Coranto Integration = SE Commercial Grade Solution

[Dylan Malone]

Let me first of all say that Jeff and Co. are my heroes... you guys are amazing.  

There is one feature missing from all the YaBB variants that would elevate YaBB to a commercial caliber solution: Powerful integration with a news system.

I'm not talking about PostNuke, PHPNuke, etc.  That's a good tool for a hobby site, or a small commercial site.  But you'll never get the speed and flexibility out of those portal systems needed for some bigger projects.

As far as I've seen, (and I've done a LOT of looking) there's one free news script that leads that pack:  Coranto.

Check out my site for an example (admittedly it's still in early development, but it will launch to a broader audience later this month after I get some things tuned-up):

http://www.algore04.com

Notice how every news story has a link to the Forum (04um) which includes a count of resposes so far?  Note also that the 04um keeps a running list of the latest headlines.

This was done with YaBB Gold and a beta version of a YaBB addon for Coranto.  But, the developer of the YaBB addon doesn't have access to a SQL server, so he cannot work on porting his project to YaBBSE.

When this site is hosting hundreds of active users at a time day and night, I'm going to need the extra speed of YaBBSE.... Is anyone here interested in working on Coranto / YaBBSE integration?  I'd be happy to help in my own small way, but I'm not much of a programmer.

[Zarabadoo]

have you tried the news.php or latest_topics? that is currently what i am using for my page and it seems to be working fine. i currently use coranto for the left ant right bars, but the main news is all within YaBBSE.

www.zarabadoo.com (never mind the non fitting of the board with the rest fo the site, i am currently reworking the template beings there were options missing from the sp1 conversion.)

i guess it would all depend on what you were trying to get coranto to do in conjunction with YaBBSE though. if you were looking for commenting to be available, that would with either of the SE options. only thing i really miss is the glossary from coranto, but that is easy to live without. (of course, i've been thinking of trying my hand at working a fix for this.. hehe. too bad i really suck at php at the moment.)

anyway, i guess what i am getting at is what features were you looking at gaining from such an integration?

[thetaxiforums]

hi ive just upgraded to 1.3.1 and didnt know about hthis news.php, well i knew it was there, the file but i didnt know you could put news items on another page like your homepage could someone explain how or where i can find instructions

[Dylan Malone]

anyway, i guess what i am getting at is what features were you looking at gaining from such an integration?

Hey, that's a wild site you have there Zarabadoo.  

I didn't realize how effectively you could use YaBB as a news system until I looked over your site carefully.  Even so, I cannot move my news system to Yabb because I need the full pallet of HTML available to me.

I need to post videos, flash animations, forms, etc. as news sometimes.  Am I correct that this is beyond the scope of YaBB (or virtually any other message board system)?

As remarkable as YaBBSE is, it cannot do everything that Coranto does for news... for one thing, Coranto can generate static pages to keep the load light on your server if you need it to.

I'd be very interested in working with someone on a project to integrate YaBBSE and Coranto.

[Zarabadoo]

i wouldn't say that it is beyond what yabb can do. i know you can use it to post most types of media on it ( i believe someone made a mod for video even), but if you are looking to archive stories and news in a flat file format, i guess coranto would be the way to go.

i still am not seeing why it would need to be merged with YaBBSE though. i guess if you are trying to merge user bases, it could be somewhat useful. or are you trying to get the interfaces and any other databases melded into one? possibly both. make it so that certain members could post news to the main page and then the discussion link would forward to the forum until the story reached it's archiving period.

to me, it seems like a lot of work to integrate them for what you'd gain from it. i can certainly see why you want to use coranto, and do not blame you at all for doing so. seems just as easy to maintain the 2 separately. i guess it would all depend on the size of your reporter base.

not trying to disuade you. just thinking aloud here. i actually use coranto myself for my other content short of the gallery and main news. i'm really the only user of the system myself, so i've never really considered the possibility. i do think there is even a PHP/mySQL port for coranto even that could possibly make things easier for such an integration.