They have announced it here: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2099641
and it is a result of their experiences here: http://blog.phpbb.com/2010/07/28/oscon-2010/
I think whilst normally we want to improve the core forum module, this feels like it could be different. If the phpbb team are working on an official bridge they have the ability to change the code of phpbb itself to make it integrate generally. (Which they appear to be doing anyway).
They are working on rebuilding phpbb4 from the ground-up using the symphony2 framework and drupal is always almost rebuilt. If this bridge is good maybe Drupal8 and phpbb4 could be so tightly integrated there would be no need for a forum module?
Do you think this future is desirable? Or impossible? What do you think gets in the way of this?
Comments
Not likely
I freaked out a little bit when they first posted it, worried that people would just abandon Drupal's forum and use the bridge. But, now that I've had time to think about it, I don't think it's going to matter much. It might take away a bit as people who were on the fence will likely decide to use phpBB but there's still going to be plenty of people who won't. A bridge will never be as good as a real Drupal forum so there will always be a need for it.
Michelle
A bridge is great
When forum is just a small part of Drupal site, the core forum module works well. However, when the forum grows, and if your site is heavy, it could be a good choice to use phpBB to keep away from Views, Panels and tons of other stuffs. I have 150+ modules in my site that has 100K+ pageviews daily, and I could see how phpBB fits into the picture.
Other way around
When a forum is just a small part of your site, that's when a bridge makes sense. If a forum is a big part of your site, why would you want it to be tacked on like an afterthought? No matter how solid they make the bridge, it will still be a bridge and not a true part of the site.
Michelle
Think about a newsportal and
Think about a newsportal and a community forum, both have very high traffic. A bridge will help you:
- Reduce the overhead in each part
- Have SSO system
A multi-site with shared user table could achieve the same thing, but Drupal is not as effective as phpBB when talk about forum.
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It really depends what you're trying to achieve. If the forum is really separate from your main site, a bridge is fine. If you want them truly integrated, a bridge isn't going to do it.
Michelle
Yeah, I was saying about a
Yeah, I was saying about a true bridge. They both have their own lands, just a bridge to share the login (and user info).
Not in other way of integration that just adds even more overhead.
Great news!
This is great news! I'm using the phpbbforum module for drupal now, and it's good but does not provide everything that is desirable. I had to make a lot of changes in it to make the integration resonably tight. The visual integration is perfect though.
The main reason that drupals core forum won't cut it for me is that it lacks the ability to split topics and move posts around flexibly. The forum is a big part of my site, I don't want to delete posts just because they're off-topic. I'd rather move them or create a new topic for them, which phpbb handles perfectly.
I'm sure the phpbb team can make the integration very tight, but phpbb won't do threaded discussions. As far as I know, they don't plan to add it either. Drupal core module will have it's uses, since a lot of people prefer threaded discussions.
It seems a shame to bolt a
It seems a shame to bolt a whole other cms and 100 or so tables worth of database to a framework as beautifully organized as Drupal, especially since the only reason to do so is that phpbb has all the conventional forum tools.
Yeah
Especially when it wouldn't take that much to get that functionality into Drupal. Someone just needs to get past the blocking VBO issue and that would open the gates.
It's a losing battle, I think. Some people are just convinced they need phpbb despite the fact that you can already do just about everything with Drupal.
Michelle
Is this true?
Is it true that a bridge will always be just a bridge?
It seems for example that using CiviCRM and Drupal is better then a CRM module build in Drupal. Also Drupal and Solr search is better then improving Drupal's search module. Could the bridge get to the point where it is so good it works as a module in Drupal like every other? Phpbb are attempting to rebuild phpbb from the ground up with phpbb4 and make it more modular. So you could have a bridge that simply doesn't have any of phpbb's user tables because those "phpbb modules" are switched off?
We're talking years away for something like this to ever happen. (So there is plenty of need for Advanced Forums for a while!) but if the phpbb team got to into understanding the drupal way and stripped away all the un-needed stuff. Wouldn't it be cool if the opensource community worked on the bits they are really good at and everything worked with everything else?
