So, as the title says im creating a new piece of low end (i.e. not mainstream selling etc) forum software, primarily just for a uni wind band so there will only be about 20-30 people using/browsing regularly. However despite the small amount of users I always like to push my software forward with technology so was wondering what the current norm is for forums and stuff. Obviously stuff like javascript drop down boxes are very nice but what else is nice and hiney these days ? Is PHP still an OK thing to create a forum with ? Its mysql still number one for databases? Has XML been surpassed in its category ? Some of the things which may help you help me are... - Its a no registration forum by default, with no option for registration - thus anti-spam tech is nice. - Its a one page thread list and multi-page post list. There are not multiple forums. Im really looking for cutting edge ideas here, I want shiny dammit
The ability to embed media is always a good one, I don't know how far you have got with that if at all. Also maybe a rep system or something.
Well my old forum had rudimentary ability to embed stuff like youtube, but that was basically only because of the youtube functionality which i used with some premade tags. Embedding stuff off your server, interesting idea. A rep system is interesting but a hard idea to implement without registrations. Maybe if there was some sort of identification method the forum could work out for itself - interesting...
I'm personally not a fan of multi-page post lists. basically, what you're making is a mailing list, which are easy to come by and easy to reply to and so-on.
It's not anti-spam you need, it's anti-graffiti. "Guests can post" = swamped with crap. With freedom comes irresponsibility.
Non multi page post lists though can run sometimes into hundreds of posts and make one single post quite hard to find. It really is anti-spam, the problem im having atm with the current version of the forum is actual spam - people with odd names coming on and writing nonsense about viagara all over it - rather than people coming on and writing ****. I currently have some tech on there to discourage people from writing slander about other people (the only way you can get away with it is if you have never posted before).
