[REBOL] Re: Forum Name
From: didec:tiscali at: 8-Jan-2004 0:35
Re: Forum Name
As one of the everyday user of the french forum http://www.codeur.org/forum/forum.php?css=http://membres.lycos.fr/rebolfrance/forum.css&theme=17
since one and a half year, I perhaps can give you comments on it's usage.
Web forum has the advantage to be reachable from everywhere with only a browser and without
any setup.
By opposition, ALTME need an apps and Mail need a mail client and setup, so they are
more restrict to use on a specific machine.
I use ALTME on 2 computers (home and work), and I need to check twice if unreaded messages
where not already read on the other computer (boring).
For the ML, as spam kill me everyday, I don't use mail client too much and still the
same problem : 2 computers. So I send you this message with my short Rebol client that
parse the list and messages web pages ;-)
Forum need to be well build (and explain) to be usefull as searching info.
Our forum has (simple, yes) search capabilities, but "keyword" search is not very reliable.
If you want to know hos to open a port, searching "port" or "open" will bring you too
much answers not concerning your problem.
To be usefull, a more advanced search engine must be used with boolean search and so
on.
Forum, are usually sorted by date and thread title.
A good thing would be to have categories. To be able to place a post in some of them,
so you can browse categories to find documents.
We have the "Send me a mail when answer" but I never used it (like Carl said, mail suck).
But sure it's a needed functionnality.
In the thread list, registered users have a visual indication of thread where unreaded
posts are. Just some red or yellow squares to indicate them.
For a guy like me, who post more answers than questions, It's very very usefull !!
For whose who ask, they can see if new answer were posted since their last visit, even
if they don't have the ability to receive mail (cybercoffe, office, friend home...).
Our forum was code by a student in web technologie, so it give us fine features like
the ability to receive the thread list page or a tread page (posts) in XML format.
ie: the HTML thread list http://www.codeur.org/forum/forum.php?theme=17
and the XML one http://www.codeur.org/forum/xml_forum.php?theme=17
He also add an XML-RPC server, so we can now use the REBXR work to act on the forum without
browser. Nice.
So I have build a Rebol client that can read XML tread list page periodically and where
I display the same red and yellow indicators. Like this, it become more "real-time".
I have planned to also display the posts page with Rebol (done but not release yet),
like this I will be able to "run code" directly, a la easy-vid ;-), next step is XML-RPC
use.
As I understand it, you want your forum to be a "tips" and "how to" archive location.
So you need to restrict access to people that know where and how posts things. Or you
will need many moderators : we begin to see more and more "trolls" (ads, illegal stuff,
hackers...)
Probably more to say, but thats all for now.
Regards
DideC