Thing is even if you can do everything with Drupal. The phpbb team are really good at coming up with new innovative ideas (I think they handle permissions better then Drupal for example). Its not so much that I think I need phpbb, I just think how much cooler the world would be if Drupalers (like yourself) were working with teams like the phpbb team?
Yes
As long as you are using a 3rd party forum, your forum posts will never be native Drupal content. It doesn't matter how good of a bridge they make, it will always be a bridge. For some, having the forum look like it's part of the site is enough and you can do that with SSO and theming. For others, like me, we want the forum content to be Drupal content. And that requires a Drupal forum.
I have no interest in working with the phpbb team. Nothing against them; just not my thing. I'm working on making Drupal's forum better.
Michelle
I agree. Why reinvent the
I agree. Why reinvent the wheel if it's already made? Seems like a waste of time to me. Sure, it won't be drupal native, but I have a feeling that the users cares more about good functionality than how it looks under the hood.
Sigh
I don't know why I keep replying to people who insist that the hundreds of hours I have worked to make a decent forum solution for Drupal is a waste of time.
Your site may not be complex enough to see the value of a Drupal native forum but please don't assume everyone has such simple needs.
Michelle
It's a fool's trade
If a developer is using Drupal for the right reasons, one of those reasons is versatility. That versatility comes from Drupal's native node/hook system. A bridge usually means you take the whole other thing - in this case a whole phpbb installation - and stick it in a subfolder, create its database, and add a module to Drupal to integrate user validation. Slapping a bridged phpbb forum on a Drupal website sacrifices that versatility. It's going to limit what you can do with that forum and what that forum can do to the rest of the site - or at least make it more complex, less reliable, and prone to bugs.
And true, superficially thinking, the user doesn't care how the back end works as long as it's user friendly and gets the job done - until that job is anything but a packaged generic - then the user will care indirectly if that user desires expanded functionality.
Duct taping a support forum to a product promotion website will get you by on a site where user experience isn't a priority. But if the forum is to be an integrated part of a website, one of many content types, one of many ways to contribute to and benefit from the website, one where user experience is the focus - a bridge isn't going to do it. I mean, the simple fact that you'll have to maintain two databases freaks me out. Keeping one healthy is a bit tricky.
And like Michael said, there's no reason to depend on rickety bridges when Drupal can do it all. The two real problems with Drupal forum are: One, only now is our community making a full-fledged forum package available, including the conventional tools. (good work Michael) And two, that full set of forum tools requires several different modules of varying quality and support, not all of which are purposed for or fully integrated into the forum.
This is quickly changing though. I plan to contribute to it. And I'll bet a year from now Drupal will have a set of modules that will surpass phpbb, Simple Machines Forum, Vbulletin, and all their brothers and sisters. If it doesn't, shame on us.
Slapping a bridged phpbb
I don't think so. Have a bridge make it less complex, more reliable, have less bugs.
Why? Put many modules together always leads to interoperability problems.
Those things would have value if they were from some developer of the Advanced Forum module. Don't hold your breathe.
I actually have AF installed. However I keep it very simple. I did have experience with the Drupal node_access join bottleneck for the permission. My users need the moderator, super moderator roles that I don't know how to set up, and permission per forum is far from perfect. The limited Drupal comment.module permission obligates to write a module, to hook in a Drupal way in order to allow/refuse some access (and that's not the Drupal way).
< blockquote>I don't think
< blockquote>I don't think so. Have a bridge make it less complex, more reliable, have less bugs.
Why? Put many modules together always leads to interoperability problems.
LOOOOL! Are you serious? If you think that putting modules together leads to interoperability problems then imagine putting two completely different software together...
A complex system has more
A complex system has more bugs than two simple one.
The two "putting together" which you're saying are not architecturally the same.
I agree with some reservation...
Yes Drupal + civiCRM is better than a Drupal only solution and some of the reasons why it is so powerful is because:
1) It becomes native to Drupal's theming engine when you install it (civiCRM) as a module.
2) It has a separate database so that the 125 or so civi tables don't intermingle with Drupal's database tables.
(Yes it can share the database but I wouldn't set it up that way).
3) It has exposed hooks like Drupal so it can be extended like Drupal through the use of custom modules.
