Sphene Community Tools

good day sir,
I run a moderately active vbulletin based forum with over 3000 members and 70000 posts and am seriously considering moving it all over to sct and building something that is more customised to the needs of my community. The problem is that vbulletin is constantly changing, the code is growing and there is a whole bunch of stuff now in vbulletin that is useless to me. Bug and security updates are frequent too. I have been uing vb for nearly 3 years now so I have a real good understanding of what features are truly important for us so I have set up a sct site on my home server and have begun customizing it. Before I get too far into it I want to know if it is possible to convert the passwords in the vb db which are stored as md5 hashes into sha for sct...is it possible? If not I need to come up with an alternate strategy like sending everyone to the forgot your password page or something like that.

Anyways I anticipate that I will be working on this for a few months before it is production ready. It seems as though anything is possible so here is my wish list for features that I intend to add, or perhaps inspire others to create:

* private messaging...but ideally I would like to use some sort of instant messaging system that can act as both a chat and a pm storage box with instant notification of new pm's

* frontpage stats

* gallery

* saving of non-graphical attachments such as pdf, avi, doc etc...these could go in the wiki

* a gallery to post connector, so that when sopmeone is making a post and they want to use an image that is already uploaded to their gallery then there will be a list of pics with links perhaps in the message posting interface

* user gallery in the profile page

* wysiwym in textarea or something similar

* youtube popdowns like at reddit.com (the links say watch)

* user self delete

* show current avatar on edit profile page

* thread search goes to page containing post that is being searched for, and also ability to search within a thread

* post views only count once per user

* ajax instant title edit for admins

* ajax post edit

* thumbnail of first attachment in thread in thread listing

* ajax spell check

* listing of referring links

well that is it for now...but there will be more ideas for sure
hopefully it is all doable..I really appreciate the work you have done on this and I want to help as much as possible...I am new to django and python programming so I will be a little slow but eventually I hope to figure it out
thanks again

--- Last Edited by ceeray at 2009-02-02 23:13:17 ---

hi, thanks for your interest in SCT :)

of course everything is doable, but most features need to be implemented from scratch .. there is not much there yet for those extra features..

* passwords: there is no way to convert md5 passwords - i have converted 2 forums yet and both times used the method of sending new passwords to all users - it is really a very easy script... the other possibility would be to create a custom django authentication mechanism and simply check against the old MD5 passwords..

* wysiwyg editor: there is already a prototype wysiwyg editor for SCT's forum but i haven't had time yet to fully integrate it :(

* user self delete: i think this would be more a deactivate feature.. because the references have to be kept intact.. but that shouldn't bother you i guess.. you only have to adapt a few locations where the user is outputted and write 'disabled' if an account delete was requested

* thread search: where is the difference to the current search ?

* post views only count once per user <-- i haven't done this because it is a bit resource intensive (remember which user has viewed which post) .. but it should be doable none the less.. (although i don't really see any reason)



i just picked a few features because most others are just completely new additions you have to do from scratch .. but shouldn't cause much more headache than they already look like :)

if you like i can help you with development a bit - at least give hints on how to do some things.. i'm not sure though how much time i can devote .. we could also try to define those features in more details and figure out how to best fit them into SCT and post a 'help wanted' request on sourceforge.. most of those features sound quite interesting..


is your forum you want to convert a public one ?

works for me!

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 18:21:29:

* wysiwyg editor: there is already a prototype wysiwyg editor for SCT's forum but i haven't had time yet to fully integrate it :(

yes that is good thanks I will check it out.. I will probably want to add some more buttons to it

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 18:21:29:

* user self delete: i think this would be more a deactivate feature.. because the references have to be kept intact.. but that shouldn't bother you i guess.. you only have to adapt a few locations where the user is outputted and write 'disabled' if an account delete was requested

sounds good!

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 18:21:29:

* thread search: where is the difference to the current search ?

I am talking about the ability to search within a thread

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 18:21:29:

* post views only count once per user <-- i haven't done this because it is a bit resource intensive (remember which user has viewed which post) .. but it should be doable none the less.. (although i don't really see any reason)

you have a good point there...

