also have a technical question... These news, will they be in the same database used by YaBB? Will this/they slow down YaBB SE? I ask because I know we are gonna have tons of news and I don't want the forum to suffer from that...




I would still love to hear from Michele herself though...

I think you misunderstand was is meant by "using an announcement board".

When you post a new news item, it is linked to a thread somewhere on your board.  This _does not_ mean they even have to look at the board to read the post - it is on the news page as well.

-[Unknown]

[marcnyc]

For some reason yabbse.org's forum haven't been sending me any notifications to any of the threads I subscribed (I see them in my notification list but I don't get any emails, not in the last 3 or 4 days at least) so when I was getting unpatient I came back and realized two people actually replied to this thread, so now I am heading over to pfabb to post in that article thread because if you can really get me something in a couple of days I can wait that long and I'd be glad to become your newest pfabb user/lover