PhunkyBB

A Ruby Port?

2010-04-28T21:31:49Z

I'm totally engrossed with Ruby these days, so I'm thinking about switching to Ruby instead of PHP. I'll probably use Sinatra as the development framework.

Switching to Github

2010-02-10T22:44:18Z

PhunkyBB source code is now hosted at Github.com!

http://github.com/docunext/phunkybb

Making Progress with OpenID Support

2009-08-17T01:42:41Z

I'm pleased to post some news about progress with adding OpenID support for PhunkyBB. Not there yet, but very soon.

Once OpenID support is ready, I'll have to finish the interface redesign I've been working on. I'd also like to integrate some of the simplicity of My Little Forum.

Status of version 0.3: No Release

2009-07-04T18:04:33Z

I'm not releasing any downloads for version 0.3 as it was such a major shift from 0.2, I'm sure there are residual bugs which need to be squashed.

I'm now pushing forward with 0.4 and there is plenty of instability in the code base, so I'm going to put my effort there. Hopefully things will smooth out and I'll be able to release downloads for 0.4 or 0.5.

Speaking of things to do, PhunkyBB needs to get back on the testing bandwagon!

Forum Spam

2009-07-04T17:01:26Z

Forum spam with the PhunkyBB forums system hasn't been much of a problem due to the involved registration system, as well as the fact that I use the awesome mod_spamhaus plugin on my servers.

However, I plan to loosen up the mod_spamhaus plugin at some point, as well as setup anonymous commenting with PhunkyBB. Thus I'll have to take a serious look at how to defend against forum spam.

First of all, I'd like to revisit my tests of using spamassassin to inspect HTTP POST requests.

Next, I'm going to review filters for HTTP POSTS, which can cleanse and alter incoming posts, to remove javascript, external img references, and limit the number of outgoing links.

If its not apparent already, I don't want to include this functionality directly in PhunkyBB. However, I may include some functionality related to this effort but solely relevant to forums, like the number of posts an anonymous user can make in a certain amount of time. However, now that I'm thinking of it, that would be a useful HTTP function...

My Little Forum

2009-07-04T10:05:41Z

Wow - I just came across "My Little Forum" and I'm totally impressed! I just downloaded the source and can't wait to dig into it.

In a nutshell, its a super simple forum system. It is quite different than a lot of other forums I've seen lately, including PhunkyBB, and I believe its more of a "2ch" style forum, like Kareha and Shiichan.

As I recently stated, I'm planning to add openid to phunkybb ASAP, and I really need to add anonymous posting as well.

UPDATE - I'm reviewing the code and noticed a few things:

It uses scriptaculous and prototype
It uses geshi, akismet, bad-behavior, and smarty (all good packages imho)
Database has eleven tables

This looks like a great package for general use! I'm not going to use it though, as obviously I'm partial to PhunkyBB, but I'm going to try and learn from their impressively simple interface design.

Future PhunkyBB Plans

2009-05-22T21:47:28Z

I'm planning some social networking type functionality for PhunkyBB. What that specifically entails remains to be seen, but its annoyed me that while forums software were once very social platforms, they've evolved to be very insular.

I want to make PhunkyBB a more open system, so I hope to implement OpenID as well as making it possible to post anonymously or to post without having to register.

Also, email has emerged as a persistent mode of communication. I'm planning to setup some phunkybb mailing lists soon, and I'd like to tie those into the forums and bug tracking as well. There is an untested "subscribe to thread" function which is helpful, but it would be cool if you could email into the forums too.

I found a couple of bugs in PhunkyBB 0.3 alpha

2009-05-22T10:47:58Z

I'm so glad I am being patient with the release of PhunkyBB 0.3! Turns out there were some fairly substantial things related to users and profiles which I had to remedy before a release.

I've almost fixed them and once I've done a little testing, it will be released. It has to be released, because I've got some more cool ideas flowing for version 0.4! :-)

PhunkyBB 0.3 Alpha Live on All Our Sites

2009-05-06T05:42:18Z

I've completed updating all of our sites which run PhunkyBB, so I'm going to go ahead with releasing 0.3 when I find a little more time.

I don't think anyone else was using 0.2 so I'm going to stop development on that branch, and focus only on 0.3 and the future.

I've written an XSL template which generates most of the SQL necessary to upgrade the database from 0.2 to 0.3, but I won't maintain the script moving forward and 0.2 will officially become deprecated and unsupported.

Once 0.3 is released, that's it for 0.2!

PhunkyBB MSIE Support

2009-04-27T07:09:06Z

I rarely use Microsoft Internet Explorer, but I realize that lots of other people do, so I usually try to support it as much as is practical.

When I checked the newest version of PhunkyBB with MSIE tonight, it really looked terrible. Thankfully it only took a few hours to get everything *pretty* much in order.

I've been testing on an Asus eee PC with MSIE 6.0, which obviously isn't the most common MSIE setup, but it is a good test bed because of its screen size constraints.

I also have a more recent version of XP with IE 7 on a fifteen inch laptop screen. That is a much more common setup, and I'm hopeful that it will work from the start of testing.

PhunkyBB 0.3 Alpha Live on Three Sites

2009-04-26T06:08:07Z

The pending release of PhunkyBB 0.3 alpha is alive and well on three websites! This has been an enjoyable release process to work on, and its not done yet.

I keep feeling the urge to update all the installs of PhunkyBB, but I want to give these sites a few weeks of operation to find and iron out any last minute wrinkles.

Here's some links to the sites hosting PhunkyBB 0.3, if you want to check it out. The changes may seem minor, but look close, the upgrade is substantial:

Feedback and additional testers are always welcome and appreciated.

PhunkyBB Development Sprint

2009-04-15T03:57:48Z

All my posts about PhunkyBB 0.3 has really got me itching to release, however, I did find a bunch of bugs recently so I'm going to do one more big push before a release.

As I stated before, I'm still going to roll out PhunkyBB on some low-traffic sites first. I haven't gotten around to doing this yet, but it will happen in a week or two.

PhunkyBB 0.3 represents a major improvement in PhunkyBB! Are you excited? I am!

Sessions

2009-04-14T22:22:11Z

I had to update Nexista last night to make sure that robots who are crawling PhunkyBB are not given cookies. Only users who are looking to login should receive cookies.

0.3 Closer than I thought!

2009-04-07T04:01:51Z

So I'm not going to backport the cool new changes and improvements in 0.3 to 0.2 because 0.3 is much closer than I thought. I've been making serious progress on 0.3 lately and I am going to start rolling out the subversion trunk to a few low-traffic forum sites for preliminary testing.

User rights still need work - as I'm not sure how I want to handle users that register for multiple boards that use the same database. It might be advantageous to allow users to maintain the same passwords across boards, but I don't want registration on one board to grant permissions across all accessible boards. So, there is obviously more development to do, but the major hurdles for multi-site support are good to go.

PhunkyBB 0.3

2009-04-02T23:15:16Z

PhunkyBB 0.3 is taking longer than usual to release because of the multi-site functionality. There is still a lot to do in that regard, but I may decide to release an alpha version without full multi-site functionality as there is a lot of new features I want to use that doesn't involve multi-sites.

Alternatively, I may back port the functionality to the 0.2 branch - whichever is easiest!