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 18:21:29:

i just picked a few features because most others are just completely new additions you have to do from scratch .. but shouldn't cause much more headache than they already look like :)

if you like i can help you with development a bit - at least give hints on how to do some things.. i'm not sure though how much time i can devote .. we could also try to define those features in more details and figure out how to best fit them into SCT and post a 'help wanted' request on sourceforge.. most of those features sound quite interesting..

sounds good I will keep you in the loop
right now I am migrating the database and attachments
vb has 148 tables so there is a lot to throw out

is your forum you want to convert a public one ?

yes, please email me for details

also I am wondering if it is possible for the uploads to go to a unique directory per user?
what do you think...I am thinking it might make it easier to organize galleries for each user, and also to implement my idea to have a list of files that are already in the users gallery that can be linked to in a post...
it might be a good idea as well to put a delete button beside each upload in the reply page, you know in case we change our minds about uploading something

SCT uses the default django upload mechanism .. so i'm not 100% sure if this is easily possible (although the django file store is an extensible API.. so it probably is .. haven't looked at it that deeply yet)

ceeray said @ 2009-02-02 19:38:23:

what do you think...I am thinking it might make it easier to organize galleries for each user, and also to implement my idea to have a list of files that are already in the users gallery that can be linked to in a post...

i think this should be implemented on a model-layer.. ie. not listing all files in a directory, but store in the database which file was uploaded by which user (which .. is already done anyway since it's always the post's author)

i don't know.. i think there should be first a list of requirements for that feature.. and then figure out a way to implement it.. not the other way round :)

ceeray said @ 2009-02-02 19:38:23:

it might be a good idea as well to put a delete button beside each upload in the reply page, you know in case we change our minds about uploading something

i have to admit this is a good idea :) i've added it to the issue tracker: http://code.google.com/p/sct-project/issues/detail?id=145

okay here's another idea...how about adding another field to sphboard_postattachment, maybe call it galleryid or something like that...so that each user could have a gallery based on those galleryid's and also ideally each user could make 'albums' within their gallery just by manipulating the galleryid's

maybe when the user goes to post there could be an upload attachment/gallery js popup, the popup could have uploading boxes to upload files and also boxes to upload from urls...
also I envision in the popup a listing of files belonging to the userid, possibly with small thumbnails, and clicking on those thumbnails or links would put the attachment link into the post at the point of the cursor

maybe there should also be a list of allowed uploaded file types, and maximum upload sizes

the user's profile page could have a link to the user's 'gallery' but also some thumbs for the latest attachments

the actual gallery page for each user could have multiple upload boxes, and ways to sort images into albums...and ideally there should be a description field available for each attachment for searching purposes

so you basically need a full fetched gallery application :)
i don't know if it wouldn't be better to look for an existing django application with that features and integrate it into SCT ..

i did a short google search and found http://code.google.com/p/django-photologue/ .. sounds quite feature rich .. no idea what it can do though :)

although .. on the other hand it of course would be interesting if you could mis-use the forum for gallery management... like create a 'forum category' for every user.. and the user can manage his own sub categories.. and each image would be a new thread.. this way users can even reply/comment on images with the whole forum functionality ..

(and this user centric forum category feature would also be required for private messages of some sort.. so maybe it would also be worth thinking about this way :) )

just dumping my ideas.. it will all be quite time consuming none the less :(

I like it...comments are good

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 22:52:12:

(and this user centric forum category feature would also be required for private messages of some sort.. so maybe it would also be worth thinking about this way :) )

yes that is a great idea
I really like the idea of a personal forum with the owner of that forum wielding some moderating powers by default
the pm box can be a sub forum, maybe with a field or field to determine who can access each thread, for instance say you have a pm (ie thread) going between person A and person B and you want to add person C etc then the owner of that thread can add a user(s) or perhaps usergroup(s)

one other thing while I am thinking about it that might be useful is a reason for editing box when edits to posts are made (to keep things in perspective)

Herbert Poul said @ 2009-02-02 22:52:12:

just dumping my ideas.. it will all be quite time consuming none the less :(

all I can say is build it and they will come
I am going to learn as much as possible so I can help with the coding one day




--- Last Edited by ceeray at 2009-02-03 00:18:09 ---

sorry no updates as my homeserver mobo crapped out a week ago
soon though