Suggestions for Forum Improvement

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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gcmartin

#341 Post by gcmartin »

Not sure where that came from, but, what I think will happen is the contributors will put forth the best Forum that benefits this community such that any user can see and access the forum no matter what OS/browser they are running.

Same as we've always had.

No offense to anyone's views. I think the focus will be on simplicity, usability and user forum functionality. ... I think.

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Flash
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#342 Post by Flash »

It will be if I have any say. :)

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Q5sys
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#343 Post by Q5sys »

gcmartin wrote:Is 2013 the year to bring the forum backbone modernization forward? If so, can a small team organize to accomplish the necessary items to reasonably achieve this without taxing a single individual with this upgrade task.

In an effort to achieve such, it would mean that a Shadow (really a test site) be setup where the latest version can be installed providing a home for the movement/conversion of the DB to its new home.

Then some concerted testing to review that the checks and balances are in place.

And finally a site exchange or index movement to the newest after initial tests and shakedown is completed.

Can this be done in a team effort? I have never set up a forum, but believe that for those who understand its structure and have a reasonable understanding of the product, this can be accomplished such that it mimics what we already have and addresses @Flash and other moderator needs.

Is this reasonable? If so, I volunteer to assist in whatever way I can.
gcmartin,
Since you admit to never having set up a forum before, I'll try to explain this as clearly as possible so that there isnt any misunderstanding. (hopefully everyone will understand this as well).
I've both set up, admin'd, and mod'd Phpbb2 and phpbb3 forums before, as well as migrated a phpbb3 forum over to bbpress. So I've spent some time working with all the aspects of forum development.

Setting up a forum is really a single man job. It isnt the sort of thing that you can section off jobs to other people. Taking a vanilla software forum package and installing it, is simple enough, but then in order to set the forum up for certain functionality and features... custom editing the php pages and installing modules have to be done in sequence. Its not as if I can say "Person A: go install Module X" and "Person B: go install Module Y" Because once you install module X, that may completely change how Module Y needs to be installed. Same goes for when you are doing custom edits of the Php pages. Once you start changing things... every modification that follows must take into account all the changes that were done before. Its not like setting up a computer where you can install software in any order and it'll work.
So sadly its not the soft of work that can be shared among people. Once the forum is set up, doing the mod work can be shared, but the admin functions of the site, are pretty much single man jobs. You can have two forum admin who are active in tweaking things after the site is set up, but they have to have VERY GOOD communication skills. And honestly, usually its just less complicated for one person to do it all.
The problem is the time element. Since all the admin work falls on one person, it gets done when they have time.

And that's all with the perspective of setting up a fresh new site with no users.
Migrating one site to another can be a complete nightmare. Thankfully going from phpbb2 to phpbb3 (for example) isnt super complicated, but doing other migrations like phpbb2 to bbpress, can be fraught with problems.

Obviously all testing would be done on a test site, that can be poked and prodded so the official site wouldn't have to deal with down time... But that testing phase could take anywhere from a few days (very rare), to months. It all depends on how much time the Admin has to work on it. Now if the community was willing to cough up a few grand to hire a web-development company to do the switch... then it can be done faster. But as we are all volunteers, it'll get done when it gets done.

There have been people in the past that have complained about the slow nature of progress. I dont think anyone right now is in that crowd, but what it takes to mirgate an existing site with 20k users and over 600,000 posts is immense. And I dont think most average users have any conception of what it takes. The DB conversion alone would probably take over a day, depending on the hardware of the server its sitting on, and how many other sites are running on it.

I can't speak for John directly, but I think if it were possible to have a team of people do the work for him, he'd probably relish the opportunity to have other people to the work under his watchful eye; but thats not really possible. And so, we all have to wait until he has the time to focus on it.

We have this place by his generosity, let's all keep in mind that running this server is not his job, and like everyone else he has other things going on that may require his time and attention.
The fact that this community has had such a stable forum for so long is something to be proud of. I'm sure when we do have some progress, it'll be worth the wait.

gcmartin

#344 Post by gcmartin »

Dont know if this would help @JohnMurga or others, but I Google'd "Phpbb2 and phpbb3 migration" and found some topics that might apply to a migration here, should one be undertaken.

One such explanation is here, where it appears that one person on their BB system accomplished a migration by following the product's guide. They also offer a suggestion to shorten the time in migration.

That's merely one approach and it may not be useful in this forum's case. But, if it helps that experience may prove useful.

And, thanks @Q5sys for your practical and thoughtful experience in doing this sort of thing. All of this can help, both, the understanding and assist in a planned approach to objective should it be undertaken.

Here to help

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Q5sys
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#345 Post by Q5sys »

gcmartin wrote:Dont know if this would help @JohnMurga or others, but I Google'd "Phpbb2 and phpbb3 migration" and found some topics that might apply to a migration here, should one be undertaken.

