UseBB Community

Update on the template system. I decided to not use XSLT in 2.0, but a regular template engine using PHP for templates: Savant.

The reasons for this are:
- XSLT is still not available by default on PHP 5.1.
- XSLT templating requires knowing yet another language, next to HTML, CSS and PHP.
- XSLT (and any other template system using custom syntax) requires the template to be compiled before usage, either once per change (Smarty) or every time (IT).

Savant uses simple PHP syntax for the templates, not requiring the template creator to know yet another language or syntax, and not needing to compile the template before usage (thus faster). After all, PHP is a template system on itself.

I will, however, try to implement a top layer system to use for the View part, so that later on other template systems can be used. If this will be available in 2.0 is unsure, it might only be as of a later version.

For the new Savant based template set I will probably use the Tango icon set, which is also going to be included in future Gnome releases. They are nice and Open Source, plus there are also a few basic smilies.

What happened today made me think about security:

- UseBB2 should save the IP address upon registering, so there's no need to check the server logs to see which IP registered the account.
- Additionally, the forum should reject more than one registration attempt from the same IP in x minutes/hours.
- The logging functionality that was planned in the beginning of the project should be available in the first public 2.0 release.
- Open proxies should be banned by default.

Dietrich wrote

- Open proxies should be banned by default.

Not sure about this and may not be the same thing and probably it is not.

But...

I use a proxy, it helps reduce the affect of latency (satellite connection) or something like that, not my end rather the NOC(Network Operations Center) end.

Well, I suppose that isn't an open (or anonymous) proxy you are using, but one from your ISP.

http://opm.blitzed.org/ contains a list of these proxies. I checked your IP address and it isn't listed.

Another addition for security: of course using captcha (visual confirmation) for the registration process, but also for guests to post (as on most weblogs).

Open proxy != ISP proxy.

Update

Current 2.0.0 planning is as following:

Quote

- Entirely OOP PHP 5.1
- ADOdb database abstraction
- Savant templating
- New design, logo, colour scheme (Tango icons)
- Advanced permissions
- Sessions in database
- Subforums (bye categories)
- IPv6 support
- BBCode/Wiki parser
- GConf alike settings registry
Eventually:
- Tags
- WYSIWYG
- Threaded view

Note the GConf alike registry system that will finally put an end to the config.php editing and will allow plugins/modules to freely set their own settings.

how are templates going to be stored?

please tell me they're going to be files i can edit in an editor. I hate the templates stored in a database, they are tediuos as hell to edit. To make it worse, some boards split everything into little itsy bitsy pieces so you have 5000 different templates just to display the front index. JEeez.


i'm just venting, i downloaded and installed a lot of systems yesterday and they all had that same shitty ass templating system. mybb had a template for just one button! when i saw that i deleted it. bah.. you don't know how happy i was to see your templates in that folder

As discussed, templates are going to be Savant template files.

Would there be a way to prune specific forum automatically, option when you create a forum or edit a forum and give it a certain amount of days for a automatic prune, really really hate to say it like what phpBB does.

Not sure if it can be done with v1, possbly an option for v2.

Though not a big deal, pruning now is decent, thought I would add the above.

v2 should have a cron system that can automatically run cleanup jobs at given times. Automatic pruning could be a part of it.

I think auto prune would be excellent for v2 or above, as long as there is a way to enable or disable per forum.

Of course, the idea of the cron system is that it can run static methods of classes at given times. As each node in v2 (topic, forum, ...) is represented as a software class (Topic, Forum), Forum::prune(5) would prune forum ID 5.

These "rules" and the frequency can be set in the ACP. There should be an easy way (wizard-style) to set these kinds of common cron jobs, and an advanced way (so that you can literally use Forum::prune(5) for the advanced user).

So, creating automatic pruning should only be a matter of a few clicks. It's a very nice system (thanks to wtcBB for the idea ) and is one of the next things waiting to be developed as soon as I did some cleaning to the current code.

A little update was made to the changes topic.

Experimental things (such as tags) are marked as experimental/testing. I'd like to note, while I would be pleased to have this in UseBB 2 by default, it depends on the time I'm able to dedicate to UseBB 2 and whether I get any help from other OO PHP 5 developers. These experimental features might be introduced in a later version (eg UseBB 2.1) or not at all (WYSIWYG - maybe once available as a 3rd party plugin, let's keep on dreaming ).

Also depending on how fast the system is completed, the minimal required PHP version for UseBB 2 might be changed from 5.1 to 5.2, as PHP 5.2 was released recently, deprecating the 5.1 branch.

It's still a long way to go, but it's worth it.

maybe I read over it,
will there be a plugin system? And if what permissions will the plugins have?
Based on the cron system above it would be grat if any plugin could register own cron methods and so on.

There will be a plugin system, though it is not certain in what release this will be, 2.0, 2.1, etc.

But it will ofcourse be possibile to register cron jobs.