If PHPBB follows this path and creates a PHPBB module for Drupal that automatically adopts the theme you have applied to the Drupal site with hooks that we can use to extend it through custom modules and the ability to extend the theming, I think it would be a compelling addition and I would certainly be happy to give it a spin.
At the moment PHPBB3 (in my experience) is a bit of a bear to wrestle with when adding to a Drupal site.
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It goes beyond theming. I can't speak for civicCRM because I know nothing about it. With forums, though, I can tell you that connecting the themes isn't going to let you make a list of discussions on your front page that include both forum posts and group posts to name just one of many examples where native content wins out over a bridge.
Michelle
Hi Michelle, Sorry for the
Hi Michelle,
Sorry for the civi example... It is a bit of an odd comparison but none the less, it is a good example of how a very complex piece of software can be well integrated in to a Drupal installation.
It installs as a module, it can either use Drupal's Database or have it's own, It has hooks (drupal style hooks), it is exposed to views, its API is available in blocks (and you can mod template.php to gain more access to page.tpl.php if necessary) and of course it adopts the current theme and can be extended through regular Drupal theming practices. It becomes native to Drupal and you can list out it's content the same way you would list things on a Drupal site.
If PHPBB were to create a module for PHPBB that exposed itself to Drupal in such a way, it would go a long way towards improving the current Drupal / PHPBB situation. Until that time, I don't suppose I'll be going down the PHPBB path again.
awasson, this is what I was
awasson, this is what I was getting at, I mean I realise that a bridge between phpbb3 and drupal will never come close to Advanced Forums
But phpbb4 will be built from the ground up. I'm just intrigued about the possibilities of this. But they aren't anything more then possibilities.
.
I doubt that they will build it with native Drupal content so the fundamental issue will remain. AF doesn't do forums better than phpbb but it does Drupal better and always will.
Michelle
yautja_cetanu, I figured...
...That's what you were getting at because of your reference to civiCRM and I hear you! If I hadn't used civi, I wouldn't have guessed a huge 3rd party application could be so tightly integrated with a Drupal site. Hopefully the people at PHPBB will take a page from civiCRM's playbook and build theirs the same way.
Well we can hope so anyway ; )
I think I might be wrong :S
I think I might be wrong :S http://dropcrm.org
Lobo who heads up Civic is currently discussing the idea of turning CiviCRM entirely into a Drupal Module for civicrm 4 rather then maintain this deep bridge. They have already stopped offering a stand-alone version
Yeah, I just read that...
[off topic]
The discussion I read (http://bit.ly/bjVQU6) is several months old but very interesting... There are some compelling reasons why they are considering moving it to Drupal entirely and there's still talk that they'll continue to modules for Joomla and a new one for WP.
Each solution has its own
Each solution has its own strength. Please don't keep saying that a bridge is a waste or a forum module is a waste.
Yeah, Amen to that : )
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly... It's disrespectful to those who have poured a lot of time and effort into AF to call it a waste of time. If you don't want to use it, fine but calling it a waste of time is meaningless.
I'll reserve judgment on the bridge until I know more about it but anything that makes it easier to integrate, run and maintain forums on Drupal is a good thing.
I'm sorry about before, it
I'm sorry about before, it was clumsy said. I meant that it seems more effective to integrate phpbb if all you're trying to accomplish is the phpbb look and functionality.
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If all you want is phpbb, then use that. The point of a native Drupal forum module is to give you full featured forums that are entirely part of the same site, not just bridged. If you have a mainland and an island, you can make them look and function the same but you are never going to change the fact that part of your community is on an island.
Michelle
And if there is a mainland
And if there is a mainland and an island, a "bridge" allow both citizens go freely between them without demanding for a visa. The purpose of a bridge is not for assimilation. Each country has its advantage, and is big enough to stay alone. If someone builds a bridge for Joomla!, I vote against. But for phpBB, why not?
That said, sometimes a native Drupal forum is preferred. And I don't think a "very tightly integrated phpBB module" in Drupal will likely happen.
.
As I keep saying, to the point where I think I'm just going to stop because no one is listening, it depends on your needs.
