I’ve been looking for some forum software to run a new site. The PHP world has a good choice of free/open source packages, many of which are very widely deployed. This is a brief review of four of the most popular systems. Despite having heard good things, I’ve avoided proprietary systems like vBulletin and IP.Board (formerly Invision Power Board). I’m certainly not going to pay just to review them.
First the good news. All the packages reviewed were easy to install. They all have a fairly neat automated installer with the exception of PunBB which is semi-automated. At the end of the process it gives you a file which you have to upload manually to the server. No big deal.
Thereafter, things go right downhill. Let’s look at some basic stats:
Here, “tables” is database tables. They’re a good indication of how bloated, or if you prefer, “powerful”, a system is. A basic forum system needs just four core tables: users, forums, topics, posts. Add onto that one more table for storing global configuration like the site name and you should be good to go.
“Files” is the number of files in the default installation package.
bbPress scores well here in keeping the bloat down, running its entire system in a parsimonious eight tables; at the other extreme, phpBB weighs in with an engorged 62. Behind these simple figures lies a sorry tale of phenomenal feature creep, atrocious usability and security nightmares.
Four reviews to follow:
- bbPress
- PunBB (in progress)
- Simple Machines Forum (in progress)
- phpBB (in progress)
This blog runs on WordPress and I have a love/hate relationship with it.
Actually, it’s just a hate relationship really. I hate the way it works, I hate the scrappy, crappy codebase and most of all I hate myself for not finding something better, or in lieu of that, making something better.
Phew.
WordPress 2.7 is currently in development and the wireframes show some improvements in the admin interface. That’s to be welcomed. However, as an encouragement to take usability further here are a few pointers for other improvements.
- Generally when I log in its because I want to write. I care little for the Dashboard. Take me straight to the new post editor or at the very least give me the option of configuring the admin so that it does it. A cramped “QuickPress” box isn’t a substitute for the real thing.
- Stop telling me about how much spam you’ve caught. The purpose of a spam catcher is to make it disappear, not to bother me further with reports on how successful the spam catching is.
- Matt Mullenweg’s thoughts on his breakfast, USian politics, the Amazon Kindle or indeed WordPress itself form no part of my workflow. If I want to subscribe to any WordPress development blogs I’ll do that in my feed reader. This functionality doesn’t belong in WordPress anywhere.
- You’ve just bought a brand new Moleskine notebook. Unwrapping it and opening it up, you discover that someone has already scrawled on the first page, “This is an example of a handwritten page in your new Moleskine notebook. You can write pages just like this yourself. Try it!” You then have to rip out the example page to actually get started. WordPress should employ effective blank slate techniques, not stuff the database with example content on a new installation that users have to delete before they can use it. Ditto, bookmarks in the links section.
- The default theme should be as minimal as possible both to encourage users to switch to something else and also to provide the simplest possible starting point for theme development.
- Uncategorized isn’t a category, it’s information architecture leftovers. Make the app work with no categories and start like that by default.
- I’m not your pardner. Please don’t address me with “Howdy”.
- Is it a blog? Is it a CMS? No, it’s a “state-of-the-art publishing platform“. This means nothing whatsoever. WordPress rapidly needs to work out what it is and who it’s for before it goes even further down the route of being jack of all trades and master of none. If this is the state of the art then the art is in a pretty poor state altogether.
Likely to say: “We’ve just moved to ZorbServeMAXX 5.0.7.19RC2!!1!1″
Previous Offences: Telephone helpdesk. Network installations. Overclocking. LAN Parties. Case modding. Aerosmith. Warez.
Will ruin your project by: continually pushing the server’s software one version ahead of your site’s code.
The Geek is a sysadmin at heart and he designs websites as a means to an end: testing new software on his server. Stable software is for girls. The good stuff has more patches than an audience participation production of the Pirates of Penzance. It matters little to the Geek that your site only exists to sell your minicab services to customers within five miles of Morden. He’ll pull out all the stops to ensure that it scales to two million visitors per month before he’ll even consider launching.
Fortunately, the Geek has a friend who works in a hosting company (in fact, all his friends work in hosting companies) who can get a good deal on just the kind of “big iron” that’d be absolutely perfect for your site. Despite this unexpected advantage, your hosting bill comes to six times what he’s charging for the web design itself, and that’s just for the first month.
Still, if your business ever gets featured simultaneously on all five national TV channels you’ll be able to handle the spike, even if the design looks suspiciously similar to the wiki-based documentation for the Geek’s server hardware. Odd, that.
