SubSonic: Our Forums Suck. HALP!
Monday, November 26, 2007 -
I was hoping our forums project would take off and we could "dog food" a neat new forums project based on SubSonic. That didn't happen, and I'm paying the price.
I try to answer 20-50 posts a day on our forums, and with the new job, Eric getting married, and others out for the holidays, our forums are suffering a bit. We've recently had a group of developers come in to help out, but I'm afraid it might be too little, too late.
As I cruise through the forums I can see that some are getting frustrated at the lack of responses. I hear you. Believe me.
I'll keep this short and to the point: I have a tough decision to make, and I need you to help me. Here it is:
- Do I improve on what we have, taking more of my time and other's time to work out a neat idea or
- Do I throw in the towel and go with an established system?
I've been playing with phpBB and I really, really like it. I also like the JitBit ASPForums because they're extremely fast. Both can be folded nicely into our existing site.
PhpBB has a lot more features and community support, and is reasonably fast. JitBit's stuff is just ridiculously fast and has some great features, but is pretty bare bones.
No data will be lost - we'll roll it over and you shouldn't notice a dern thing. I hope.
If you think we need to make a change, speak up! And let me know which of the above you prefer. I apologize for the lack of support here - but I'm in a super tough spot RE my time and I can't whip Eric and Kevin much more.
And how is another system going to help get more reply's?
What ever is fast (to implement), has a good host of important whistles and bells and can, at some point, be migrated if need be.
I ironically was on the forums today as well and am seeing some annoying shinnanigans... Nothing worse than a bunch on negative, derogatory, and completely useless attitudes swimming around... Those silly nonconstructive individuals who are pissing on the cake need to be dealt with asap. Looked like you were forced to work the 3 strikes law...
All the best,
RA
(But I think the forum project was also made for showing some SubSonic features and should not be thrown away.)
Has anyone had experience with it?
Also, MySpace uses the same software.
JitBit ASPForums because it's ASP.NET, fast and I prefer a barebones approach. A forums only as good as the information inside it and that's only useful if you can get to it quickly. After having to endure too many forums gasping for air, like The Green Button back in the day, I say speed speed speed.
As long as there is speed, search and thread notification then that's all that is really needed. In fact if it has any avatar or signiture support I say please turn them off, nothing is more annoying than a one line forum message that takes up half the screen because of someone's witty idea of a signature or avatar.
Chees
Simo
Don´t waste your time reinventing wheels. As far as I remember the Subsonic forum should be more an example than a feature complete forum. I think thats done.
To support Subsonic core, a working and feature complete forum is more usefull then eating dogfood and trying turn an example project into some sort of feature.
I know, there was the idea to have a "SubSonic driven forum control" to plug into a website, but you can do that with any of the exisiting solutions, so where is the point?
Spend the saved time in Subsonic core! there is the value.
If the forums themselves aren't important then don't focus on them don't use the project and continue. Interest in the project will probably decrease (at least until MVC SubSonic steps into the light)
So bad for the forums, good for supporting SubSonic.
If the forums are a bit important, you can stick with them and hope that posts like this get more developers onto the forum team.
I would go with the latter, because I really think the world needs another forum project :)
One that is based on SubSonic and which shows it's muscles.
And if it's moving forward a bit faster those functions can't take too long now can they :P
Every hour you spend hacking around with forum software is an hour that is stolen from SubSonic. And when you do that, SubSonic cries and Jesus kills a kitten.
You don't want SubSonic to cry now, do you?
Aaron
President, Rob Conery Fan Club
But that too is light on features (which is nice sometimes), or maybe it has just enough?
Punbb is another light weight forum but has just the right amount of features. I'd check that out as it's super clean and will get you most of what you need - somewhere between beast and phpbb.
My 2 cents.
Oh, and yes, keep the forum project download but I think we should stop using it as the main forum software. We need to be nicer to the community, they need love too ;)
But that too is light on features (which is nice sometimes), or maybe it has just enough?
I'm gonna make my vote for Punbb, which is another light weight forum but has just the right amount of features. I'd check that out as it's super clean and will get you most of what you need - a feature set between beast and phpbb.
My 2 cents.
Oh, and yes, keep the forum project for download as you did a great job in such a short time but I think we should stop using it as the main forum software. We need to be nicer to the community, they need love too ;)
yetanotherforum.net has all of it's aspx files right in the root, and I don't think it really uses code behind files... I guess that's a matter of preference...but I wasn't interested in maintaining the code base on my site because of that.
Use an Established forum? Do it!
Scrap SubSonic forum? No! Ultimately I agree with what Chris van de Steeg said above.
I'm new! What's going on?
Too often, people think that solving the world's problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.
foliposterhus