Need a huge forum with every last bell and whistle that doesn't need to be an actual part of your main site? Use a bridge.
Need a forum that is first class Drupal content completely and seamlessly integrated into your site? Use Drupal for the fourm.
It's not that complicated but far too many people think they need to bridge when they really don't. I see so many sites where you click forum and are taken to what looks like a different site with < 500 posts in the forum. Or people that go through all the work of setting up a bridge... and then want to put a forum post on the front page.
For nearly 3 years I've been trying to get across the message that Drupal's forums work just fine for 90% of Drupal sites with forums. And I'm getting tired of people telling me I'm re-inventing the wheel or saying why bother, just use phpbb. I am not re-inventing the wheel. I'm making a wheel that works properly with Drupal. It's no more a waste of time than making a wheel for a car is a waste of time because there's already wheels for semis.
Michelle
I agree with Michelle 100%.
I agree with Michelle 100%. I've been using the core forum for some time and have a hell of a lot of users and posts. I've only found what I consider to be 2 drawbacks
First, there are a few technical issues. Stuff like the performance of the main forum listing when you have many forums. I wish I had the skill to figure out how to resolve them and submit them into patches for Core.
Secondly, administration/moderation. There are plenty of ways to admin/mod a forum in Drupal, but none of them so far have been as elegant as VB of PHPBB. I'm currently working on some admin-type stuff that I intend to put on drupal.org when it is complete.
Though I wish those drawbacks could magically go away, they are mostly offset by the amount of integration that I get with the rest of the site.
But, as I've said before, Michelle's work on AF has, IMO, turned the core forum from something that technically works to something that is totally useful.
Admin stuff
I have an issue in the queue for making a moderation submodule. It's blocked right now by the fact that VBO won't work with custom Views styles. If someone can get past that, that opens the doors to a very nice moderation module.
Michelle
Great news!!!
I am using phpbbforum module for about a year already to integrate two my sites, one drupal and one phpbb. It works quite well but still has some issues. I believe "natural" bridge will do a better job and get better support than side one.
Confused and on the fence
Just a quick first post (which I registered to make) to thank all those that posted the pros & cons. I am relatively new to Drupal and find I now need a forum and AF I looked at and felt it was lacking something. So I looked at phpBB3 and was quite excited by the possibilities and decided to go with phpBB3.
However, reading through here I see the error of my ways. What AF may be lacking now, I fear phpBB3 will take from me in effort over time to maintain a close coupled relationship with Drupal (even when the connector comes out). I can see my early needs wanting to exploit the Drupal feature set more.
So, for my new site I am going with AF, which I believe now to a better 'start up' option for a single site all in one solution. I hope that the developers will continue their great work in improving AF over time.
Should I find later that my site becomes mainly 'BB centric' (which I doubt) or that I have to split the site out, I understand that I can migrate to (and from) phpBB if required (a headache worth avoiding, who knows?)
.
What did you find lacking in AF? Check the roadmap. If it's not there, add a feature request. I'm always looking for real world feedback of what features people really find lacking. It's easy to compare feature lists but that doesn't tell me what features people find important. I run a forum on my site which isn't huge but is moderately active and the only things I really find lacking are the moderation, jump to last post from the topic list, and the "in reply to" when someone replies to a specific post. Also a decent notifications module, but that's outside of AF's scope.
I'm going to keep on working to make AF a good choice for your Drupal forum. Keep in mind, though, that it's not developerS. I get patches now and then and got some extensive help from merlinofchaos a year ago but, overall, it's just me working on this very part time after the kids go to bed and alternating with trying to get time for my own websites. It's hard for me to keep up with a team of developers dedicated to building stand alone forum software.
Michelle
To clarify, I cannot find any
To clarify, I cannot find any show stoppers going initially with AF. However, (for me anyway) there was initially a subjective sense of; there's other dedicated, feature rich BB options out there, why not use one of them as I would get everything one could desire in a BB option, easy set-up, backed by a larger dev team, but does this really full fill my actual needs?
I know now this was a totally unfair appraisal of my needs, and that initially assumed phpBB3 would give me the all things 'new and shiny', without contemplating what issues really lie beneath the surface. This thread made me spend vital moments in careful consideration, with what my needs actually were.
