Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

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Discuss features as they are added to the new version. Give us your feedback. Don't post bug reports, feature requests, support questions or suggestions here. Feature requests are closed.
vph
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Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by vph »

Hi all,
I've been using and moding phpbb for a while now, and I've recently looked at drupal. Both are really good systems, and are of course target slightly different needs. After looking at these for just a short while, I've come to a conclusion that nowadays creating communities has got to address effectively syndication and publication. I'm not suggesting that you turn phpBB into something like drupal (a really good CMS). But within what phpBB does best, I feel there are room to steal some good ideas from a good CMS.

In terms of specific features, I hope to see those that facilitate the process of syndication and publication (within the capacity of phpbb of course). For example,

+ Bigger fonts that are easy on the eyes.... please. I don't know if i'm in the minority here, but I feel that the default font size of phpbb is just too small. Increasing the default sizes somehow just doesn't make it look right, I think; at least I couldn't. I hope something will be done about this.

+ A thoughtful announcement suite that categorically highlights announcement. I think that this feature will likely be part of Olympus. But how about something like announcement queue ? where users can submit their posts as announcements, which initially appear as regular posts and are in queue to be officially made into announcements by mods/admins?

+ Blog .... something like the blog mod incorporated more closely with the exisiting structure of phpbb would be excelent.

+ Collaborative work (e.g. a book). I feel that the current structure of phpbb with a slight modification of "weighted threads", for example, could easily afford the implementation of an "ordered structure" like a book, or some kind of structure, where people can work collaboratively.


Just a few thoughts ....

Vph

Aldenhier
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by Aldenhier »

1) If you have a roller thing on your mouse, hold down the Ctrl key (windows) and scroll.

2) That may be a useful mod... I may make it if it isn't in the phpBB release

3) I don't think that many people would use that on a daily basis, so to speak. That would be more of a MOD.

4) I'm not sure that I get what you're saying...

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psoTFX
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by psoTFX »

phpBB is a templated system, you can alter the font size very easily. Equally this current style and the new 3.0 style all use relative font sizing.

Announcements were/are intended as being useful/important items of information primarily offered up by the board admins/moderators. While what you describe may be useful to some it's not something I see being used by a significant minority of our community. Thus our very large, very capable modding community are the place to look IMO.

phpBB is a forum ... it's a piece of software designed to allow people to discuss issues. It's not a blog, there is an array of software designed explicitly for blogging.

Again, phpBB is a forum ... it's not a portal which seems to be the sort of thing you're describing.

vph
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by vph »

Two things:

1) The default font size. I have actually tried several things in terms of increasing the font size, from browser, modifying the template (inside ACP), etc. .... I've come to the conclusion that the default font-size is designed to be visually optimal. Unfortunately, it is too small. Further, making the font size bigger makes the forum look ugly. And all these are relative to vBulletin and other things, which all seem to have visually beautiful and bigger fonts. I think this is such a small thing, but can make a big difference.

If you've become familiar with this setting, that may be fine to you. But when you jump back and forth between a vBulletin setting (for example) and phpBB, you'll see a (big and annoying) difference.


2) Phpbb as a forum or more ??? I think that phpbb provides a very effective forum environment. But I think you have to look at the bigger picture. Your slogan is "creating communities". And I feel that communities will soon reach beyond the forum environment; it may have already. Many other works try to do many things, but not all aspects of a community is very efficient. In particular, the forum is not close to as good as that of phpbb. All I'm saying is, you should look little further into the future, and try to extend the definition of communities, within the framework of what you do best, namely phpbb.

And now may be a good time (drupal, it seems, to look into developing a serious forum module).

Once you share this vision, things like announcements, etc.... are simply technicalities.

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stubbers
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by stubbers »

I beleive vph poses a very good question. Yes I agree communities are about syndication etc, and because the phpBB group haven't yet taken this opportunity a number of sourceforge projects have begun to appear. Don't worry portals will be availible, whether or not they are supported by the group or not is up to them.

1 - It may be too small, I don't tend to notice, I use very very small fonts, and have been told to do otherwise. It is to me very good looking with these font sizes, seriously any larger and things just don't fit on the screen. I have increased the font size on the browser and got 2 or 3 steps up before it became jumbled. In my opinion I'm not sure what you are doing to change the font sizes...

2 - Answered at the top

Magnotta
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by Magnotta »

vph wrote: Two things:

1) The default font size. I have actually tried several things in terms of increasing the font size, from browser, modifying the template (inside ACP), etc. .... I've come to the conclusion that the default font-size is designed to be visually optimal. Unfortunately, it is too small. Further, making the font size bigger makes the forum look ugly. And all these are relative to vBulletin and other things, which all seem to have visually beautiful and bigger fonts. I think this is such a small thing, but can make a big difference.

