I'm trying to figure out what path I'm going to take for my next web project. I'm not in a huge hurry, but I'd like to choose my final solution soon so I can begin learning how to integrate it. I've looked at quite a few options, and this is one of my current top choices. I like a lot of what it offers, however, I'm not sure if it will be right for me. Your answers/guideance is appreciated:
First, here's my goal: I intend to revamp my current retail site and content, and add a substantial social networking site. Not a dating site, but a place similar to facebook, etc. to complement my existing and future content.
Features I'll want: User Groups! with group forum, group calander, etc.; general forums, categorization/search of groups, Who's online now (by user name), and later various other bells and whistles of lesser importance such as possible group blog/wiki, etc. UPWARD limitations/scalability are a big factor. Lastly, I want to download/install the script myself, rather than a shared hosting solution.
Here's why I want to use a free solution: 1) Cost obviously. 2) I want access to the code so I can make modifications and intergrate it into the rest of my site. The authentication/password system is of particular interest. 3) I like the support forums - as I wouldn't be working alone.
Lastly, I have access to Windows based system, Sql Server, and also My SQL, php, asp, asp.net. I'm far more comfortable working with ASP (and some of my site is already using it). This factors into my decisions.
So far, I've pretty much narrowed my choices to 2 or 3 applications. I have some questions specific to this forum tool:
1) Are there any plans (by the designers) to set up user group "home pages"? This is essentially what would be entailed:
A) User creates a group (site admin setting can allow any registered member to do it, or optionally require approval).
B) Group has some admin features including a simple home page for the group (created by the group creator) with some gizmos such as group calander; links for other users to join the group (with optional allow by the group admin, or automatic toggle setting); hotlinks to existing members in the group; group members or admin can send a message the entire group; a small bulletin board post for the admin with comments from the group users; a group only forum area (viewable directly from the group); links in member profiles saying they belong to various groups (they can belong to more than one); invite new members; and a categorized group navigation tree (categories created by site owner) (so other users can browse what groups are available).
C) I'd obviously prefer this be in the base code itself (rather than a mod), and I think many forum webmasters would like the same. A feature like this would greatly improve stickyness/usefulness of an already solid forum tool.
2) Are there any free mods that accomplish this?
The user groups homepages is the primary feature I'm looking for (with group member forums). The rest (group wiki, blog, etc.) is probably doable through other methods once the group homepages area is in place.
I've seen a couple free forum downloads (that I don't want) with this feature in place (through the base script or addon), but this is one of the last factors in helping me to decide the best script for my use.
Speaking strictly from my personal view, it would be possible to build as a mod - which would be modifying the base software, that's how SMF mods work - but I really don't see it becoming part of the core software.
SMF is capable of many things, however it's not a groupware solution, IMO, it is a forum, and these are more almost like social networking features rather than bulletin board features. As such there aren't many mods for this - because it's a HUGE amount of refitting to SMF. I have heard rumours of social networking ones but they aren't free I gather.
There is a lot of core functionality that would suit in SMF, but it'll need substantial refitting to work as you intend. I also note that you're using ASP; SMF is not in ASP, and while it does run on Windows servers, it does so in a sub-optimal way generally.
Thanks for the info...
I'm currently on a Windows Server 2008/IIS 7.0 setup with access to php5, asp, asp.net, mysql, and sql server amongst other things.
I realize SMF is php based, but any thoughts on how "sub-optimal" it would be on the above platform? If I do wind up installing it, I'm trying to decide whether to run it on Sql server or MySql. Will I lose access to features?
Regarding the Social Networking features:
I agree 100% that SMF isn't designed as-is to work in that capacity. However, based on my design experience it isn't too far a stretch to take it to that next level, and is a somewhat natural extension of a community based forum. I wouldn't expect SMF to create the whole social networking platform (ie. full function blog, home page, wiki, filesharing, etc.). However, I would argue the benefit of adding basic group home page (club page) functionality (with group forum category). It's essentially an extension of a user profile page, but takes it one step further by essentially allowing folks to share a new profile page together (admined by the group creator). Once the group functionality were in place, the mod developers could take it from there (which, in turn would increase SMF's audience and usefulness, without too much work on SMF's part).