What it all comes down to is what my visitors will find most useful (its possible they become overwhelmed by phpBB features), and it's mainly going to be a service related site where BBs will assist the occasional user.
The proof is always in the pudding, so if my visitors (and I shall encourage feedback) have any worthwhile comments about AF I shall let you know.
I for one am grateful and impressed with the dedicated work a single developer such as yourself has contributed to the AF module.
I look forward to when I have enough 'Drupal time' experience to be able to contribute myself, thereby enriching further; what I hope will always remain a loyal community.
.
Your initial thoughts are pretty common. They see that you can tack on a full featured forum and assume that's the best bet. And, for some, it is. But many people realize later that they want a forum post on the front page or to list new forum posts and new group posts and new blog posts all together in one "what's new" list or any other of the many things where bridges will bite you in the butt. So it's important to evaluate your needs, not only your needs now but your needs in the future, before deciding whether to use a bridge.
Don't wait to long to start giving back. As a newish Drupal user, your perspective is important. You're coming at things fresh and that's something that's lost once you have a lot of experience. You don't need to code... Writing docs and testing are both very important things you can do from the start.
Michelle
Keep in mind, though, that
And that's why I've shied away from AF. It's been over 6 years since I first used Drupal. In that time, I've seen a lot of attempts to build a better forum for Drupal. I've also seen way too many abandoned attempts to build a better forum for Drupal. I'd rather not get stuck with an outdated forum with no reasonable upgrade path...
You must not have a good
You must not have a good understanding of AF then.
It doesn't use anything that isn't in core for data storage, so an upgrade path should never be a problem. Unlike a bridge to a 3rd party piece of software that often times loses support. Then you are stuck with a Drupal site and a phpBB, and no way to integrate them at all.
If Michelle gets sick of doing AF and no one steps up, at worst, you can always go right back to the standard Drupal forum module. It might not be pretty like AF, but it works.
This is primarily the reason that I use AF. I don't have to worry about a phpBB update killing my Drupal site.
Actually, I do understand
Actually, I do understand that. I wasn't terribly clear in how I worded that post, though. Sorry.
I meant more that I'd likely be stuck without a viable replacement for at least some of its functionality, rather than being stuck with a db I can't upgrade. That also goes for the other bits of functionality not covered by AF itself that have to be assembled piece by piece with other modules.
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I've been with Drupal for 5.5 years and have seen the attempts as well. The difference is that I released AF nearly 3 years ago and continue to work on it as best I am able. I have never abandoned it and have no intentions of abandoning it since it is a big part of my site.
Also, as kclawes said, you can turn it off at any time and your data will be fine and handled by core forum.
Michelle
Well the way I see it is....
You have several decent choices... PHPBB or AF will give you a decent forum but it's up to you to make the choice and then do the work to integrate it into your site. I'm not particularly invested in either direction so I think I can be pretty objective with my thoughts on the subject.
Forums IMO can be the most difficult components to integrate into a site because they have so many moving parts. You just have to be prepared to do some work to make them fit into your site. I've used PHPBB a number of times and it is a great piece of software. It's been around for quite some time (10 years as far as I can recall) and regardless of what you might hear, it isn't going anywhere soon. That said, I've found it to be a supreme pain in the neck to integrate with a Drupal site because there are so many moving parts (screens, admin pages, etc...) and unlike projects like civiCRM, it works beside and not in conjunction with Drupal. I want the site to be cohesive and consistent. Maybe they'll create a fantastic bridge that integrates PHPBB within Drupal but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
AF also isn't going anywhere as has been noted and it does a great job. I've installed it for my own interest and the next production forum I build for Drupal will likely be with AF because it is part of Drupal. The install is a breeze and the stock settings work quite well for setting up a forum. The organizations I work with are small, maybe 2000 members maximum and usually only a percentage of these organizations will actually use the forum. As far as I can see AF will do all I need. If you come from a PHPBB background AF might be a bit confusing (my opinion) because it is so simple to configure and set up. It doesn't have that labyrinth of admin screens to navigate mainly I think because if you're a Drupal admin, there are less hoops to jump through to assign permissions, etc...
