MindTooth Wrote:Any more news on this subject? As said before, I gladly donate my license of IP.Board and pay the first six months of support

Though, note. That if the XBMC choose to change forum solution at a later time, I wish to have the license revoked back to me. Sound fair to me.

IP Board is not open source. Personally I hope we stay with vBulletin. The open source options are not currently up to par, IMHO.

Well, neither is vBulletin. And it IMHO sucks compared to IP.Board. It all boils down to basic principals as to what serves the needs. At the moment, maybe a new forum software is needed, but a redesign to cope more with the project overall.

This is probably a bit off base and may be a bit heretical: what about migrating to a reddit style system?

The ability to vote good posts up and to bury bad ones would help avoid spam and since it's deigned to allow discussion of links it could be altered to only allow discussion of self posts and links to our wiki. How To posts would then be more quickly added to the wiki and the online manual would grow. The software would likely need to be reskined but it might improve things.

/end pie-in-the-sky fantasising

There is a small software like Vanilla which are quite simple: http://vanillaforums.org/

Also, there is FluxBB which the Arch Linux project uses: http://fluxbb.org

To be honest with you for what XBMC needs this VB software could last a while longer. It looks like it 3.X version.

I have messed with a bunch of the open source forums software's and they are too stripped down for what XBMC does. No open source forum software has a CMS/Blog sytem. So basically XBMC chooses from IP.Boards or Vbulletin. They have the most mods and styles available.

The one thing I wish XBMC forums had was a mobile friendly theme like the new version has. I just imported my forum to the new VB 4.1.2 and think it works well. If you want to see what a real mobile theme looks like point your smart phone to http://www.vbulletin.com/forum and in the bottom left box change it from default to mobile. IP.Boards has a mobile theme too, but their customer service sucks compared to VB. Thats my opinion though.
Of coarse XBMC would need to spend about $300.00 for the new software. I don't know if they want to spend that money on that instead of R&D on hardware for the software.

We don't need a CMS or blog system.

We're currently evaluating phpBB. Initial impressions are good.

jmarshall Wrote:We don't need a CMS or blog system.

We're currently evaluating phpBB. Initial impressions are good.

Nice! PhpBB and MyBB were my favorite of the open source/free stuff.
Phpbb I don't think has a mobile theme last time I checked, but MyBB does.

What do you guys use on the main XBMC site for the articles ?

BORIStheBLADE Wrote:If you want to see what a real mobile theme looks like point your smart phone to http://www.vbulletin.com/forum and in the bottom left box change it from default to mobile. IP.Boards has a mobile theme too, but their customer service sucks compared to VB. Thats my opinion though.
Of coarse XBMC would need to spend about $300.00 for the new software. I don't know if they want to spend that money on that instead of R&D on hardware for the software.

It's a pity it costs 300$ as it looks really good on mobile and has a familiar interface. I like RSS, too.

The cost isn't the issue - we prefer to support completely FLOSS where possible. Plus, from our initial overview of phpBB it appears far more friendly to administer, which is a big thing considering no one really wants to bother with that side of things

Cheers,
Jonathan

I have a license for IP.Board that I gladly could donate for the XBMC site

I happen do prefer MyBB over phpBB. Though, I'm not the one to decide which. Confident that you make the correct choice for your needs

Whatever we pick if it turns out to be fixed width someone will die

Honestly, my impressions of the forums here is that it works fine for the most part, what is really needed is more visible and active moderation and administration. more of the how-to posts and guides needs to be put in the wiki, 100 page long threads going back years should be closed and new ones reopened. so the information is up to date and the seemingly unused sub-forums such as XBMC Announcements shoudl either be used or deleted.

There is a lot of good work being done on XBMC but it is spoiled by the lack of coherent documentation and the amount of duplication of topics in some sub-forums.

Are you offering to assist?

If so, get cracking - we'll help you out with anything you need.

jmarshall Wrote:Are you offering to assist?

If so, get cracking - we'll help you out with anything you need.

Once term is over in May yes. Untill then i have little time to spare.