Personally I like phpbb the most, purely because it is so widely used and easy to use. Granted, it had some widely publicized vulnerabilities a while back, but any application that is so widely used will eventually be hacked.
I know the developers are not the biggest fans of bb's. Fair enough, but I can see value in having three elements all working together here:
- Mailing Lists - For immediate communication and development related
threads. 2. Wiki - Documentation & tracking of new features and 'how to's' 3. BB - For support, questions, and general discussion.
It may seem like too much now, but I think we have all seen applications following this sort of model, all very successfully.
Does anyone else agree/disagree with this approach?
Geoffrey
On 10/8/2005, "Tank" tank@galleywinter.com wrote:
I would prefer a BB as well. much easier to search and track where things are going.
vBulletin is an excellant solution although it is a pay software. i would be willing to help with the costs of it. IPB is also a good secure option that is free.
Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
Hi All, I think what you are proposing is a great step forward to help the community along. Personally, I prefer bb's as a method to share knowledge throughout the community w/o clogging up inboxes. However, you make a valid point that Wiki's could also step in and perform the same function (somewhat). I would still urge you to keep your options open with regards to the BB. I am sure that once word gets out about Roundmail, your going to see a dramatic increase in usage and interest! :)
I'd be happy to help out on the Wiki if I can be of some use.
Geoffrey
p.s. The mail that I sent to the roundmail gmail account is quoted below:
Hi There, Just wanted to again thank you for the work you've done on this project. I really love how you've merged some of the slicker features of Gmail into a really nice UI and overall system!
One suggestion though. I personally (and this just may be me), am not a fan of the SF bug tracker, or using lists when supporting major applications. SF's search capabilities, imho, suck. The bigger your community gets, the harder it will be to manager.
As for lists, sure they are fine but the ones you offer don't have any ability to browse an archive. Invariably, you will get users like me who could post questions or issues that have been dealt with before.
How about setting up a forum or something similiar? At least there you can control/moderate if thats what you need, but also the community get a sort of shared knowledge about this great application!
These are simply my views only, while I'm not a developer I'd be happy to donate some server space or time setting things up if that would help.
Please keep up the great work!
Geoffrey
On 10/8/2005, "B. Johannessen" bob@db.org wrote:
Geoffrey McCaleb wrote:
- List Archive
A suggestion I put forward to Bob was, why not put up a simple bulletin board (like phpbb)? As the Roundcube community grows I really think it would be helpful to have a central place for users to get help and ask questions, keeping the more development oriented threads to the lists.
You say you sent me a suggestion? As far as I can tell, I haven't received any e-mail from you, and none have been rejected by my spam filters. Care to resend?
I'm working on the mailing list archive right now, and *hope* to have it up and running this weekend, but I'm not making any promises. I'll of course make sure *all* past messages are included in the archive.
When it comes to a bulletin board, I'm not really a big fan, and I don't think I care much to have to administrate something with a security track-record such as phpBB. On the other hand, when I talked to Thomas about setting up the mailing lists, we agreed to start of with just the dev and announce lists, but later add a users list to handle all the questions that has nothing to do with development. As to when this should be done, my thinking is once we consistently see more questions on administration then development/feature requests on the dev list *and* the the dev list volume hits ~200 messages per week. I'm open to suggestions though.
What I will do, if there's any interest and a few people step up to help keep an eye on things, is set up a wiki. (In case someone has been living under pile of rocks for the last few years, and doesn't know what a wiki is, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki). I find Wikis a great way to work on collaborative documentation, but unfortunately we need a few editors to keep link spammers and vandals out. So, if I get at least two volunteers, I'll get started on the wiki as soon as I'm done with the mailing list archive.
I'll finish off with a few list stats for those interested:
Number of subscribers on dev list: 83
Number of subscribers on announce list: 45
Bob (List-mom)