Mind you, PHPBB does have a much greater level of moderation and administration so maybe if I were running a site that had 10's of thousands of members and I needed granular levels of moderation, I would consider PHPBB but for what I need AF will do the job and I certainly could have used it (should have used it) for forums I've set up in the past.
Well that's my 2 cents.
This is great news, though i
This is great news, though i know some people have worked very hard on mods for drupal (michelle/advanced forum).
Pc gaming team - http://teamfod.com
Drupal core is the way to go, how is anyone questioning this?
I'm sorry guys, however much I love using phpBB, I have to ask why so many insist that a bridge (however decent it is of the phpBB guys to start work on it) is a better solution to a core module? It's ridiculous to think that. I'm with Michelle all the way, if you want a true framework (website and integrated forum) then topics need to be Drupal nodes! No doubt about it.
That said, I'd like to see some examples of how the Drupal Forum module has been utilised to make use of the same sort of functionality that phpBB offers. I've no doubt that Drupal can do these things, so I'm not questioning it, I just think that it would allow visitors of this page to see exactly how Drupal matches up so they can make their own decisions.
If you can help point us in the right direction Michelle I for one would be very grateful (as I am for your ongoing efforts on the Forum module, thank you).
Another reason I ask this is because I'm about to embark on creating my first Drupal based forum/website solution (D7) and need examples on how I can make it every bit as good as phpBB, not the same as, but in a different way, better! :)
Many thanks,
Jonathan
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Making a feature by feature comparison is on my to do list but has less priority than working on the module itself so may be a while. :) The short list is that the two biggest lacking areas in Drupal is forum moderation and performance. For a huge site that needs constant moderation, moving posts from one topic to another, merging topics together, stuff like that, Drupal isn't ready, yet. And there's a couple of really killer queries in there because of the way data is stored in Drupal.
If you're running a huge site that's 99% forum with just a bit of CMS tacked on, then a bridge may be a better choice at this point, at least until Drupal works a bit better for the high end. Otherwise, Drupal can do pretty much everything you need right now and keeps on improving.
Michelle
Thanks Michelle, I wish I had
Thanks Michelle, I wish I had the skills to help you out with this as it's definitely something I feel passionate about, I seriously think that people should put their efforts into making Drupal's Forum work rather than spend time slating it.
I'm no PHP developer but if there's anything I can do, like the aforementioned feature comparison...feature :) (provided you talk me through what those are). Or even CSS or HTML stuff, I'd be more than willing to help out. Even accessibility or usability etc.
P.S. If there's a better place to put this exchange (as it's a little off topic) feel free to point me in the right direction! :)
Cheers.
Features
If you're serious, making an up to date feature comparison would be great. That's one of those things that anyone can do and better for me to spend my time coding instead of doing that. To get you started, there's a very out of date one here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/5470 and one I did a bit over a year ago here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=r2eQ3XwGh1X7jZEa9wMNatg&output=html . You can either edit that first wiki page or make a new one. Whatever is easier. :)
Michelle
Hi Michelle, it's a lot to
Hi Michelle, it's a lot to get through! :) I'm weighing up whether I should edit the existing one or start fresh so I'll try my best to get it done soon. Incidentally, on your spreadsheet, your comments are cut off midway through, could you possibly fix this for me so I can get some more context for some of the features?
I assume AF - Advanced Forum, but what's "FR", "APK", "UR" and "FF"? Sorry for being dumb! :)
Also, one last thing, assuming you're basing this on both D6 & D7, a lot of the mentioned modules (Quote and BBCode) haven't got D7 releases yet, how are we approaching this?
Sorry, I'm very new to this and don't want to get anything wrong.
Many thanks.
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Do you have a Google account? If you send me your info, I can add you on to the spreadsheet so you can edit it directly.
FR = Feature Request. APK = Advanced Profile Kit. UR = User Relationships. FF = Flag Friend. Not dumb... If you aren't familiar with the modules, abbreviations can be hard to decipher. :)
At this point, I haven't even looked at D7. Let's get it done for D6 and then we can go through and make a column for D7 and the update status of each bit once D7 is out.
