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There is no doubt that a forum is one of the most active, if not the most active component of a community site. It allows anyone to search for discussions about almost anything, and can start discussions about any new topic, news, or rumors. Over at talk.maemo.org, the forum has been used to announce new developments, get help from the community to test apps, and suggest enhancements to the operating system.
In the first online MeeGo Community Meeting, it was identified that a forum is one of the components that needs to be added ASAP.
The main challenge for MeeGo is to properly bridge Drupal, MeeGo.com's content management system (CMS), and the forum system to make [[Single sign-on|Single Sign-On (SSO)] work.
The software of choice to be used for the forum system has not been decided upon. The following table shows the proposed forum software that can be used:
| Forum Software | Drupal Forum | phpBB3 | vBulletin | FluxBB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSO with other MeeGo services | Component of Drupal itself. | Drupal phpBB3 bridges latest versions of Drupal and phpBB3 to provide SSO and synchronisation.
| Drupal vB, a Drupal module project, is currently the only add-on that supports the latest version of Drupal, and bridges the two systems. Drupal vB allows the following:
Me Aliases is another Drupal module project that needs to be installed in Drupal. This makes it easy to redirect users to use the Drupal member page to change their email address or password, rather than in vBulletin. Changes in the member's information (email and password) get automatically replicated to vBulletin. | |
| Email/Forum Interchange | ? | ? | Beta - see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=28924 | ? |
| SEO | See SEO checklist project, clean URLs by default, URL structure can be changed with an aliases module. | Search-friendly with per bot settings
phpBB and SEO Also available: phpbb-seo | Comes with searchbot friendly archive pages. vBSEO enhances vBulletin SEO by automatically generating and submitting sitemaps to the popular search engines. | FluxBB 1.3 (based off PunBB 1.3, to be replaced by 1.2-based 1.4 that doesn't) supports clean URLs. |
| Search | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in | Built-in |
| Maintenance / Security / Upgradability | Update checker, but manual upgrades. | Automatic update package | Overwrite the whole system with upgraded version, and run a standard upgrade procedure which performs all upgrades automatically. | Overwrite the whole system with upgraded version, and run a standard upgrade procedure which performs all upgrades automatically. |
| Administration | Built-in Admin CP, can be adjusted to only provide functionality to specific user groups. | Built-in Admin and Moderator CPs | Built-in administrator and moderator control panel | Built-in Admin CP |
| Plug-in Architecture | Drupal's native module system (the forum is a module too) | AutoMOD | Built-in plug-in and product management system. | 1.4 does not have a plugin system. |
| Ranking/Voting on threads/posts | VotingAPI for Drupal
gives an easy-to-use framework for rating, voting, moderation, and consensus-gathering module Drupal VotingAPI Additional modules (simpler) are listed on same page | Ranking and voting built-in | ||
| Karma/User Points | A combination of userpoints basic module API and Drupal userpoints contrib are what might be used in Drupal.
Please note these apply normally to the node and posts directly and not the forum module of Drupal itself. | Karma MOD | Post Thank You Hack | |
| Active Forum Topics Module | Drupal phpbbforum provides blocks for integration with Drupal [1] | Drupal vB provides a 'Block' (Drupal term) to display the Active Forum Topics on any Drupal page. A sample can be found at the right sidebar of the test site. | Built-in | |
| Additional Features |
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| Compatibility with Nginx | Yes github nginx-drupal Drupal nginx | Yes [2] | Yes | |
| Testing | A test site has been created to test out the bridge between Drupal and vBulletin. The main objective is to test its functionality, make sure it's stable, and iron out bugs. The test site is being opened so anyone willing to help can help test the bridge. Some items that need to be tested are the following:
The test site is password protected. Below are the details on how to access it:
More information on where to report bugs and suggest features can be found at the front page of the site. | |||
| Support | Drupal forum | phpBB Community | Plug-ins, Forums, Bug Reports | Forums, Trac |
| Licensing | Open source | Open source | Commercial | Open source |
qgil has suggested to start clean and just create minimal categories for the mean time. The Beauty Schools of America Complaints proposed structure is as follows:
It is intended to add company and device categories in the future as MeeGo powered devices are announced. Hopefully, Daniel Delpiano the companies will assign moderators/primary contact persons to help with the forum.
Feel free to add yourself to the list:
| Forum Software | Drupal Forum | phpBB3 | vBulletin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrators |
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| Modders / Themers |
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| Testers |
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