<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 11, 2008 11:54 AM, Harrison - Schaaffe <<a href="mailto:peter.harrison@bigfoot.com">peter.harrison@bigfoot.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font face="Arial">Michael,</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Arial">I must admit I am very wary of phpBB2, for the reasons I
stated, but the feature set with phpBB3 seems greatly improved. I chose
vBulletin for the feature set when the open source product at the time couldn't
deliver what I needed. I used phpBB2 for about 4 years.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Let me tell you, I've said some not nice things about phpbb2 this month, and don't want to rely on it for more than the time required. A logical upgrade path is welcome, and I would like to learn toward a phpbb3 installation (there is beta work on the mailing list software, which gives us a nice option if we want to take it. The software looks solid without it as well).
<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div><font face="Arial"></font></div>
<div><font face="Arial">I understand the desire to stick with open source for
deployment of similar platroms around the world at the local level.
</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"></font> </div>
<div><font face="Arial">Is there a plan to migrate to phpBB3, or is it in use
already? If v3 can do what it promises, then it would be best to upgrade before
the forums get too big.</font></div>
<div><font face="Arial"></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>There is not a stated goal, as nearly all of the admin work on the forum has been in my free time, with assistance from good Phil Bordelon and his sysadmin skills to assist along the way. I don't want to flip the switch on the site until we have a full running system (regardless of waht software package we land with. a BETA forum running in tandem for users to stress test with the production system seems like the best way to go. Agreed?
<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div> </div>
<div><font face="Arial">I'm assuming it would import phpBB2 databases, can it
import vBulletin natively? If not a vBulletin export to phpBB2 format should be
able to be done with a built in utility.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>It is very much intended to support upgrades from phpbb2 databases. No experience with vBulletin, but an intermediary step to phpbb2 seems good to me. I've streamlined the backup process, so we can play around with db snapshots and not worry about data loss. Whee!
</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div></div>
<div><font face="Arial">I'm going to assume phpBB3 will be the planned platform
for the unified forum. </font><font face="Arial"></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>I want to echo the concerns overs file-level modifications to install MODs. That really isn't a manageable way to keep software packages up to date, both the phpbb base software as well as updates to the mods. Proper support of MODs/Addons/Extensions is really important in going forward.
<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div><font face="Arial">Please also send a login for the
<a href="http://olpc.osuosl.org/" target="_blank">olpc.osuosl.org</a> forum. </font></div>
<div></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Will get you a login account as soon as possible. Should be tonight at the latest, will try and get it sooner (weird issue, don't ask).<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div></div>
<div><font face="Arial">As I said previously I figured that <a href="http://olpchelp.org" target="_blank">olpchelp.org</a> would
have a lot of non-technical members, and it does. As a result of this I
chose a theme that would be attractive with limited use of graphics. Bandwidth
can be an issue on low speed links, so I have used a 30 day expires header on
all images to cache them on the client side. The <a href="http://olpc.osuosl.org/" target="_blank">olpc.osuosl.org</a> forum seems to taken a
different approach by stripping out most of the the default phpBB subSilver
template images. Is there a phpBB theme out there that is judicial in its use of
graphics, attractive and could be easily modified to match the OLPC brand /
feel?</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>The low use of images on the site was a fortunate hack. Few images the better, if only for rendering quirks and page loading, but proper cache option settings is a very good thing, and I think we can find a nice middle ground. As you can tell, I don't have the best artistic touch, so ripping out subSilver images in place of CSS background colors where it made sense was just a look-and-feel hack I threw together.
<br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div><font face="Arial"> This is an area in where technology, form and function could
come together for the relaunch of the combined forums. For me this is very
important in attracting membership. It's never just the technology, it's people
and process too.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>And not necessarily in that order! :)<br><br>I'm glad we're starting to find a path to start going forward on. I can get a BETA phpbb3 install for us to work on with a snapshot of our db at the
<a href="http://olpc.osuosl.org">olpc.osuosl.org</a> server (some unique url will be sent out to interested testers in the community) and we can evaluate how it will work for our combined uses with a hands on approach. Tomorrow looks like a good hacking day. Anyone care to join the fun?
<br></div></div><br>-- <br>Michael Burns * Student<br>Open Source {Education} Lab