Thanks!
Michelle
Hi Michelle, thanks for the
Hi Michelle, thanks for the extra info, appreciate it. I have a google account so that would be great, I cannot access http://shellmultimedia.com/contact at the moment as I'm in work and our proxy is blocking it for some reason. I will send you a mail with my contact info in there this evening if that's ok.
I was thinking of a page that would list features (with comparisons to other software) and which modules you could use to enable that functionality. Taking a useful twist on the existing comparison page. (Will include D7 comparisons as the feature support grows).
Many thanks
.
That's fine and that's what I was planning on doing, too. With Drupal it's not enough to just put a checkbox that it has it. People need to know what module to add to get it.
Rather than continuing to take this topic completely off topic, I started a wikipage that we can use as a workspace. I turned commenting on so we can have discussion there and start filling in stuff in the node itself.
http://groups.drupal.org/node/93829
Michelle
We currently have a drupal
Mis-typed
Just another voice
This has been said a few times, but wanted to add another voice to this side. If you're truly looking for integration and a unified experience the Drupal forums/AF are the way to go. For something separate, I'd say a bridge is OK (ubuntu.org comes to mind).
I've done a few community sites and use AF for all of them because I aim for a unified user experience: 1 profile, 1 set of stats, etc. A bridge will never be able to replace that. Also, I have never found a forum that gives me ALL of the features I want, but at the end of the day I'd rather just be a Drupal developer rather than a Drupal/PHPbb developer. Even from a business standpoint, supporting 1 piece of software is better than supporting 2.
For anyone on the edge, in my experience, users appreciate a well done site. You will always have people asking for different features, but overall they will appreciate the work you've done if the things you do have work well.
Thanks to everyone who has devoted so much time to Drupal forum-related modules, especially Michelle.
WebOzy: the web services company
About Me
Drupal newbie ahead
I've been using Seditio CMS for a couple of years, and built a pretty large website, but Seditio got abandoned few months ago. No support, no downloads, nothing. Since I'm running a website with 24k+ users, 160k+ posts and 12k+ topics I had to find new CMS, and Drupal was recommended by many developers.
What I am worried about? First of all: performance. I have around 10k unique visitors daily and it's bit hard on server since cache system for Seditio isn't of any use. I'm not on dedicated server, but plan to upgrade from shared if Drupal turns to be a big resource user.
Will 160k+ posts(and still counting) be something that AF will have no problem running?
Second, ease of use (moderation)? Don't want to give a headaches to my team of moderators when trying to move/split/update/delete posts/topics.
I'd like to keep it unified as Eidolon Night said, since this is a community site where user profiles will play a big role, but sacrificing a performance and ease of use for all my users over displaying recent posts on index is a hard decision.
Hope someone will clear things for me.
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At this point, performance of large forums and moderation are still the big pain points in Drupal's forum. I'm working on a solution but the project is in hiatus until September and will take many months after that, so not a practical solution for anyone who needs something production ready soon.
Michelle
Despite the efforts of many
Despite the efforts of many (not least of all Michelle), I would NOT consider Drupal forums to be even close to being acceptable for medium to high demand forums. Not only because of the performance issues, but also because the functionality and ease of use is just not there.
Its a pity that the Drupal forums suck so much....because its a seriously weak point in an otherwise excellent (the best IMO) CMS.
I've used Drupal on some
I've used Drupal on some larger forums. A couple of comments:
1) If using Drupal 6, be sure to use the Forum2 module. It back-ports some important performance improvements from Drupal 7 back into Drupal 6. Specifically some access control issues on Drupal 6.
2) Forum sites tend to have lots of logged-in users (vs anonymous users), so normal Drupal caching doesn't help much. You'll want to install a PHP opcode cache like APC and more importantly install memcache (both PHP extension and Drupal module).
3) For heavy traffic sites you can also get into Varnish cache configurations for authenticated users, but that takes a lot of expertise (and not something I have done).
4) Memory. Give your server a lot of memory. The more the better (especially when caching).
So yes, on the same server config PHPBB will probably always be faster. But it is still possible to use Drupal if you are persistent. And yes, there is plenty of room for improvement.