Tutorial Blog – Online Free Tutorial Free online Tutorial blog

XMB (forum)

This article is about the XMB message board system.For the Sony GUI system, see XrossMediaBar.

XMB is short for eXtreme Message Board and is an open source forum system written in the PHP 4 scripting language and using the database management system MySQL to store dynamic content. It is being distributed under the GNU General Public License. Out-of-the-box, the forum is quite simple compared to its commercial competitors, but a substantial amount of modifications exist to add new features.

Some important features:

Support for many languagesBuddy listu2u messaging systemThread subscriptionsSubforums

Modifications

A substantial amount of modifications or hacks exist for XMB. Most of these are made by administrators of other XMB boards. The XMB forum software can be considered quite easy to modify compared to some of the other forums.

Currently, the main sources for modifications are:

XMB Forum
XMB Services
XMB Garage

Derivatives

The Crossday Discuz! Board is a derivative of XMB, which is mostly popular in China and heavily rewritten with new code.

MyBulletinBoard (MyBB) is another forum software created by some of the original developers of XMB, but based on new code.

Another board software derived from XMB is UltimaBB, which has now been discontinued and TPB (TPB) (Techz Power Board) which is still in development.

Beehive Forum

Beehive Forum is a free and open source forum system using the PHP scripting language and MySQL database software.

The main difference between Beehive and most other forum software is its frame-based interface, which lists discussion titles on the left and displays their contents on the right.

Other features which differentiate Beehive from most forums include:

Targeted replies to specific users and/or posts.Safe HTML posting (malicious code is stripped out), rather than BBCode, via WYSIWYG editor, helper toolbar, or manual typing.A relationship system, allowing users to ignore users and/or signatures that they dislike.Powerful forum-wide and per-user word filtering, including a regular expression option.A flexible polling system, allowing public or private ballot, grouped answers, and different result modes.A built-in “light mode” that allows basic forum access from PDAs and web-enabled mobilephones.

The source of these useful yet distinct features is not just from the minds of developers, but also from the people who use the software.

With its mix of technical features and user friendly interface, Beehive is used by a range of audiences, from Linux users to senior citizens and more. Beehive is used by the popular UK technology website The Inquirer.

History

Beehive Forum was started in 2002 by a group of ex-PC Format forum members (known then as NPCFF - Not PC Format Forum) who were upset when Delphi forums decided to cripple the service for their non-paying members. The first release, labelled Beehive Forum 0.1 beta, was released on the 27th June, 2002.

The latest stable version, Beehive Forum 0.9.1, was released on 24th July 2009, and includes a variety of fixes, improvements, and new features.

The latest bleeding edge version is often used and tested at the new haunt of NPCFF members, now known as Teh Forum, from where free unofficial support may also be found.

The majority of Beehive is written by Matthew Beale, and he is currently the primary coder for the project

Security & Vulnerabilities

Beehive is one of the most secure Open Source forums.

On 28 November 2007 Nick Bennet and Robert Brown of Symantec Corporation discovered a security flaw related Beehive’s database input handling. The vulnerability could “allow a remote user to execute SQL injection attacks”. The flaw affected all versions of the software up to 0.7.1. The Beehive Forum team responded very rapidly with a fix released, in the form of version 0.8 of the software, later that day.

The current version of Beehive does not have any known security vulnerabilities.

bbPress

bbPress is an open source light weight internet forum package, created by Automattic, the same company that created WordPress. It is designed to be powerful, fast, and easy to use.

Features

bbPress has a templating system similar to that of WordPress, which includes themes that can be installed and switched between. The code that comprises the themes can also be edited for more advanced customizations. bbPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install. bbPress can integrate itself with WordPress upon installation.

History

bbPress was originally written by WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg, after he could not find software available at the time that fit his needs. bbPress was the first forum software to utilize a CSS-based layout, rather than the tabular layouts of other forum software available at the time.

bbPress is used as the forum software for many high-traffic forums, most notably the WordPress.com forums, and the WordPress.org support forums.