Here's why I prefer a forum like SMF as the foundation:
1) I've seen quite a few of the social networking solutions. A lot of them have really nice features, but have relatively unsatisfactory forum tools. I like SMF (and a couple other solutions) because of the solid forum foundation. Additionally, I believe the forum is the strongest part of the social networking platform. It isn't always the most popular component, but it is the most complicated piece, and can provide 90% of the groundwork for the other components.
2) I don't need file sharing. I do need group homepages with group forums (and categorization). So, a skeleton base structure is enough to get me up and running. Combine that skeleton grouping tool, with the power of a solid forum base, and it's well on its way.
3) Cost. Most social networking solutions are very expensive, but many are suboptimal in ways. For example, I've seen a $5k to $25k solution that is a nice network, but has fairly unimpressive forums. A lot of the effort gets placed on video/file uploading/sharing (which is not what I'm after). There are also relatively cheap solutions, but again, not all that impressive.
Lastly, my personal use for the tool is something akin to club homepages using a forum as the foundation. Social networking is a bit broader than my actual intentions. Of course, once the structure for creating user "clubs with club forums" are in place, it would be relatively simple to mod/add my own wiki, blog format, etc.
Anyway, that should further explain my goals. I'm not asking for a full fleshed out social network. I am asking for the functionality to group users together into "clubs" with club forums (without admin having to do it all by hand for each request), and a basic category structure.
An update: I have seen one or two SMF mods that would likely accomplish what I need (with some tweaking). I haven't seen this one up and running, but the mod documentation looks very impressive. The best so far is ZCommunity mod (which I believe can do group based blog pages), though the author's support site leaves me questioning its future compatibility with later SMF upgrades (which is another reason I suggest the base code be modified by SMF).
If there are any other mods out there that can do this type of grouping, please let me know.
Thanks for your assistance.
SMF doesn't run on SQL Server at all. It would need some serious work to make it work on SQL Server.
Sub-optimal means it'll run slower than it would elsewhere. Other users have hit other issues, but mostly that's down to specific configuration issues, rather than fundamental issues on Windows.
zCommunity is being completely rewritten by its author to be a standalone package with optional SMF bridge.
Which mods have you found that would suit you? Maybe you can work with the author to tweak them specifically to your needs.
Here's a question, and some rambling outloud:
Using SMF current search functionality, would it be possible to exclude categories from being searched?
Here's why I ask.
I see 3 ways to create club forums.
a) use two separate forums with a centralized login. Forum1 is for the general community forums. Forum2 is for club only forums. The club only forums are organized by category, then club name. Forum2 may or may not be directly accessed by the public, but essentially it acts as the base feeding the info into group pages.
b) Use one forum sectioned into general community, and user clubs. Limit club members to posting in the club forum area. But use searches to limit results based on where the end users are at. If they are in the general community, they can search the general community forum area only. If they are in the club area, the group homepages will interact with their club section of the forum only.
c) Use one forum. All users can search/browse into any part of the forum, but only club members can post in their club's forum area.
I believe the permission tools are already in place. You just need a way to automate it: when folks join clubs they gain permission to post there. This step may require club admin permission to join.
That brings up another question:
I'm wondering if SMF moderators can assign lower users permissions?
You'd have to modify it slightly but yes it would be doable to exclude boards (picked from categories).
I see a simpler way of doing it than that. Simply limit what boards they can see by their usergroup, which should also pick up when searching.
Quote from: Arantor on September 12, 2009, 03:57:13 PM
You'd have to modify it slightly but yes it would be doable to exclude boards (picked from categories).
I see a simpler way of doing it than that. Simply limit what boards they can see by their usergroup, which should also pick up when searching.
I'll have to look more closely at the usergroup idea to get a feel for how that would work.
Any thoughts on whether a moderater level user can assign permissions to a lower level user? If that funtionality is in place, that allows the admin to assign a club creator moderator permissions on his club forums, which in turn is the step needed to allow the slub creator the capability of approving end users to join his club. (By giving them post permission in that club).
