Drupal's Advanced Forum

I think I've about had it.

I can plow through SMF with relative ease, but there's no reason the menu bar should be defined in Sources. Javascript should not be defined in Sources. The post template should not be defined in Sources. BBCode should not be defined in Sources. These things simply do not belong in Sources. They belong in configuration. The topic and board read notification tables duplicate effort, taking up twice the amount of space they should be.

MyBB's schema is even more primitive than SMF's, which I suppose ought not to be too surprising but it is still frustrating not to be able to properly optimize it. Above and beyond the control scheme. And even though it actually grants a clear separation between logic and display for theming, it is still absolutely ridiculous.

WordPress and BBPress, above and beyond their close relationship to Swiss cheese, are about as quick as a heavily salted snail on a summer day. Their insistence on holding my hand is no less frustrating.

PunBB is only fast if you don't do anything to it. It loads features in their entirety, and speed degrades rapidly as you add modules. Bring it up to the level of SMF/MyBB/phpBB, and you get their speed along with it - or worse. At least its feature set can beat BBPress.

phpBB's idea of user moderation is a joke, and is by far the slowest of the full featured forums, though it beats BBPress. That only reflects on how horrible BBPress is, however. As with MyBB and SMF, it has a theme system that cannot comprehend the idea of a block.

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So lately I've been toying with - and hinting at - Drupal's advanced forum by Michelle. Combined with the other options that Drupal offers, this route is looking more tempting by the day.

1) The ability to store the post edit history of all posts. No more worries about members blanking posts in a fit of rage. You can edit, we can see what you did.
2) Drupal is a full-featured CMS. In this regard, it competes not with SMF or phpBB, but rather Joomla, Wordpress, Community Server and vB's new CMS software. It runs circles around them all in terms of speed.
3) Branding free with one click.
4) Drupal's theme system is a step towards 'how to do it right'. It's difficult, yes, but it handles things based on a block system, meaning switching themes does not break features.
5) A comprehensive hook scheme for modules. Drupal is -all- modules, and exceedingly powerful in this regard.
6) Multi-site control. I can have a single code base running dozens of sites. An update only needs to be applied once per server.
7) ...and oh so much more. People have made Digg clones in Drupal. The Onion runs Drupal.

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Ultimately, though, what matters when making a community - converting especially - is what does it lack?

BBPress The only thing Drupal doesn't have a module for is the full synchronization option between BBPress and WordPress. I can probably make that a moot point through Views, however, especially as Advanced Forum is integrating much of them. Drupal also doesn't have the install-from-web features of WordPress for themes, updates, and mods - though it does regularly check for updates.

PunBB Again, Drupal does not have the install from web. Um. That's about it, really.

phpBB Drupal does not have a good module for IP tracking. phpBB still sucks, though, and I'm far more willing to through my programming lot in with Drupal anyway. Drupal's default ACL is pretty lacking.

MyBB As with phpBB, though MyBB's superior user tracking makes outright overshadowing a bit harder.

SMF Forum permission profiles are a concept currently unique to SMF, as is the autodetection of duplicate accounts. SMF also has a number of well-done modifications that have rather poor equivalents in Drupal (Sphinx, Stop Spammer, Aeva, etc).

I think I've learned all I reasonably can from these five, honestly. I know SMF the best, so I'm happy to stick with that for Elliquiy, but overall, I suspect the near future is going to see me running a boatload of Drupal sites.

 

Hey Vekseid,

I just came across your post here. Wish I had earlier. It's quite insightful and thus being a few months later, any updates to comment on, elaborate here?

Thanks in advance!

 

Actually, this isn't too bad!

I think I'll go play a little to see what it's like behind the scenes.

 

Nanowrimo's forums are also Drupal.

Drupal was designed by highly technical programmers first and designers second. It primarily functions as a blog, so the first thing that comes to mind is as an alternative to Wordpress or Joomla, rather than phpBB/vB/SMF. Its feature set does not compete with them - don't expect it to.

So naturally, the first incarnations of it were ugly. Very ugly. And hard to use. Drupal 5's innovation was an install script and a theme that didn't make eyes bleed.

Because everything is a module, basic features like private messaging are also modules, and integrating them can be a bit annoying as you file bugs with modules, rather than the software itself most of the time. This can be annoying if the module loses support.

After the release of Drupal 6 (the current release version) , there was a major usability study, which will hopefully be taken into account for Drupal 7. Which is important, because much of the help you get from Drupal is written in a language that looks identical to English but, to many people, is in fact not English.