Rails - Oct 2004 - To all people writing BBS on Rails: let''s join forces

I''ve noticed lately that there are at least four different projects
starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.

Why couldn''t we build one BBS, four times bigger and better instead? So
that we can look anyone in the eye and tell them that we have something
much better than (for argument''s sake) phpBB!

I would like to invite anyone itching to build a BBS to participate in
my project (http://www.rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-forum). 
I would also like to join any project that is closer to production grade
(Ruby Forum is already "demonstrable", and 10-20 evenings away from
"barely usable for real life purposes"). 

One condition - it has to be a Rails app.

Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 15:34, Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> I''ve noticed lately that there are at least four different
projects
> starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.
> 
> Why couldn''t we build one BBS, four times bigger and better
instead?
> ... skipping the rest ...
As a result of this proclamation, we managed to merge three BBS projects
in one: one by Andreas Schwartz, Kevin ''radsaq'' Radloff, and
yours
truly. The project will be known as RForum (for the want of a better
name), and its home page is http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac. 

Andreas'' code was taken as a baseline (it looked closer to production
grade). Presently, I am busy merging some of ex-RubyForum features into
it.

One thing agreed by all is that it is NOT going to be a phpBB clone.
I.e., no bbCode, smilies and avatars :)

I would like to repeat my call again: if you are writing a Rails BBS,
please join with us. Let''s write one _really_ good one instead.

Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 07:03:08PM +0900, Alexey Verkhovsky
wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 15:34, Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> > I''ve noticed lately that there are at least four different
projects
> > starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.
> > 
> > Why couldn''t we build one BBS, four times bigger and better
instead?
> > ... skipping the rest ...
> 
> As a result of this proclamation, we managed to merge three BBS projects
> in one: one by Andreas Schwartz, Kevin ''radsaq'' Radloff,
and yours
> truly. The project will be known as RForum (for the want of a better
> name), and its home page is http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac. 
> 
> Andreas'' code was taken as a baseline (it looked closer to
production
> grade). Presently, I am busy merging some of ex-RubyForum features into
> it.
> 
> One thing agreed by all is that it is NOT going to be a phpBB clone.
> I.e., no bbCode, smilies and avatars :)
> 
> I would like to repeat my call again: if you are writing a Rails BBS,
> please join with us. Let''s write one _really_ good one instead.
Thanks for setting up a trac instance and exposing the repository. I
look forward to helping in whatever way I can.

marcel
-- 
Marcel Molina Jr. <marcel-WRrfy3IlpWYdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 10:06, Fredrik Jagenheim wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 13:06:30 +0300, Alexey Verkhovsky
<alex-vV7tgcE2N9Nhl2p70BpVqQ@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> One of my goals when I started on my forum engine was that the
> frontend should be totally decoupled from the backend. That way I
> could use, atleast, two seperate frontends. 
RForum will have a pluggable markup, and what you suggest makes a lot of
sense (at least to me), too. It is easy to change markup engine based on
user preferences.

So, yeah, we can (and probably should) make presence of avatars, smilies
and any other thing that can be put into a layout as a pluggable
behavior, and even selectable by user preferences. It is technically
possible, and even easy, with Rails.

Are you willing to join our growing project? :)

Alex

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 18:37, Ryan Platte wrote:
> Neither my current connection or the server I ssh''ed into can get
> successful DNS queries for rforum.andreas-s.net -- can someone send me
> an IP address so I can map it locally?
[alex@dhcp-89-2 alex]$ ping rforum.andreas-s.net
PING rforum.andreas-s.net (213.146.167.224) 56(84) bytes of data.