The ability to change a user's groups is something that can be assigned to any user group. Thus you can easily make a club moderator - give them that ability and it'll do the job.
Quote from: Arantor on September 12, 2009, 04:23:54 PM
The ability to change a user's groups is something that can be assigned to any user group. Thus you can easily make a club moderator - give them that ability and it'll do the job.
That is a really good thing!
So, by using the existing usergroups permissions, existing forum structure, and allowing club moderators, that takes care of the majority of the structural portion of the solution right there.
So the rest would be a matter of creating the interfaces and links (and tables for housing the club data), and linking things together (which, while time consuming) should be the "easy" part (in theory).
Now, the hard part (for me) is learning php and mysql. I'm also going to figure out how to interact with mySql between my windows computer and the mySql on the hosted server. I'll start taking a look on the web. (In other words, if I start using MySql for various projects, I'm going to have databases on my personal computer that will be uploaded to MySql on my hosted server). Learning curve :o
Thank you for your help.
It is a learning curve, but it's a worthwhile one.
PHP isn't that hard to learn either; and it's not as if there's a shortage of knowledge on it - a quick Google search will answer many questions, and there are plenty of PHP and MySQL folk around here who will answer whatever questions you have in the Scripting Help board.
It helps that SMF's permissions system is so versatile that it can be made to do just about anything with a little work.
I've looked a bit more closely at the online documentation. I have a question regarding usergroups.
How many usergroups can an admin create? Is the number unlimited?
The reason I ask is this: If there are unlimited usergroups available, then each club could have its own usergroup and board specific permissions such as:
Usergroup1: ClubAgroupmoderator - he can add/remove folks from his group, and has moderation permissions on the clubs forums. Also has ability to pm the whle club list (clubAgroupmembers). He does not have the ability to modify any permissions. His club board can be private, public, read only, post upon approval by joining the club, etc.
Usergroup2: ClubAgroupmember - this is the group a member belongs to when approved by the club owner (groupmoderator). They can post but not moderate within the club boards.
Usergroup3: ClubBgroupmoderator
Usergroup2: ClubBgroupmember
etc.
Based on the documentation, it appears that granting a club moderator permission control may give them too much board-wide power.
If there are unlimited groups available, it appears the forums have all the power they need. I've seen some mods that can help automate the club process.
For all practical purposes, yes.
The upper limit is 65531 of your own (plus 4 base groups, Admin, Global Mod, Moderator and the lowest post-count group)
NB if you delete and add a new one the count doesn't go down. So you can make a total of 65535 over the life of your installation.
Quote from: Arantor on September 12, 2009, 06:58:48 PM
For all practical purposes, yes.
The upper limit is 65531 of your own (plus 4 base groups, Admin, Global Mod, Moderator and the lowest post-count group)
NB if you delete and add a new one the count doesn't go down. So you can make a total of 65535 over the life of your installation.
Thanks for the info.
I was slightly confused on the second part: If the limit is 65535, and lets say you reached your limit and you deleted 20000 old ones, then you would still be unable to add any new ones after the deletion?
If so, is there a workaround to count the deleted ones (like set the counter back), and therefore recapture the use of the 20000 deleted groups?
Lastly, (this got me to thinking) - are other things limited (such as number of forums, number of users, etc.?). For example, for every club there will also be a forum and possible child forums, so I'd have to watch the upward cap.
Indeed that's the case. The logic is thus: every time you add a new group, there is a counter that goes up by one - and this is the number for the next group. When it hits 65535, it has trouble because it'll wrap around and start colliding with group 1 and 2 (Admin and Global Mod)
There are ways to resolve it but none that can be done automatically.
Thank you for the explanation. I edited my post as you answered...
Is there also a cap on total number of forums and number of registered users?
And lastly (this is all helping with my structure options and whether to use SMF)...
Is this number the record limitation of the mySql table causing the cap?
If there is a cap on the number of forums, I may need to do a split out and run 2 separate forums or at least 2 separate tables. - one for clubs, and one for general topics. I've seen mods to do this sort of thing I believe.
