Forums revisited - UseBB

Last updated by JohnK Comments (1)

Although this subject has been discussed a thousand times before, I've started a new thread because
I'm hoping it's a new approach to the problem.

A few years back I ran a 2000 page web site and needed a small forum to tack on the end. I opted for
UseBB because it was just over a megabyte, easy to use, had heaps of features and was very easy
to make it look like it was part of my site.

The UseBB project died a few years back because most people opted for bigger and more powerful
forums, however some nice person did an update on it in early 2013. I actually loved the look and
feel of this forum and when I discovered it again the other day, I decided to see how I could
use it with Elgg.

It took less than five minutes to install on my WAMP server. I copied the files into a file called forum
in my www folder, created an empty database, renamed config.php.dist to config.php and ran
localhost/forum/install. All done and running!

The extensive Admin Control Panel Link is labeled ACP on the bottom left and that's probably
the hardest thing on the Forum to find.

I then spent half an hour changing the style to suit my Elgg application but I still have a long way
to go. Firebug on Firefox is a real plus and saves hours of work.

Due to my inability to program, I was planning to add a forum hyperlink in the Elegg menu bar and
in the forum menu bar to switch between scripts. Of course this isn't perfect because Elgg users
would also have to sign up for the forum and then log in every time they wished to use it.

On reading several threads about forums on the Elgg Discussion board, I'm sure there's someone
out there who can integrate the two. The forum itself is the right size to fit into a two column
panel on Elgg and maybe the forum can be made to use Elgg's database to extract users and
passwords from it.

UseBB's license allows for modification and integration, so maybe most of the hard work has
already been done. Judging by the comments on this discussion board, anyone who can make this
forum work with Elgg would be a hero.  Even more so if integration included the theme.

UseBB can be downloaded from: http://www.usebb.net

Click on the Support Forum tag to see what it looks like out of the box.

I hope someone finds this an interesting challenge.

  • Geez,

    I really thought this would generate a lot more interest, especially with all the hype about people wanting a forum. Here's one (not necessarly perfect) which may just do the job.

    I'm not the person to do it, but all it needs is someone who can make the forum script pick up the user name and password from Elgg.

    I've been able to do it for one user just by asking th forum to remember my details. The trouble is, when another user logs on, they have my settings.

    Making the foru blend in to your site as a plugin may be far more difficult, but I was able to make it look similar in under an hour.

    The forum authors say it was written as a PHP project and the code isn't perfect. Even so, I used it for several years on my site and had less than a dozen spammers in that time. It also worked like a charm despite lacking all the features of something much larger.

    I'm willing to beta test the linkup if someone wants to have a go at it.

    Regards

    John