On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 20:03, Jorgen Hahn wrote:
> Out of curiosity, how modular is the
> authentication system? 
I''d say there is no authentication system worthy of the name
"SYSTEM"
yet :) There is some code in rforum SVN, and some code from the other
two projects - but we haven''t even discussed this aspect yet. If you
pitch in right now, you may get to decide how modular it is going to be.
Best regards,
Alexey Verkhovsky

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 13:06:30 +0300, Alexey Verkhovsky
<alex-vV7tgcE2N9Nhl2p70BpVqQ@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> One thing agreed by all is that it is NOT going to be a phpBB clone.
> I.e., no bbCode, smilies and avatars :)
I understand the reason why you don''t want bbCode (with
[Red|Blue]Cloth), but why not smiles and avatars? There are a reason
why they''re popular...

One of my goals when I started on my forum engine was that the
frontend should be totally decoupled from the backend. That way I
could use, atleast, two seperate frontends. One for those who wanted
the ''old'' frontend which barely supported text and those who
wanted
the bling-bling frontend.

Those using the ''simple'' FE would see '':)'',
no avatars, *this for
bold* and so on, while those using the ''advanced'' FE would see
smilies, avatars and true boldness. :)

I think Rails already have the framework for supporting this out of
the box too, so why not take advantage of it?

//F

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 13:06:30 +0300, Alexey Verkhovsky
<alex-vV7tgcE2N9Nhl2p70BpVqQ@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 15:34, Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> The project will be known as RForum (for the want of a better
> name), and its home page is http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac.
Neither my current connection or the server I ssh''ed into can get
successful DNS queries for rforum.andreas-s.net -- can someone send me
an IP address so I can map it locally? I''d like to see what I can
contribute...

-- 
Ryan Platte

Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-10-14 at 15:34, Alexey Verkhovsky wrote:
>> I''ve noticed lately that there are at least four different
projects
>> starting to build Bulletin Board System (a forum) on Rails.
>> 
>> Why couldn''t we build one BBS, four times bigger and better
instead?
>> ... skipping the rest ...
> 
> As a result of this proclamation, we managed to merge three BBS
> projects in one: one by Andreas Schwartz, Kevin ''radsaq''
Radloff, and
> yours truly. The project will be known as RForum (for the want of a
> better name), and its home page is http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac. 
> 
> Andreas'' code was taken as a baseline (it looked closer to
production
> grade). Presently, I am busy merging some of ex-RubyForum features
> into it.  
> 
> One thing agreed by all is that it is NOT going to be a phpBB clone.
> I.e., no bbCode, smilies and avatars :)
> 
> I would like to repeat my call again: if you are writing a Rails BBS,
> please join with us. Let''s write one _really_ good one instead. 
> 
> Best regards,
> Alexey Verkhovsky
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
This project sounds exciting, as I''ve always had fantasies about a
beautiful
forum written in ROR. From a pragmatic viewpoint, I need a good forum for a
small project I''m working on ;) Out of curiosity, how modular is the
authentication system? For several sites, I already have a
''users'' table
with various relevant data bits contained within, including password and
username. 

I''m glad this mailing list finally came to fruition. I haven''t
had as much
time to spend on IRC (as the mysterious HariSeldon) recently and this allows
me to get my daily hit(s) of ROR info and help :) Please be gentle with me -
I''m trying to coerce Outlook into playing nicely here ;) 

-- 
Jorgen Hahn
www.niveon.com

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 10:53:43PM +0300, Alexey Verkhovsky
wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 20:03, Jorgen Hahn wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, how modular is the
> > authentication system? 
> 
> I''d say there is no authentication system worthy of the name
"SYSTEM"
> yet :) There is some code in rforum SVN, and some code from the other
> two projects - but we haven''t even discussed this aspect yet. If
you
> pitch in right now, you may get to decide how modular it is going to be.
w/r/t modular authentication systems, ActiveLDAP may be of interest to
you all.

http://dataspill.org/posts/show/4
and
http://rubyforge.org/docman/view.php/381/115/activeldap_rb.html

Available as a gem!

marcel
-- 
Marcel Molina Jr. <marcel-WRrfy3IlpWYdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>