Author Topic: Pecon writes a forum system - The adventure (Read 2565 times)

Pecon · October 28, 2016, 11:36:02 AM

So a little over a year ago I wrote a forum for the boss battles website. A few months ago I decided to take that forum and create a more standard forum system from it. I'm pretty bad with naming, I've named the new system REforum for now. If I get an idea for any better name it will most likely change. I guess the basic overall mission is to make a simple forum system that focuses particularly on being lightweight for the client and server, and having an especially small data footprint.

https://github.com/Pecon/REforum

The quality of the code varies a bit since a lot of it was written a year ago and I've yet to revisit a lot of it. Also there are a few aspects I'd like help with.

- QA
+ I need people to test the forum to find problems. Developer testing only gets you so far. If you can try out the example forum I have set up (a link to it is in the github readme) it'll help me out by recording any errors you run into. Make sure to let me know if you encounter any particularly unexpected functionality (or non-functionality, for that matter). If they have the know-how, it'd help out a lot if someone would try downloading the software and installing it themselves from scratch; I don't have a ton of testing done on the setup script.

- Graphics
+ ~~Need a non-stuffty default banner logo~~ Pretty sure Insert Name Here has this covered.
+ ~~I'd like a sort of 'default avatar' to show for users that haven't uploaded an avatar yet. Right now it just makes a broken image. Should be 100x100px.~~ Eon won this one.
+ Favicon?
+ Background texture?? (maybe not)

- Style
+ CSS styling isn't exactly my forte. Styling advice would be appreciated.

You can also help me with the code if you really want to. PM me or something and I'll add you to the repository. There are still many features yet to be worked on.

Current development goals:

- More structured method of constructing pages, for a more consistent experience (I'm dreading the amount of rewriting this will need)

- ~~Upgrade abysmal admin panel~~ Done enough!

- BBcode interpretter overhaul

Preview of how stuff maybe kinda looks right now:

If you want to try it out, you can find a link to where I'm hosting it on the github page. Not gonna risk linking directly to it.

Ad Bot · Advertisement

DrenDran · October 28, 2016, 11:36:59 AM

As much as I like lightweight forums, the black on dark blue colorscheme just isn't doing it for me.

Refticus · October 28, 2016, 11:37:24 AM

Quote from: Pecon on October 28, 2016, 11:36:02 AM

Not gonna risk linking directly to it.

you forgot the links in the screenshots

pefu19 · October 28, 2016, 03:55:58 PM

im the first stuffposter

update:

im taking over the forums, hands up

Notorious B.I.G. · October 28, 2016, 04:06:58 PM

its cool i might make a logo for it soon

Insert Name Here� · October 28, 2016, 04:25:15 PM

Here's this banner I made, if you want it in a different style, send me a PM

You can click the image to get the full-res to download if you want. If you use it, no need to give credit

I could also get to work on a default avatar too if you want, just you'd have to tell me what your forum is themed around so I'd have an idea for a default avatar. I could also be a tester / designer (I can't script but I could give you some help and constructive criticism and opinions) if you want as well

Space1255 · October 28, 2016, 04:27:40 PM

*hacker typing*
I'm in

Eon · October 28, 2016, 04:35:19 PM

here's my logo entry
1100x250
png version:

tiff version:

would appreciate credit but isn't needed

edit: default user avatar
png version:

tiff version:

double edit, favicon 16x16
png version:

tiff version:

download the ico here

Eon · October 28, 2016, 05:09:41 PM

-snip-

Foxscotch · October 28, 2016, 08:08:35 PM

I would suggest using pull requests over just giving people write access to the repository
also, I definitely appreciate what you are trying to do with the AGPL, but in reality you would probably have a hard time enforcing it. step 1 is proving that they're using your software on their server, and good luck doing that (legally). I feel like it just makes you more likely to get people hiding their modified source code out of spite

last thing: I'm very out of touch with PHP, because I don't like it, so I will probably not be contributing to any of that, but let me know if you wanna add any javascript ;3

Pecon · October 28, 2016, 08:11:12 PM

Thanks for the graphics, INH and Eon. Really glad to have some quality looking images to put in. I'll be crediting each of you when I make the commit that adds those images to the repository.

Quote from: Foxscotch on October 28, 2016, 08:08:35 PM

last thing: I'm very out of touch with PHP, because I don't like it, so I will probably not be contributing to any of that, but let me know if you wanna add any javascript ;3

I'll keep you in mind. I'm pretty bad at JS.

Also I suck at git. What's a pull request?

Cr�wn · October 28, 2016, 08:18:06 PM

Super cool. I think it would be even better if you worked a bit on making the tables look a bit nicer using CSS. I get that it is supposed to be simplistic but still would be cool to look nice.
"New" markers on unread stuff would be pretty nice as well. (Maybe this is a thing and I just didn't see)
Also markers on sticky'd posts.

Pecon · October 28, 2016, 08:24:16 PM

Quote from: Cr�wn on October 28, 2016, 08:18:06 PM

Super cool. I think it would be even better if you worked a bit on making the tables look a bit nicer using CSS. I get that it is supposed to be simplistic but still would be cool to look nice.

Actually I note above that I'm really not good at CSS design, and I'm all for making it look a little nicer. I'm looking for specific input in that area.

And yeah some markers will be in order eventually.

Foxscotch · October 28, 2016, 08:36:51 PM

Quote from: Pecon on October 28, 2016, 08:11:12 PM

Also I suck at git. What's a pull request?

you'd be much better off reading this than listening to me try to explain it lol
as far as reasons to use it go, a lot of people could sit here and write a 2,000 word essay about it but I'm really only suggesting it for safety reasons. giving blockland people write access to this would be a bad idea

pefu19 · October 29, 2016, 05:20:01 AM

make topics of author threads editable pls