Wayne wrote:
c'mon guys, please. Let's stay on topic?
I'm really getting torn here between investing dozens of hours to learn Drupal, or the exciting prospect of "rolling our own" by way of simply writing a new site up around the existing data.
The problem is, drupal is far advanced and could be ready to go in a couple of weeks. Writing one specifically for Amiga.org sounds exciting but could potentially take months, if not years to get to where the current system is now.
Wayne
well the answer is probably to go both ways,
learn an existing product right now and then when
that is up and running attempt to write your own forum
code as a background project.
as you point out the thing is to achieve data compatiblity,
a bit like using a different email client:
same emails, different email interpreter
learning ANY existing system will be guaranteed to
succeed whereas writing your own system will usually
take longer than you anticipate.
and as you point out, learning an existing product
is "dozens" of hours, whereas rolling your own forum
will be months.
but creating your own code in the long term is always
preferable and if done correctly evades
gratuitous dependency problems.
eg you could try writing your own forum
with php in a php-portable way: where you can port the
php code to future forms of php.
php is syntactically IDENTICAL to C, so portable php
code is an IDENTICAL problem to writing portable C code.
with php things like text boxes are achieved AUTOMAGICALLY by simply delegating the problem to HTML.
if you visit my website, the email box at the top
and the picture display options at the top are all
done in php. You can try sending me an email from
the email box to see php in action. or try selecting
different picture display options.
the URL is:
www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.ukphp is server side so AmigaOS doesnt need any compatibility,
just ensure that the output html is compatible with
the AmigaOS browsers.
the server simply interprets the php and outputs
ascii which is the webpage the visiting browser
sees.
when I reply here, the webpage is
....../reply.php?forum=22&post_id=580111&...
the php script is reply.php
and the args are forum post_id ....
arg "forum" has value "22"
arg "post_id" has value "580111"
etc
the arg values are separated by &'s
because text input is usually large, they use
a more efficient way to send the args
after replying the URL is:
..../viewtopic.php?topic_id=50302&post_id=580225&order=0&viewmode=flat&pid=0&forum=22#forumpost580225
that is also a php script viewtopic.php
and the args are topic_id post_id order viewmode pid
forum
eg arg "viewmode" has value "flat"
and arg "order" has value 0
php is truly cool, and the only scripting language
to consider IMHO, eg this forum is ultimately php
the visitor CANNOT view the php script which is
reply.php or viewtopic.php
all they see is the html output when the server
executes reply.php
one other thing, dont trust anyone who says
one or another system has bugs as that is likely
to be FUD.
ask them to give the URL for the alleged bugs
before you believe such.
I can show you php I have done which is the
above URL.
the brilliant thing about php is you can synthesize
web content on the fly, whether it be an html page
or a jpeg or anything.
that is why most forums and intelligent web pages
are done with php
