Integrating with a forum
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Hi, folks.
I admin a list for a community which wants to expand our list to a
forum. Some of us really like list communication; others would prefer
a forum. Instead of forcing the issue, we want to do both, with
bidirectional mirroring.
I know this issue has been raised before, and I know it's tricky. I'm
not a programmer, but we have a programmer on hand who is willing to
do the integration. All I need to do is scope the requirements
properly. Here is my initial requirements definition, which is all
very tentative:
http://metagovernment.org/wiki/Forum_integration
forum integrator. Great. But it only works with phpBB 2. Not only is
In there, you can see that I did find M2F, which appears to be a list<-
phpBB2 out of date, but also from past experience I find phpBB to be
pretty underwhelming. So I'd like to use a more sophisticated (but
still FOSS) forum such as MyBB (or others if you can suggest one that
is up to the task). There is an alpha of M2F that claims to it
eventually will do the trick, but it is indeed very alpha.
I'm posting here to see if anyone has any better insights than I have
had so far and/or any comments on my existing document linked above.
Apart from the technical difficulties, the additional problem I see is
with message overload. So I'm thinking of setting a second list. The
existing one would be a full bidirectional mirror of the forum, and a
new one would just be an announce list of any new topics posted to
either (ie, anything that is a new topic on the forum or a new thread
on the list). Or can I do that with umbrella lists somehow?
Am I dreaming. Is this just way too complicated to tackle?
I further want the forum to support OpenID. I imagine that adds
additional layers of complexity when combined with list integration.
Any thoughts on any of this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
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Ed Pastore writes:
It looks like the webforum world is pretty thoroughly PHP-based, about which I know nothing, so I have no technical comments.
Consider an RSS feed for this, too.
Or can I do that with umbrella lists somehow?
No, I don't think that really does what you want. I don't see an obvious way to do this other than to just have two lists, with the new topic list reply-to munged to the main list. I suppose they should be sibling lists, though.
I further want the forum to support OpenID. I imagine that adds
additional layers of complexity when combined with list integration.
Not if OpenID is just one way to authenticate. The spamfiltering on the list will handle troublemakers there, and the forum just trusts the list and vice versa. If you require that list members and forum participants all use OpenID, then it would get complicated.
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On 2011-05-29 5:22 PM, Ed Pastore wrote:
I prefer SimpleMachines forums myself... www.simplemachines.org
But I would dearly love to see a reliable and secure method of integrating my forums with mailman...
I do believe that with the new architecture of MM3, this is supposed to be much more easily doable...?
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Ed Pastore writes:
It looks like the webforum world is pretty thoroughly PHP-based, about which I know nothing, so I have no technical comments.
Consider an RSS feed for this, too.
Or can I do that with umbrella lists somehow?
No, I don't think that really does what you want. I don't see an obvious way to do this other than to just have two lists, with the new topic list reply-to munged to the main list. I suppose they should be sibling lists, though.
I further want the forum to support OpenID. I imagine that adds
additional layers of complexity when combined with list integration.
Not if OpenID is just one way to authenticate. The spamfiltering on the list will handle troublemakers there, and the forum just trusts the list and vice versa. If you require that list members and forum participants all use OpenID, then it would get complicated.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fc5749b706b85121d8a8b828ef27ed3b.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On 2011-05-29 5:22 PM, Ed Pastore wrote:
I prefer SimpleMachines forums myself... www.simplemachines.org
But I would dearly love to see a reliable and secure method of integrating my forums with mailman...
I do believe that with the new architecture of MM3, this is supposed to be much more easily doable...?
participants (3)
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Ed Pastore
-
Stephen J. Turnbull
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Tanstaafl