There are similar caps on the logical number of boards and users, off hand I think it's 65535 for boards and 16777215 for members.
In reality though SMF isn't designed for very large numbers of boards and it will start to impede performance with too many, and in reality you'd put them into logical categories and subdivisions anyway.
That makes sense. I figured the size/resources would cap me long before the number cap limitations. By knowing the caps, it helps me to figure out how to subdivide things.
Out of the gate it tells me I'll want one general userbase, and probably 2 separate forums (or forum tables). I'm thinking 2 forums is the likely way to go - one for general subject forums (which will have a lot of categorized and nested subjects), and one or more for clubs (also categorized). I'll search in more detail on that down the road (such as integrating users, integrating stats, from multiple forums etc.).
Thanks again for the help.
You can achieve that with one forum, having multiple categories and boards (like this one does), bearing in mind you can customise the theme and hide boards based on member groups.
Merging two forum databases to share a single user table is nightmarish to put it bluntly.
Quote from: Arantor on September 12, 2009, 08:54:56 PM
You can achieve that with one forum, having multiple categories and boards (like this one does), bearing in mind you can customise the theme and hide boards based on member groups.
Merging two forum databases to share a single user table is nightmarish to put it bluntly.
My thoughts on the multiple forums were to overcome the total boards cap issue (possibly) by spreading it out amongst different tables/databases, reduce the load on the database (by having the tables be smaller and separated), and also it might make it more simple (design) for segregating the "clubs" portion from the general forums areas. Of course, I don't know exactly how mySql or SMF handles these things, so I'll have to look more closely when I get the documentation and test forum loaded down the road.
The problem comes in integrating two forums; they don't integrate that well, the tables are just too interrelated. So any element you do share you have to be careful with, e.g. user post counts.
I don't think you'll hit the limit of 65k boards, even recycling over time since invariably you'll edit existing ones (which don't inflate the incremental count) rather than create new.
Quote from: Arantor on September 13, 2009, 04:45:28 PM
The problem comes in integrating two forums; they don't integrate that well, the tables are just too interrelated. So any element you do share you have to be careful with, e.g. user post counts.
I don't think you'll hit the limit of 65k boards, even recycling over time since invariably you'll edit existing ones (which don't inflate the incremental count) rather than create new.
Thanks for the info...
I'm not sure. I'll have to look much more closely.
I guess the main question would be this: Is a topic considered a board, and what is the limit on topics?
If topic is not a board, then I should have no problems with one forum.
If topic is considered a board, then I will have problems with one forum.
A topic is not considered a board at all. One board holds many topics, one topic holds many posts. This, for example, is a topic - SMF Feedback and Discussion is the board containing this topic.
Limit on topics is a total of 16777215 over the life of board (same deal as boards). Largest SMF forum has at present something around 7.2m posts, I believe.
Quote from: Arantor on September 13, 2009, 05:21:48 PM
A topic is not considered a board at all. One board holds many topics, one topic holds many posts. This, for example, is a topic - SMF Feedback and Discussion is the board containing this topic.
Limit on topics is a total of 16777215 over the life of board (same deal as boards). Largest SMF forum has at present something around 7.2m posts, I believe.
Great! That is helpful.
That means that I shouldn't need multiple forums to segregate clubs from regular forums based on cap. Each club would get one board. Each club would have 2 usergroups. So there would be around a max of 32000 total club boards. (Assuming the server could handle that number in the first place).
Thanks - that helped with my progress.
It's not set in stone; it's possible to change it but the more boards you keep at once, the slower it'll get.
Quote from: Arantor on September 13, 2009, 05:30:27 PM
It's not set in stone; it's possible to change it but the more boards you keep at once, the slower it'll get.
Makes sense. Archiving based on date last used of the "clubs"/posts/boards will probably help with this. I'm still considering the split boards, to reduce the load, but I am now aware that it can be difficult to do. When I get a bit further into it, I'll have to learn more about the archiving features as well to come up with the final strategy.
I've been looking at the permissions info in the online docs.