One such explanation is here, where it appears that one person on their BB system accomplished a migration by following the product's guide. They also offer a suggestion to shorten the time in migration.

That's merely one approach and it may not be useful in this forum's case. But, if it helps that experience may prove useful.

And, thanks @Q5sys for your practical and thoughtful experience in doing this sort of thing. All of this can help, both, the understanding and assist in a planned approach to objective should it be undertaken.

Here to help
actually I can tell you right now that wont work, there were some rather large changes with phpbb 3.0.6 up through the current 3.0.11 release, which mean the conversion isnt necessarily super easy. That one is very specific that its between two specific versions. I dont know what subversion of v2 we are using, so that'd play a big role in it as well. Also, doing a 'conversion' is not the same as doing an 'upgrade'. Conversion gives you a copy of your phpbb2 forum within phpbb3, but from my understanding you dont have access to all the new features in phpbb3. In order to do an eaiser switch, you sacrifice some of the newer fancy stuff.
Which means that most prebuilt modules for phpbb3 most likely arent going to work without custom editing. So what time you may save during the conversion will come back and cause even more work later as you try to develop forward.

When doing a conversion/upgrade of a forum of this size, simple one size fits all solutions that are put out by developers, wont work 99% of the time. Those single click upgrades, are good for vanilla sites with usually less than 1000 members. Beyond that and things go bad. I've seen databases be completely corrupted by trying to use some of the automatic conversion scripts out there.

If doing all this were easy and simple, it'd probably would have already been done.
I look forward to when all this can be done, in the mean time we will continue to press forward with puppy.

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#346 Post by bark_bark_bark »

Does JohnMurga even have decent php version to even run 3.0.11
....

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Q5sys
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#347 Post by Q5sys »

bark_bark_bark wrote:Does JohnMurga even have decent php version to even run 3.0.11
Only he knows. No one else that im aware of knows anything about the server config. And I'm not about to launch exploit scripts at the forum/server to find out what version he's using.

gcmartin

#348 Post by gcmartin »

@Q5sys, I don't think anyone has suggested that we step beyond JohnMurga's work, currently.

I glean that this thread is discussing Forum improvements in a way as to view methods of moving the forum from its current release to a version that brings added functionality to forum use.

This includes ideas on personnel approaches, product information availability, ideas of methods of accomplishing build and testing, etc.

You and others are being very helpful with ideas and experiences to consider.

I view this thread as providing insights which will be useful should a forum change occurs by providing helpful info and hints to accomplish it in a safe and easy manner.

I not taking issue, but, I think that is, simply, all thats being shared thus far.

Any ideas that we bring to bear could be helpful to John.

simargl

#349 Post by simargl »

.
Last edited by simargl on Sun 01 Sep 2013, 14:37, edited 1 time in total.

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Q5sys
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#350 Post by Q5sys »

simargl wrote:It would be nice to have chat box feature like it's provided in Porteus http://forum.porteus.org/
Then, people could get answers more quickly...
Wouldn't it just make more sense to have a page that has an applet that can let people log into the official puppy chatroom on freenode?
I've seen several sites with php based irc clients that allow people to connect to an irc chatroom.

Since we already have a chat system in place I think it makes more sense to just use that one instead of creating another place for people to check.
Great idea for a 'chat' area.

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Q5sys
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#351 Post by Q5sys »

Can we please get a lower time between searches for registered users?
I understand having a time buffer for guests to do repeated searches. If you accidentally put in a typo in your search query... you have to wait an annoyingly log time to be able to re-search

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Makoto
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#352 Post by Makoto »

Well, people who have been around for a while, perhaps. I believe the limit was put in for spammers/bots, and those are less likely to stick around for a while. (We have had some spambots who have waited six months to a year, or more, before posting.)

I think I've run into the limit a few times while running the occasional search for older spam. :mrgreen:
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#353 Post by Q5sys »

Makoto wrote:Well, people who have been around for a while, perhaps. I believe the limit was put in for spammers/bots, and those are less likely to stick around for a while. (We have had some spambots who have waited six months to a year, or more, before posting.)

I think I've run into the limit a few times while running the occasional search for older spam. :mrgreen:
why is a spam bot going to be using the search function? Even if it did... most spambots are automated and post rapidly. We dont have a post timer that Im aware of. why would we have a search timer?

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#354 Post by Makoto »

I'm not sure why. :oops: As far as I'm aware, though, the limits are primarily put into place on forums to discourage spammer/bot abuse. I'm guessing it's the ones that try to find a 'relevant post' for adding their spam replies.
[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install ] * [ XenialPup 7.5, Frugal install ] * [XenialPup 64 7.5, Frugal install] * [ 4GB RAM | 512MB swap ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

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Flash
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#355 Post by Flash »

I don't know why for sure. I get the impression it's the result of a general limit on how rapidly you can access the forum. Probably an anti-spam thing, but I could be wrong. In any case, it doesn't seem to be consistent. It seems to me that I can usually repeat searches pretty quickly. Only sometimes does the forum complain.

