Hello,

Sorry to bother you with something more or less external to OpenBSD,
however since I am settling a forum on my server and want to keep
security high enough, please could you advise me about which forum shall
be good enough according to you.

For exemple, phpBB seems not good in terms of security and therefore
will not be used.

Regards
JF

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Not seen a good test, nor run one. But YaBB has been good to me in the past.

--Sean Howard


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I've heard good things about FluxBB and PunBB, but really you should
consider using a mailing list instead of a server.

-- 
Samuel Baldwin - logik.li

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+1, mail list with archive it's always better than a forum.

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Why is that better?

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Yeah, really. Mailing lists are really really barebones. They are good
for a suitably barebones community, but how do you go about
implementing subforums, moderators, and so on? How do you integrate
cute avatars and msn links? What if your users don't want to tie their
email to the community but don't want to be bothered finding some free
email provider to camp? For a lot of non-techie communities, forums
are much easier.

-Nick

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Because you get to pick your UI, because all your mail as amalgamated
into one mailbox where you can sort it yourself where there's no easy
place for garbage "off-topic" discussion, because your mailbox is
where messages can be threaded properly, because there are no avatars
or forum stats or ranks or administrators or moderators to create
politics, because they're low overhead and easy accessible, because
low-traffic mailing lists still catch everyone's attention where a
low-traffic forum will eventually be ignored by the users... so on and
so forth. There's bound to be a bunch of sites or archived
rants/debates about this.

If it helps, compare your average forum goer with your average mailing
list denizen. That alone should be enough...

-- 
Samuel Baldwin - logik.li

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I think you're being pretentious a little bit.

A good usenet implementation is *closer* to a forum, which is what you want. But forums are a different (more dynamic) use case. With smaller entry barriers to large amounts of content.

--Sean


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The question was: "Does anyone know of a good secure Forum engine
that runs well on OBSD."
A debate of its merits vs a mailing list is a tad off topic
and has nothing to do with OBSD.

Thanks.

On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:02 -0400, "Sean Howard" <silver@callysto.com>

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I will implement a forum because it is mean to be included as small
lines in the end of some web pages for posting comments.

Otherwise, if someone knows a secure comments system available either
from package or from the web i'm interested.

After some searches for few days, i've come to the point where I prefer
not to implement anything rather than taking the ones I found either
forum or comments scripts.


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Something like Disqus is simple to integrate in a website, almost
impossible to use to gain entry into *your* system (one possible
definition of security - you'll need to be a bit more specific if that
is not the one you had in mind), offers threading and e-mail
notification of new comments, and so on and so forth. There are other
players in this space, including at least IntenseDebate.

I don't have too much experience with either system as a user, and none
as a site owner/administrator. But they seem to suck less than I'd
expect of a web-based option, and a mailing list is probably not the
best place to comment on articles...

		Joachim

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Hi,


all other things aside: If you're on a mailing list, and the list is
being shut down, you still get to keep your private mailing list
archive, whereas, when the forum operator changes his forum software,
or shuts down the forum, all past content is simply gone (or as good
as).

IOW, if you post to a forum, your content (what you submitted)
essentially becomes theirs, and you don't even get to keep the pieces.


Kind regards,
--Toni++

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Not true.  Whenever I read an interesting forum post, I save the html
file to my hard drive for future reference.

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Yes and no... finding the "interesting forum post" needs to be done
quickly, before disaster strikes, and it's much more hassle to save the
web page in a way that can be read offline with ease and peace of mind
(web bugs, broken style sheets, java script hell, IFRAMEs etc.pp.,
anyone?).  With a mailing list, all of this happens "automatically",
and then there are still MARC and GMANE.


Kind regards,
--Toni++

PS: I also try to save all interesting posts to my local disks, to
    be able to re-read these posts later, but it's still a PITA.

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On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Samuel Baldwin

Forum goers: kind of stupid, but friendly, or at least funny if they
get into flamewars?
Mailing list users: snotty and short with people?

I think you misunderstand forums; have you ever even participated in
one? Not needing to choose your UI is a feature, not a bug.

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Yes, quite a few, and it drove me crazy and made my cynical.

My favourite feature is having it all in one place, rather than having
to keep track of a bunch of sites and monitor them; mailing lists all
show up in my inbox and sort themselves. And I can do this with
whatever mail client I like.

-- 
Samuel Baldwin - logik.li

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Hello,

On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:13:00 -0400

I second on that one : FluxBB (which is based on PunBB) may be a good
choice. It only includes what is really needed in a public web forum,
and nothing else (for exemple, it does not includes a private messaging
feature), so it is not as bloated as other forum engines might be, and
it even works with PostgreSQL (by this I mean it is not limited to just
MySQL...).

But it's also somewhat hard to maintain from a sysadmin point of view.
You have to modify the base source code by your own hands if you want
to add some feature; the idea behind this is that you are forced to
know what you do to add something that may be broken or insecure, so the
community does not give you any patch nor automated process to modify
the base source code.


Regards,
Maxime

-- 
Maxime DERCHE
GnuPG public key ID : 0x9A85C4C0
(fingerprint : 0FDC 16AF 5A5B 1908 786C  2B85 2D3C C83E 9A85 C4C0)
http://www.mouet-mouet.net/maxime/blog/index.php

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On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Maxime DERCHE <maxime@mouet-mouet.net>

Something that really bugs me about web software is how they limit
themselves to MySQL.  I chose PunBB because it supported SQLite and
had a solid module base, along with a builtin update manager.

For OS forums, you could write support for your chosen DBMS into it
and submit a patch.  For closed source forums you're screwed.

And if they really piss you off, you could always write your own.

But yeah, I agree, OT.

--
Aaron Mason - Programmer, open source addict
- Oh, why does everything I whip leave me?

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I presume you're talking primarily about bulletin boards.  I know plenty
of web developers that use PostgreSQL and SQLite.  I think a better
statement would be:

"... how inexperienced web developers default to using MySQL because it
has a lower barrier to entry, without considering if it's the right tool
for the job or how to configure and secure it appropriately for

Oh please don't.

-- 
Jason Dixon
DixonGroup Consulting
http://www.dixongroup.net/

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s/MySQL/php/g
s/MySQL/asp/g
s/MySQL/JavaScript/g
....

s/inexperienced//g ---> If there are *experienced* web developers -
they don't write the code.

Now you see.. the problem isn't the tools.. it's the Tools that are
using them. No all web developers aren't tools, but there's a vast
majority, so much so it's hard to find one that doesn't suck that
hasn't been assimilated into the Google collective or something
similar.

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I was only stating the spirit of open source - if you don't like it,
get your hands dirty and write your own.  I've written my own forum
--
Aaron Mason - Programmer, open source addict
- Oh, why does everything I whip leave me?

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Did you end up getting it right?


(Sorry, I couldnt resist)


paulm

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I have used SMF now for 6 years without problems.
http://www.simplemachines.org/

-- 
()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against proprietary attachments

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Unfortunately SMF is not open source:
http://www.simplemachines.org/about/opensource.php


/Lars

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