I believe you can set permissions by groups, and permissions on boards by groups.
Is it possible to set permissions directly on users + board without using user groups? For example, a user could belong to a general user group, but have only limited permission on one specific board (but general permissions on other boards).
No, permissions are not per user (that would make the permissions setup huge). It has to be done at usergroup or usergroup+board level without seriously modifying things.
If you wanted to grant only one user something, you could possibly override the checks but in reality I think a custom usergroup is likely to be the better answer both in terms of code and user management.
At first glance, I would think the usergroups would have been optimal.
But after thinking about it a while, the best situation would be to enable individual users different accesses on different boards. The user groups would still be the primary way of doing things. However, if a each user had their own permissions (also) that have higher priority than group permissions, it would make the grouping thing much simpler to accomplish for "clubs".
Of course, that's all void as that's not possible with the code as is.
Here was my thinking:
Main boards have read/write type permission for everyone.
Club boards are read only to the general public. Write permission for club members if the club owner approves their join. Club owner gets read/write/possible moderate capabilities on his own club(s).
This can all be done with groups (limited to 32000+/-) by assigning 1 owner group, and 1 users group per club. So far, so good.
But a better way would have been to have an external page (viewable by the club moderator) which would open write access to a user when the club owner approves their membership to their club. This would be accomplished by adding the individual board rights to the user directly from the club owner approve a member page. Had individual user permissions been possible, then the setup would have been exactly the same (main boards r/w, club boards read only, etc.). But upon join, a user could then write to the club section of the club he is a member of (but not others). This would have eliminated the need for 32000 club user groups, and thus opened the clubs to 64000+/- (or more if club forums were optional upon request).
This also made the approve a member simpler by essentially bypassing the step for creating a member group for each club. (In other words, with individual user permission "override", you only have to add the permission to the user. In the groups setup, you have to create the group based on the board, then add the member to the group).
The other workarounds won't work like having 1 club user group level for all the groups, because the minute you add the user to the group, all the club boards become read/write (when only one should be).
Edited:
Also, in case I wasn't clear. The goal isn't to have only user based permissions, but rather to have group permission/board permissions as/is, but also have a user only permission that overrrides the group level permissions.
Here's one more question:
Is there a feature built in (using the existing setup) for a group moderator to approve member requests to join a group? Or is the site admin the only one who can approve group join requests? I guess what I should be asking is what level of permission must a user have to approve a group join request from another user?
User only permissions is a fair amount of work to add on top of the existing, depending on how you go about it. Likely there will be a not insubstantial performance hit.
The right to move people between groups is assignable to any group; it's done in Admin > Members > Permissions > Settings > Membergroups allowed to manage permissions (in 2.x)
User-level permissions would also be really complex, especially when trying to track down odd issues that pop up. You'd also have to check multiple areas to make sure a user has the correct access as a user-level permission could be blocking a group permission.
If you think you must have permissions granular on the user themselves, you are probably either overlooking something or have a very special case. More than likely, you aren't the special case. If you need multiple users to all have the same user-level permissions, you are overlooking something. Try revising your group setup and see if you can accomplish what you need to do.
Quote from: Arantor on September 16, 2009, 07:16:29 AM
User only permissions is a fair amount of work to add on top of the existing, depending on how you go about it. Likely there will be a not insubstantial performance hit.
The right to move people between groups is assignable to any group; it's done in Admin > Members > Permissions > Settings > Membergroups allowed to manage permissions (in 2.x)
I can definitely see the user level permissions being a problem with SMF, and will likely steer clear of it.
Regarding allowing membergroups to manage permissions:
Here's what I'm after:
User wants to join a user group. User group is "by request only". So end user sends the request. I believe there's a built in SMF feature to accomidate this (join group by approval). Normally the admin is the one who receives and approves the requests.
My question was:
1) Is there a way for that request to go to the moderator of that group only? in other words is the moderator (ie. club owner) going to get the join request from the prospective member?
2) If a usergroup has been enabled with the power to manage permissions, can that capability be limited to a certain forum area? In other words, if by giving a user group the capability to grant permissions/assign user groups, that user would have too much power if he were not limited to just the one forum (club) area. I wouldn't want to grant a "club" leader the capability to change permissions site-wide.