Nine months after launch, your inbox still bulges with hourly reports on load averages, server uptime and critical security advisory notices that the Geek just can’t bear to keep to himself.
Likely to say: “This would be so much easier in Flash.”
Previous offences: Conceptual video installation art. Lomography. Tufte books. Graffiti. Manga.
Will ruin your project by: sacrificing content and functionality on the altar of aesthetic perfection.
For the Creative, working life is a huge comedown from those heady art school days when he could spend weeks rethinking sports cars, rethinking the iPod, rethinking television and rethinking thinking. But there’s no good reason why Scunthorpe Sanitary Services Ltd shouldn’t have a cutting-edge multimedia extravaganza, ‘cos design is democratic, innit?, as long as you’ve got the dosh.
After months of brainstorming sessions, storyboarding conferences, mind maps, mockups, teasers, trailers and “post-production”, the end result is as likely to pick up an Oscar as it is to persuade a jaded facilities manager that there’s a cheaper way to get his corporate toilets cleaned. Just as long as you’re standing in front of his Mac’s 30-inch monitor and wearing his £300 headphones, it’s truly awesome.
Whatever you do, though, try not to experience it via any kind of network or read the text without a microscope.
Likely to say: “Enlightened design requires the synthesis of effort, desire and serendipity. Sometimes the best design is… no design.”
Previous offences: Meditation retreats in Nepal. Burning Man. Environmental activism. Wind chimes. Veganism.
Will ruin your project by: confusing spiritual development with web development.
No matter what the specification says, the Zen Master knows that your soul yearns for something more. Something profound. Something timeless. Something a damn sight more interesting than building a virtual shopfront for your bunion pad factory.
The exploratory (indeed, only) phase of his “holistic” design process is pitched somewhere between Freudian psychoanalysis and a Socratic dialogue, concentrating on uncovering your repressed traumas, existential dilemmas and psychic blocks rather than shifting boxloads of bunion pads to the world’s hobbling masses. The Zen Master, centred, tranquil and placid, will be entirely undeterred by missed deadlines and enraged clients, seeing them as an opportunity for “growth” rather than a harbinger of lawsuits to come.
In the end, but far too late, you realise that arguing with him is exactly what he wants, so you pay him to go away, write the whole project down as a loss and leave him to return to his cloud, older, wiser, poorer and considerably more traumatised than when you started.
Five years later he’s still keeping in touch.
Likely to say: “What’d you say if I could build you a PC, hook you up to broadband, save you 20% off your phone costs and make you a website for just £49 a month over the next five years?”
Previous Offences: Man and Van. Lawnmower repairs. Painting and decorating. Minicab driving. Photocopier services.
Will ruin your project by: subcontracting it to the Barrow Boy.
Web design is a computer thing and Jack has a computer shop. Ergo, he offers web design to his customers. What they don’t suspect, of course, is that his design skills extend no further than choosing perforated chrome spotlights for his guest bedroom and that their website job will be done by the local Barrow Boy.
For this rare level of service he charges a hefty premium, but then he’s got his overheads to consider and face time costs money. Still, £49 a month (plus VAT) seems like a pretty good deal for five web pages, a choice of over 10,000 templates, the (refurbished) PC, the (unsupported, flaky) broadband and the deep discounts on phone calls to other customers of the same service within a two mile radius.
You get a free domain name, too.
Likely to say: “5 pages for £99! Choose from over 10,000 templates! Free domain name!”
Previous Offences: Barrow boy. Home improvements sales. Pyramid schemes. Pirate DVDs. No tax disc.
Will ruin your project by: spending longer closing the sale than working on the site.
His father, his father’s father and his father’s father’s father sold fruit and veg by the pound at the market. Now he sells web design as if it were fruit and veg by the pound at the market. Despite working far longer hours than his costermongering ancestors, his success in web design is constantly thwarted by his £98-for-ten-pages competitors and his inability to offer a service more sophisticated than pasting text between Word and FrontPage.
His skills are as blunt as his operation is sharp, but he’s no slouch. Your site is delivered by email the following morning, along with a receipt for his “design consultancy”, a list of his astronomical hosting prices and information about his “premium uploading service”.
Of course, you can’t fool people twice, so the next time you shop for web design your first port of call is eBay. There, you pick up a CD-ROM of 10,000 WEB DESIGN TEMPLATES!!! RESELLER RIGHTS!!! for only 99p (plus £9.99 postage) from barrowboy(694).