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nubc
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#356 Post by nubc »

User watchdog was good enough to provide an easy and much-needed upgrade to SeaMonkey for Wary 5.xx and Puppy 4.31+ users:

Seamonkey2.23-en_US-w5.pet
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=90882

I hope this essential upgrade can be given a conspicuous placement here in the forum, as a sticky. But even more, perhaps a useful upgrade like this might justify starting a new category, Upgrades, which are, generally, sorely needed by the Puppy Project, since we don't have a rolling release version and since upgrades are, in effect, provided by (inconvenient) point release versions. Inconvenient to some users, anyway. How do I explain to any outside party, that I can't upgrade my browser because I am locked in to a static point release version of Linux? Needless to say, I can't expect much sympathy on the common issue of browser upgrades.

Opinion: I might also add that the browser is a significant and fundamental component of the Puppy OS, important enough to justify a separate forum category just for Browsers, not just a minor sub-category buried in Additional Software. I am reminded of the fundamental importance of the browser every time I have to upgrade Puppy to a later version because the browser is no longer supported, which is usually the primary, if not exclusive, reason for the upgrade. Conspicuous and easy access to browser-related forum activity would benefit both regular and, especially, new Puppy users.

Additional Software sub-fora related to pages of posts
Package Collections/Repos - 2 pages
REQUESTS - 20 pages
Browsers and Internet - 16 pages
Business - 2 pages
Compiling - 3 pages
Desktop - 9 pages
Documents - 9 pages
Drivers - 5 pages
Educational - 1 page
Engineering/Science/Simulation - 4 pages
Eye Candy - 6 pages
Filesystem - 5 pages
Games - 26 pages
Graphics - 8 pages
Multimedia - 19 pages
Network - 7 pages
Security/Privacy - 4 pages
System - 5 pages
Utilities - 13 pages
Virtualization - 3 pages
Unsorted - 167 pages

Excluding Unsorted, 5 sub-fora stand out in usage, in order of most pages of posts:
1 Games (26)
2 REQUESTS (20)
3 Multimedia (19)
4 Browsers and Internet (16)
5 Utilities (13)

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#357 Post by tlchost »

Q5sys wrote:
Wouldn't it just make more sense to have a page that has an applet that can let people log into the official puppy chatroom on freenode?
Even easier, and less of the forum resources used would simply have a thread with this link in it:

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=puppylinux

Drop in and say Hi....we speak Puppy there

Thom

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Q5sys
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#358 Post by Q5sys »

tlchost wrote:
Q5sys wrote:
Wouldn't it just make more sense to have a page that has an applet that can let people log into the official puppy chatroom on freenode?
Even easier, and less of the forum resources used would simply have a thread with this link in it:

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=puppylinux

Drop in and say Hi....we speak Puppy there

Thom
Doesnt require forum resources. It runs entirely in the browser on the users machine, the only hit (at most) would be a few mb download of the chat client. Which in most cases, isnt hosted on the forum anyway. that's downloaded from the chat vendors site (like with kiwiirc), so site is only hit with a line or two of extra HTML code.
nubc wrote:Opinion: I might also add that the browser is a significant and fundamental component of the Puppy OS, important enough to justify a separate forum category just for Browsers, not just a minor sub-category buried in Additional Software. I am reminded of the fundamental importance of the browser every time I have to upgrade Puppy to a later version because the browser is no longer supported, which is usually the primary, if not exclusive, reason for the upgrade. Conspicuous and easy access to browser-related forum activity would benefit both regular and, especially, new Puppy users.
Good luck with that. About a year ago I asked for a 64bit sub-forum. After a month or so and a few PMs, John let me know that he didnt have time to make a sub-forum.

A 64bit forum and an ARM forum would be a good thing, but it requires Admin to make them. But apparently... he doesn't have the time.

someSven_2

#359 Post by someSven_2 »

What I really hate about some forums: You can't contact any support without beeing logged in! If you have an account, but Login is not working, you need to register again. But then you don't need the old account, except you want your username back. :evil:

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#360 Post by RSH »

Usually there are just two reasons why a registered user can't log in:

1. He/She forgot the username/password
2. He/She has been removed for some reasons

If he/she just forgot the password he/she can request a new password - at least in this here forum.
[b][url=http://lazy-puppy.weebly.com]LazY Puppy[/url][/b]
[b][url=http://rshs-dna.weebly.com]RSH's DNA[/url][/b]
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