UseBB Community

The last few weeks I have been hesitating heavily about the project, which seems like it never really got off the ground. I have also see people coming to the project and leaving a few weeks or months afterwards, including team members, which proves UseBB misses his point and looks like any other forum (which wasn't the intention when I started it). The last few weeks the activity on the forums really reached a very low point, and I am thinking of stopping the current development and start writing on 2.0 as planned with new features and a better base engine.

What do you think? 1.0 development is going really slow (started in January 2004), we are now November 2005 and we have not reached a final version yet, in opposition to competitors which have popped up like mushrooms after I started the project.

Writing the whole board in procedural programming is taking lots of time, and assigning more developers would be a waste of time since the board won't be developed any further than 1.0 (also planned). The question is if there is any interest in the complete 1.0 system as I see very less people coming here and giving feedback.

As a result, the documentation for 1.0 won't be completed unless someone takes it over, but the DocBook XML system will stay as it is proven to be a good system and solution, there just isn't the time and interest for a complete documentation. There is no doubt to me that DocBook will also be used for 2.0. Also, some parts I had on the TODO won't be completed as most of it will be replaced when alpha/beta versions of 2.0 are released.

So, give me your suggestions on this... as I have always written UseBB for the community, so they need to give their opinions on this matter. Now is the time to take action before the project is losing any more activity.

Well, this must really be hard as a one-man job. All I can predict is that Herodes will be back in a month, and maybe he can start contributing to the project. I can also help in the docs part, but have my own project, have to maintain the computers I administer etc. etc.
I will, however, do my best in helping you out, as I like this board a lot, easy to use still powerful. Want to see it growing and improving, and want to help it if I can.

Yea, it must be hard with only one developer. I really wish that I could help out, but i'm not familiar with it's code and don't have that advanced PHP knowledge. I really like the software and think it has lots of potential once more and more people start using it.

Do you plan on going to 1.0, then straight to 2.0?

Well the plan is to develop until 1.0, then start working on 2.0 and only release bugfixes of 1.0 afterwards. But the question is if there is any interest in the 1.0 version...

For 2.0 eventually more developers will be assigned when the core system is ready.

1.0 is a lightweight one, while 2.0 will not be, will it? We definitely need 1.0 since I think a good forum system has been developed and released in 0.7, so all we need is to add some unique flavor to it. :-)

Well 2.0 will in the first place be a redesign using the current web development technologies, on that part 0.x brings nothing or less new compared to PHP boards developed a few years ago. I'm not giving more details right now, except that it's PHP 5 and MySQL 4.1 based. It may have advanced features later on.

So does that mean if my webhost runs PHP 4 i won't be able to run 2.0? (as it is developed with PHP 5?)

Well, that's true...

We are aiming for the future, developing for PHP 4 would be a waste of time and it misses several useful possibilities.

After all, when 2.0 final is released hopefully a lot of webhosts will be running PHP 5 already. At this moment, our host does not run PHP 5 too yet.

Well then, i do believe you should develop 1.0, for those who don't run PHP 5. That way, it will give more time for webhosts to upgrade to PHP 5.

I think 1.0 is neccessary, UseBB is great but i understand your having a hard time.
2.0 will be more like all the other boards, I dont know how i can contribute to UseBB
but I'll try with the small powers i have.

And about php 5 and so on, my host are running php 4 but I guess it will take time for UseBB
2 to develop so my host should have upgraded by then So I dont think it's a problem.

Quote

2.0 will be more like all the other boards

Well that's not the intention, if this would be true I'd probably be in the team of another bulletin board instead of writing my own one mimicing other boards (and I know nowadays there are lots of which just try to clone exisiting boards).

Ok stupid of me saying that but it will still be more like other boards than 1.0 right?

Well I'm not so sure about that.

Every bulletin board is more or less like another... this one has some kind of flavor that I like, don't know why, maybe the high compliance and the usability.

Well sure a bulletin board is a bulletin board, there are things which are always the same, but I'm not trying to remake any other bulletin board but to be original and to KISS (keep it stupid and simple). But with 2.0 a whole lot more should be possible than with 1.0.

For small boards this is a simple and cool one and I do recommend it to all who wanna establish one.

Well, I will be sad to see development stop on 0.7 since, as you say, it is the basic 'no frills' bulletin board/forum. I still have some issues with things that don't work, but assume that is because I am using IIS rather than Apache.

One thing though, I have it running on PHP5 & MySQL4.1.14 and IIS6 which is something.

I am not sure how long the client will want me to host this their temporary forum on http://radiochickforum.nzcool.com/ but will continue to use UseBB in some way from now on.

Well I guess I will complete 1.0, but without the additional features that were still planned. Let's hope for some mods, unless anybody wants to further develop the 1.0 code base.

Once 1.0 comes out i was going to take a close look at the code and try to develop some small modifications. So once 1.0 comes out i'll probably be asking quite a few questions about how the code works. .

I wish completion of 1.0.

Dietrich wrote

KISS (keep it stupid and simple)

KISS is "keep it simple, stupid", unless of course its your own variation of it.

Or use SMILE "Simple Makes it Lots Easier".

Hi Dietriech,

First of all congratulations on a job very well done.
I only started using useBB in June thias year for the Dutch community in Australia on http://www.dutch.net.au. I think one of the reasons for its success is the simple look and feel of the board. We were looking for just that, because we have a very varied (in both age and computer literacy) audience. People don't hessitate to sign up, and the threshold to participate is very low. I personally think this is a great board, and would like development to continue.

Hi Dietriech,

i would like to see version 1, even with the new roadmap. i like the board and use it since a few month.
it`s a pity that there`re no additional developers involved. i`d help if it wouldnt be this language. how about a java port

I'm in favor of seeing 2.0 developed. In particular since you note that 1.0 can be difficult to work with in terms of its procedural-ness.

In practical terms UseBB seems really straight-forward at a code-level, and this encouraged me to use it as a base-line for several other niche features I needed. I found that my coding style (primarily OOP) really doesn't fit well in UseBB. And that I really really suck at procedural code

Anyways, I'm fully in favour of a more OOP 2.0 (*especially* if it uses the great tools available like Pear HTML Template and Pear DB)

We'll see what third party libraries it will use, but PHP 5 contains a good XML and XSLT parser by default.