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#203630 09/04/1999 2:02 PM
Joined: Jul 1999
Posts: 118
Enthusiast
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Anyone can comment?? http://netbula.com/anyboard/

It has many features I wish WWWThreads had.
http://netbula.com/anyboard/features.html


Except, it does not run on MySql. And it is too expensive. And it is all in one single huge script, guess that makes it inefficient. And the script is very cryptic.

Anyone wants to comment???


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I've actually taken a look at this AnyBoard thing you referred to. And, if you're asking for features it has that this one doesn't, then they are few and far between. Sure, you can rate something with AnyBoard, but nearly every other feature is there. Personally, I would NEVER want users to posts messages where someone couldn't reply. This is generally reserved for read-only boards where administrators or moderators post to.

Besides that, the features are there.

Multi-page threaded or non-threaded message board (yup, in WWWThreads)
Register and protect your identity with a password (yup, in WWWThreads)
Auto fill-in of your name and e-mail address (yup, in WWWThreads, behind the scenes)
Private discussions between registered users (yup, in WWWThreads via private mail)
Once logged in, you do not need to enter user name again during session (yup, in WWWThreads)
The ability to modify your post (yup, in WWWThreads)
The ability to delete your post (I think it's there, with restrictions)
The ability to prevent replies to your posts (for admins or moderators, yes, in WWWThreads)
The ability to send/receive e-mail notices of new posts (yup, in WWWThreads)
The ability to upload a file when you post (yup, in WWWThreads)
Identify new posts by color (yup, in WWWThreads)

*see a pattern here by chance?*

I'd go on, but I'm tired of typing. :-)


Danbo
http://danbo.com
http://danbo.com/forums/wwwthreads.pl

Joined: Aug 2000
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AnyBoard has one thing that WWWThreads have... developers with a sick sense of humor. In order for you to take advantage of all of the features in AnyBoard (which still is less that what you get with WWWThreads Pro) you must pay well over $3,000 for the product!! And even then you're STILL limited to being able to only create up to 200 boards/forums. I don't know what they were smoking, but who would pay that much? For that much money, you'd definately be moving away from Perl and moving toward more serious applications.

Feature wise, they have a great product, but whoever decided on their pricing structure was definately thinking very highly of their own code.

Regards,

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I use Anyboard Gold v7.2.x at http://www.maui.hi.us/windsurfing/ and have been quite happy with it with the exception of certain apsects of the software's design. Right now my biggest complaint is that it suffers from creeping featurism to the extent that it attempts to be all things to all people. They've recently added polling and chat capabilities on top of the main forurm package and I think it's just becomming too much. On one hand, I can see how integrating those features with the forums would be advantageous - for instance, user registrations and authentication would be tightly coupled. However, my complaint is that they simply can't design all three products and make them all great. One or more of them will wind up lacking some key feature that you could otherwise find in any number of other excellent CGI applications out there. I've looked at Anyboard's polling and chat features and frankly, they suck. I'd rather choose another package when I'm ready to add those features to my website.

Also, I chose Anyboard for it's forum conferencing features after I found what I thought was the best forum software out there. I'm a little dismayed that since I plunked down $500 for the gold version (which BTW only allows you to host 20 forums from one domain), the developer is spending his time and effort on chat and polling feautures when he should be concentrating his efforts on the forum software WHICH IS WHAT I PAID FOR!.

I know many people are thrilled to know they have chat and polling features in Anyboard all of a sudden but I'm not. I'd rather they fix some of the outstanding problems that I and others have been asking them to fix for some time now. Generally speaking they are quick to fix bugs. A new version get's emailed to me every month or two with bug fixes and new features and that's nice. It's just that I've had a hard time convincing them to add certain features that I think are critical.

Having flamed Anyboard, here are some good points that I like about the software...

It does a very nice job seperating user data from presentation and gives the admin a zillion ways to tune it's behavior. Specifically, the ability to change the graphic appearance of the various displays is very good. So far, after looking at the free version of WWWThreads, I think Anyboard does it better. I've seen several requests in these forums from customers who have asked for the ability to move the display tags from the program code and provide them as variables that would allow the admin to customize the look of the forum displays differently. That was back in Septermber I think (in the feaure request forum). I wonder, have those requests fallen on deaf ears? That's one of the reasons why I'm still hesitant to switch to WWWThreads.

Because of the way it assembles and stores user posts as complete seperate Javascript + HTML files, you can make use of server side includes (such as banner rotations in the header and footer sections) and these will get parsed by the server when the forum messages are displayed.


What I like about WWWThreads....

I think the default interface is a somwhat easier for users to navigate around on. It's not without it's share of problems though (many of them have been mentioned on these forums). I just hope they are being addressed and addressed fast. To ignore request to improve usability for users would be a big mistake.

The user registration mechanism is a lot more straightforward and more condusive to building on line communities of registered users. Some Anyboard users have been asking them to improve their user registration database. I'm not sure where those requests stand but they have a lot of catching up to do to get to where WWWThreads is already in that department.

Obviously, supporting mutliple relational database platforms as a back end for storing user data is the terrific way to go. Bravo for this.

In threaded mode, WWWThreads displays the full thread under each message so users can't get lost. Anyboard only displays the immediate followups that a message has and hides the others in the thread. That sometimes causes users to get lost in the middle of a thread. To address the issue, the message display provides a link that when clicked, brings up a seperate page that displays the full thread along with an indicator showing where the user happens to be in the thread. The problem that causes is obvious. It means more clicks for the user which is bad, bad, bad. Worse yet, the Anyboard developer is resistant to display the full thread under each message because of the exponential increase in bytes it takes to recreate the threaded link display. No matter that any decent Pentium with enough memory wouldn't even hiccup displaying the busiest threads, the developer nevertheless has a some sort of mental block against adding any feature that might cause his beloved code to be anything less than textbook efficient. Despite the fact that it would be a HUGE benefit for Anyboard users. He's a smart guy but I get the feeling he hasn't made the distinction between his customers and the people who actually use his software (i.e. his customer's customers). Right now he's more interested in catering to the needs of his customers (admins and power users) and not "our" customers who are often less than technical and don't understand message threads from spagetti.

So, I'm still searching for ideal user interface in a forum package. One that provides a rich set of customizable features but even more importantly, one that's simple to use for non power users. WWWThreads comes close. I'd like to wait until 5.0 comes out before I consider registering a copy to see which suggestions made throughout these forums their way into the new version.


Joined: Aug 2000
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Well, another thing about Anyboard...

I looked at a lot of their different feature boards and they all had one thing in common...

The interface is just plain ugly.

Webmaster: @websites http://www.atwebsites.com

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