I've looked at some of the competing forum software, and one in particular has this specific feature enabled. (This forum is not social networking software, just a straight forum). They call them group leaders. So, when the admin assigns a group leader to a specific group, all prospective member join requests for the group, go directly to that group leader. That group leader can only approve members within his own group, and cannot change permissions throughout the rest of the forum. This is one of the preliminary functions to social networking with a forum. This would be the first critical step in allowing club membership on approval from the club leader.
The request doesn't get emailed AFAIK, but instead to the mod center (I think, not really familiar with that part of it), whereupon anyone with appropriate access can see it and make appropriate changes.
It isn't set at group level, though, it is all usergroups other than admin that said members can manage - it is that level of granularity but I don't believe modding it would be too problematic. It may have been covered in the mod site already (worth a look, at least)
The one thing I will say though: SMF is not designed to be a social networking platform; it is a forum first and foremost. There are mods that provide club features however - and some of them are paid-for. I'm sure a search or two will bring out what mods there are.
Quote from: j22 on September 16, 2009, 04:59:41 PM
1) Is there a way for that request to go to the moderator of that group only? in other words is the moderator (ie. club owner) going to get the join request from the prospective member?
The members you set as group moderators will have the ability to approve join requests for that member group. I am not sure if the moderators will get an e-mail alert, but they should see pending items in the moderation center when they are on the forum.
Quote from: j22 on September 16, 2009, 04:59:41 PM
2) If a usergroup has been enabled with the power to manage permissions, can that capability be limited to a certain forum area? In other words, if by giving a user group the capability to grant permissions/assign user groups, that user would have too much power if he were not limited to just the one forum (club) area. I wouldn't want to grant a "club" leader the capability to change permissions site-wide.
If they are moderator of a specific group, they could only add or remove people in that group. Beyond that, they would be a normal member. Don't give them special global permissions and you should be fine.
Also note that you'll run into issues if you try to add a user to too many groups. The exact number will depend on the length of group id's.
Thanks folks...
If Motoko-chan is correct, and the perspective "club" users can be managed by a group moderator (without the capability to do site-wide modification), that is a big step in the right direction. If not, that's a bit of a setback.
I've looked pretty thoroughly in the mods for some of the "foundation" features, but that's a good tip.
I hear you about SMF not being a good community foundation. On the otherhand, my feeling is a good forum is a solid foundation for a community (including social networking). Doesn't mean SMF is right for the job (or not), but I really want a strong forum, then go from there. Many existing "social networking" communities have weak forum applications, or use blog setups in place of forums.
Side topic Rant:
This is based on my personal goals for what I want out of social networking software (strong integrated group features (clubs), strong forum, user blogs/homepages, group blogs/homepages, various wiki's, messaging, user ability to join multiple "clubs", "friends" tools, site news/announcements, strong categorization (particularly forums, and groups) - I don't need heavy file/video/mp3 sharing tools or dating tools):
So far I've come to the following conclusions for "open source" "social networking" communities strategies:
1) There are very few solid free social networking sites.
2) There are very few good mods attached to a good free forum to enable the social networking features I'm after.
3) There are very few free CMS tools with this capability.
Here's the strategies:
1) Use existing social networking software. Bonus = all done in one. Drawback - little customizaton, and each feature while integrated, may have one or more weak components (especially the forums).
2) Use a forum script, and a separate blog script. Combine the two. Bonus - great components individually. Drawbacks: hard to integrate, sharing users can be sketchy, or you need totally separate login/accounts.
3) Use a forum script, and use mods/hand code to do the rest. Bonus: solid forum, and users integrated throughout network. Disadvatage: Forums usually don't handle grouping well for this purpose. Most good forums have few social networking mods (usually 1 or 2 solutions per forum software if that).
4) Use a CMS as the foundation. This is interesting. Bonus: user integration, and possibility to get all you want. Disadvantages: Some CMS's are great, but lack a key feature like grouping. Most CMS's require using mods to get the all the parts together. Possibly integrating a separate forum software if I can share userbase efficiently.