Releases

Just like WordPress, bbPress versions are code named after well-known jazz musicians.

bbPress .72, code named Bix, was released October 14th, 2006. With this release, bbPress was no longer considered to be in alpha. It offered built-in spam protection, a clean and simple interface and complete integration with WordPress.

bbPress 0.8, code named Desmond, was released February 8th, 2007. Version 0.8 included forum deletion, multibyte tags and better timezone support.

bbPress 0.9, code named Brubeck, was released April 3rd, 2008. Version 0.9 featured a new installer, built-in support for Gravatars, a new date and time format, and integration with WordPress 2.5.

bbPress 1.0, code named Bechet, was released July 3rd, 2009. Version 1.0 featured usability improvements, as well as a more WordPress-like back end as well as native support for single sign-on with WordPress 2.7 and 2.8 and WordPress-like behavior in regards to permalinks and .htaccess updates.

Source: http://needforcontent.com/bbpress

FluxBB

FluxBB aims to be a fast and lightweight PHP-powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU General Public License. Its primary goals are to be faster, smaller and less graphically intensive when compared to other discussion boards. FluxBB incorporates fewer features than other, comparable forum scripts, choosing to focus on the primary functionality of an online forum. Features that are not deemed as essential to the software are often implemented either by the development team or by users as extensions. As a result of this more focused feature set, FluxBB is generally faster and outputs smaller, semantically correct XHTML and CSS-compliant pages.

Currently, FluxBB runs on a number of operating systems that are able to support the PHP scripting language. To store its data, FluxBB relies on either MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite.

It takes its origins from PunBB on May 9, 2008. Currently PunBB is importing many of the changes to the FluxBB core into its own SVN to maintain compatibility between the two forum systems, it is foreseen that the two forums’ feature sets will diverge in the future.

History

FluxBB is a fork of PunBB which was created by Rickard Andersson. In 2007, PunBB was sold to a commercial company. Development continued under the direction of Rickard Andersson until April 2008. At that time Rickard Andersson announced he would be ceasing his active involvement with the project, at least temporarily.

In light of the changed circumstances the remaining members of the development team decided to fork the project in order to regain control over future project direction. FluxBB was the result of this decision.

The current stable release is FluxBB 1.2.21. FluxBB 1.2.18 is an update to PunBB 1.2.17. The next version, FluxBB 1.3, is under active development and is currently in a beta stage.

FluxBB was announced as a finalist in SourceForge.net’s 2008 Community Choice Awards in the “Best New Project” category.

Connor, a developer of FluxBB, announced that the development of FluxBB has been changed. FluxBB 1.2 would be 1.4 in the future, and FluxBB 1.3 would be 2.0 with more functions.

Features

FluxBB’s default theme is called Oxygen.

Semantic and valid XHTML and CSSSupports MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLiteSupport for translation and per-user language settingsDistributed under GNU General Public LicenceMultiple themes with per-user settings.

Future development

FluxBB 1.4, which is a direct upgrade from 1.2, will include new features such as full UTF-8 support which 1.3 includes. Besides, forums powered by FluxBB 1.3 will be able to be upgraded to FluxBB 1.4 completely.

FluxBB 2.0, which will be under development soon, adds a one-click extension system which will allow users to easily extend features and functionality. Version 2.0 also improves markup and CSS, and FluxBB 2.0 will add other important functions such as a templating system, subforums/no categories mode in the future.

Source: http://needforcontent.com/fluxbb

FruitShow

FruitShow is a minimalist, free forum package based on the forums at www.joelonsoftware.com and designed for www.crazyontap.com. The philosophy is that social atmosphere is a by-product of software design. No registration, clean design, and easily skinable.

History

FruitShow was created in January 2006 in response to Joel Spolsky closing the “Off Topic” Joel on Software forum after the death of Chris McKinstry. To fill the gap, Wayne Venables created a clone of the FogBugz forum calling it FruitShow after a post made by one Sathyaish Chakravarthy, a sometime poster on Joel’s forums.

Features

Using the principles laid out the article Building Communities with Software, FruitShow follows a minimalistic design with no registration, no threading, no sub-forums, and no bouncing. With an emphasis on ease of use, FruitShow is fast, user-friendly and puts an emphasis on conversation.

Source: http://needforcontent.com/fruitshow