Forum Thoughts

Published 6 January 05 by Justin French, 10 comments

What exactly is forum software? If you take away all the avatars, signatures, file attachments, sticky topics, friends, PM’s and emoticons, what are you left with?

Just a series of ‘posts’ made to ‘categories’, which are replied to by others. Ring any bells? Yes folks, that sounds a lot like a weblog.

You could take virtually any weblog system on the market (like Textpattern, WordPress or MovableType) and make it look and feel like a minimalist forum very quickly:

1. tweak the user permissions to allow for a new ‘site member’ user level
2. allow users to register themselves, login, etc (normally this is hidden in the weblog control panels)
3. integrate a “create an article/post” interface into the public part of the website (for posting forum messages)
4. use the existing comments system for replies
5. massage the templates a little

Seriously, the ground work has already been done (users, categories, data structures, comments, plug-ins, filters, articles, templating, frameworks, security, etc etc), and there’s just a few small things needed before the average blog/CMS tool could have it’s own integrated (although minimalist) forums.

It’s certainly something to think about for TextThing down the road.

In the meantime, I’m experimenting with the Alpha’s of bbPress for The Girlfriend’s new website, and I’ll report back on how things are going soon!