So, here's where I'm at:
1) Use ELGG social networking softare. Probably only works on php/apache/mysql setup. IIS might be possible.
2) Use Wordpress's combined social networking software. Poor forums (basically blogs), code is young and a bit sketchy. But all features are there and integrated. If I use this, I'm going to wait until the code improves.
3) Use a forum as the foundation: Top candidates are SMF and MyBB. Both are very impressive. MyBB definitely has the group user tools needed. SMF may have the group user tools needed (if Motoko-chan is correct).
4) Use a CMS with heavy mods. Top candidate is Drupal so far. I haven't finished researching the grouping features. It does have blog for each user, forums, etc. and the mods bring the features up-to-par.
That's where I'm at for now. Pretty even split between SMF, MYBB, Drupal, and ELGG. But the research is helping me fine tune my final choice.
Quote from: Mark Rose on September 16, 2009, 05:57:43 PM
Also note that you'll run into issues if you try to add a user to too many groups. The exact number will depend on the length of group id's.
That is good to know. Anyone know the limit?
The limit is dependent on how long the ids are, it's not a strict limit. Specifically, there are instances where the number of groups attached to a user extends the string - since it's stored as a comma separated list of numbers. Make the string too long and it overflows.
The string is a maximum of 255 characters long, though if you were pushed you could extend it with additional performance cost.
Quote from: Arantor on September 16, 2009, 06:16:18 PM
The limit is dependent on how long the ids are, it's not a strict limit. Specifically, there are instances where the number of groups attached to a user extends the string - since it's stored as a comma separated list of numbers. Make the string too long and it overflows.
The string is a maximum of 255 characters long, though if you were pushed you could extend it with additional performance cost.
Gotchya. Makes sense - thank you.
Quote from: j22 on September 16, 2009, 06:04:22 PM
2) Use a forum script, and a separate blog script. Combine the two. Bonus - great components individually. Drawbacks: hard to integrate, sharing users can be sketchy, or you need totally separate login/accounts.
You might want to look at LifeType (http://www.lifetype.com/). It has a rather nice way to bridge user accounts, although I haven't looked into that in depth. I have considered building the bridge (really just a few files defining SMF's schema) to get them to work when i get time.
If you want blogs more integrated into SMF, I hear zCommunity works well.
Quote from: Motoko-chan on September 16, 2009, 06:43:27 PM
Quote from: j22 on September 16, 2009, 06:04:22 PM
2) Use a forum script, and a separate blog script. Combine the two. Bonus - great components individually. Drawbacks: hard to integrate, sharing users can be sketchy, or you need totally separate login/accounts.
You might want to look at LifeType (http://www.lifetype.com/). It has a rather nice way to bridge user accounts, although I haven't looked into that in depth. I have considered building the bridge (really just a few files defining SMF's schema) to get them to work when i get time.
If you want blogs more integrated into SMF, I hear zCommunity works well.
Thanks for the tips. I'll look at the lifetype thing in a sec...
zCommunity is pretty much "spot on" with what I'm going for. I believe the owner is redoing the structure as a standalone with a SMF bridge, so I'm waiting to see how it fleshes out. If his grouping tools are good, I may go that direction.
Phpbb has a really nice community mod also, but its fairly outdated to the newest version of the forum software. It did show me a good way to integrate forums with community, however. Also, I really prefer SMF and MyBB forums to Phpbb.
Just my 2 cents... (which I seem to have a lot of these days ;))
I used to have a phpBB Forum and have coded MODs for it, though I tell you, as a mod developer for SMF, I don't ever wanna go back to coding for phpBB ever again. SMF is just a lot of fun coding for and just about all of it makes perfect sense. Is much easier than phpBB to understand, cept for the Smiley's section could use a bit of improvement IMO (as I think phpBB's adding of Smiley's was a bit easier to understand and add new smileys). Still SMF is the BEST FREE Forum out there IMO.
Cheers :)
j22, is this issue resolved now? If so, you may click on the button to mark it as solved.