Forum Software
Forum software is frequently awful. In trying to write a minimal version on my own, I've discovered that mine is just as awful, so I'd rather use someone else's awful forum software. I'm sure it will be less awful than mine. Naturally, I'd prefer it to be Perl as I can hack on it if need be.
Unfortunately, this is to be integrated into an existing Catalyst application. Integrating multiple Catalyst applications into a single application isn't an easy task. There's CatalystX::Features, but I've not yet looked at it terribly closely. I think a better solution would be to find an existing, solid forum application and use Apache URL rewriting to make the two apps appear to be integrated.
Regardless of what approach I take, I really don't want to keep trying to write my own forum software. That's a waste of my time. What would you recommend?
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mwforum seems rather nice, though I haven't yet had a chance to try it out myself.
I recommend no forums.
What do you want them for?
—Theory
@David: without going into too much detail, they are an integral part in what I've been working on. I've actually been doing a huge amount of research into this area, and without forums or some similar social aspect, the project is pretty much DOA. There's been extensive research (real statistical research, not ad hoc analysis) in this area and it's clear I can't ignore it.
Not to toot my own horn, but the Collaboration System in WebGUI is both a forum and mailing list system. I agree that I haven't yet seen a forum system I like, and that includes the Collaboration System in WebGUI, but it's as close as I've seen to something that fits most communities needs.
If you're looking for a zero implementation cost to add community features, then you may also want to consider some of the hosted systems. A chatroom like Nurph, awareness system like KISSinsights, or forums like ActiveBoard and Meetro. Note, I'm not in any way affiliated with any of them. Nor have I used any. Just that I've heard of them.
Hi,
battie http://bat.perlpunks.de/ - i think i mentioned it before some time ago ;-) is still in development and it's not a catalyst app. also there are some updates planned (db schema) which can't be done easily automatically. but everyone's welcome to try it out and comment on it.
i believe it scales quite well although the site with the most traffic it is used on has only about 200k page views per month: http://www.perl-community.de/bat/poard/start (we have practically no slow (over 1 sec) database queries at all - probably because the search is using KinoSearch).
design is still at work (it's difficult because the navigation of each module is dynamically created and i try to avoid fixed box sizes wherever possible, so that it is accessible for large fonts also).
it's using tree like threads like perlmonks but with the possibility to let the already read articles fold (if javascript is enabled).
it has a mini view which can be useful for mobile devices (outer navigation table is minimized and avatars and signatures are not shown).
since it is kinda framework on its own it won't run in catalyst. i'm making strong usage of caching all over.
but i was pointed to this blog post by somebody else so i wanted to mention it at least.
hth, tina
you may llo for battie
http://perlpunks.de/battie/
its based on catalyst (AFAIK) and we use it all the time (http://www.perl-community.de/bat/poard/start?action=lastMessages;last=1). very mighty.
just to clarify lichtkind's comment:
battie is not based on catalyst, and the strange link with the url parameters is wrong. really very few links in battie have url parameters.
http://disqus.com/ ?