If you've become familiar with this setting, that may be fine to you. But when you jump back and forth between a vBulletin setting (for example) and phpBB, you'll see a (big and annoying) difference.
I just went to a vbulletin board, and there font sizes are the same as phpBB's it seems. As well, it's a compelte style issue dealing with how large the font size is, so wait until the new style is released. Maybe it will change the font sizes. If not, it's been said that the new style is going to be more heavily css based, so you'll be able to change any font sixes rather quickly to your own liking.

2) Phpbb as a forum or more ??? I think that phpbb provides a very effective forum environment. But I think you have to look at the bigger picture. Your slogan is "creating communities". And I feel that communities will soon reach beyond the forum environment; it may have already. Many other works try to do many things, but not all aspects of a community is very efficient. In particular, the forum is not close to as good as that of phpbb. All I'm saying is, you should look little further into the future, and try to extend the definition of communities, within the framework of what you do best, namely phpbb.

And now may be a good time (drupal, it seems, to look into developing a serious forum module).

Once you share this vision, things like announcements, etc.... are simply technicalities.
I'm glad that phpBB is just a forum. If phpBB came with all these other things, it would soon be a 'website in a box', at which point there would be a lot of websites that all look the same, which I would find boring. It's nice to be able to have a unique site or something where the forum is just a small part of it, and the forum can easily be skinned to match the rest of your site. As well, there was once a phpBB portal project. Who knows, one day the team might resume development on it. They've never really said that they'll never go back and finish it, just pretty much that for now its been put aside for an indefinite amount of time(which of course could mean never).

Lastly, with bringing up their slogan of 'creating communities', keep in mind their name as well: phpBB, which is php Bulletin Board. In other words, they make bulletin board software, not full websites.

mastermike707
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by mastermike707 »

Interesting topic... I think that something similar to what vph is suggesting should be implemented. The development line should split, similar to how phpBB 2.0.x and 2.2 lines are split. The first line would be a continuation of just the forums. Its features would continue to be fixed, added, and modified. The second line should be a seperate project that uses the forum system as a base and develops itself into something similar to what the phpbb portal was going to become. I suggest that the project be taken under by a new/combined team of developers, as the current ones already have their hands full. The new project should be completely seperate, it would be as if they were not even affliated with each other, except that when the phpbb codebase is updated, so is the phpbb codebase of the new line and that the two websites have links to each other and share communities. This way people who just need a forum solution can get one and people who want a whole packaged site can get one that works well.
Sorry for the rambling, just thinking out loud. I'm sorry if that bored you. :P

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psoTFX
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by psoTFX »

As with many topics here ... this is all old news and has been discussed many times. The phpBB Portal is on hold for now (and many other portals/cms exist which have pluggable phpBB modules; mambo, typo3, xoops, nuke, etc.). The other questions have been answered.

SnowboardAlliance
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by SnowboardAlliance »

I know this is old, but I need to throw in my ideas on CMS integration. I think that this could easily be added. You could have an option in the ACP to use two Users tables. This way, users could be created normally and have thier options set the same, but the second db could be one that is used by a CMS. Now you can have specified fields syncronized enough that the CMS and forum work togeter. The users can sign up at one, and they are registered for both. All shared settings would be in sync, while CMS/forum specific ones are seperated. This would all be optional and not take away any features. It's just a thought.

joeledition
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Re: Syndication aspects of Olympus ...

Post by joeledition »

I agree with the idea that phpbb could be extended to a pseudo-CMS. But I also understand it may be the role of the phpbb community to develop such an extension.

If you think about what a CMS is, you realize consists in two main parts a user/session management and content creation. A forum just does the exact same thing, except the content is presented in a different way. When I installed Phpbb on my website, users quicly started using the forum to do everything: communicating, sharing their thougts etc.

I think the interface of Phpbb is very smooth and users on my website quickly understood how to be very creative with the tools phpbb gave them. So far, I have never found a CMS which reached the same level of simplicity. I wanted my users to experience the same comfort in every part of the site. So to extend the possiblity of my website, I have modded phpbb. And I'm far from being the only one to do so, if you browse the internet, you will find many websites using only phpbb for the whole site.

Also, I didn't want my users to have 2 separate logins: one on the forum and one for the rest of the site. And obviously, no CMS has a forum as good as phpbb. I am sure that a lot of people came to same conclusion.

My website is a simple community, and require only very simple functions: It has to allow members to easily communicate and create content. The forum is without a doubt the key element in a community website, that is why I chose phpbb. And in fact, I think that this new version of phpbb adds nearly everything that was missing.

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