Phorum - PHP Community Conference
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The document discusses the evolution and significance of Phorum, the first PHP/MySQL message board, highlighting its origins, open-source transition, and development milestones. Key points include its performance focus, divergence from mainstream trends, and the need for a revolutionary change in message board functionalities. The current status of Phorum 5.2, ongoing developments for 5.3, and the future outlook for message boards is also outlined.
Phorum - PHP Community Conference
- 1. Phorum The first PHP/MySQL message board Brian Moon Senior Web Engineer - dealnews.com http://brian.moonspot.net/ @brianlmoon Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 2. Why am I on stage? • I wrote PHP/FI code • I wrote for msql (not mysql) • I wrote Perl CGI scripts • Wrote mysql_fetch_assoc() • Wrote a core PHP function that has been deprecated (bottom line? I am an old man in PHP years!) Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 3. Rasmus Lerdorf “PHP began life as a simple little CGI wrapper written in Perl. I wrote it in an afternoon during a period between contracts when I needed a quick tool to get an idea of who was reading my online resume. It was never intended to go beyond my own private use. The web server where I had my resume was extremely overloaded and had constant problems forking processes. I rewrote the Perl wrapper in C to get rid of the considerable overhead of having to fork Perl each time my resume was accessed.” http://www.php.net/manual/phpfi2.php#history Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 4. 1998 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 5. Message Boards Sucked Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 6. Community http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/127987110 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 7. New Hotness Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 8. Evolution • Store messages in MySQL • Support Paging • Search Messages • Use a block layout http://www.flickr.com/photos/brentdanley/2205021283 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 9. Accidental Open Source • Offered to the PHP General list • Help me debug and you can have the source • 10 bug reports in the first day, rolled to deal-mac.com in 3 days. http://www.flickr.com/photos/rrenomeron/85825614/ Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 10. Open Source • Started with no license • Switched to GPL in 1998 sometime • During 1999 Apachecon, heard a talk on GPL vs. Apache license. Changed to the Apache license in Vs. the hotel room that night • Phorum License is a BSD license Ben Ramsey today http://www.flickr.com/photos/maistora/5017939764 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeschinkel/424276070 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 11. Open Source • 50+ contributors over the years • Many are still friends even though they are not active on Phorum • 3 core developers over the last 5 or Vs. so years • Power users more prevalent in our support forums now Ben Ramsey http://www.flickr.com/photos/maistora/5017939764 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeschinkel/424276070 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 12. Failures • Evolutionary, not revolutionary • v1 lacked moderation, web based configuration, user accounts, more • Tailored for deal-mac largely in the early years Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 13. Successes • Performance was always a top priority • Code sanity • Utilized the database well • Hook and Module system • Real threading of messages http://www.flickr.com/photos/alltheaces/4158804332 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 14. Diverging from mainstream • Shunned OOP in PHP4 for Phorum 5 • Wrote our own template system. Smarty was only months old at the time + it was OOP • Wrote our own database layer. Never seen a good one, including PDO • Uses a “no framework” framework http://moonspot.net/rasmus-php-mvc http://www.flickr.com/photos/conorkeller/4455479137 Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 15. Market Share Quality over quantity * Hired creator of another product and switched to that and is now on phpBB "powered by phorum" returns 5+ million results on google "powered by phpbb" returns 32+ million results on google Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 16. Status • Phorum 5.2 is the current release. It is in maintenance status. • Major work being done in Maurice Makaay Phorum 5.3 to make the application more developer friendly. • Phorum 6? Thomas Seifert Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 17. Future of message boards • Needs another revolution • Last revolution was UBB, everything else has just evolved their model • Focus on less categorization and more about getting people what http://www.flickr.com/photos/arfried/186159147 they want to see • Do it as distributed software, not as a service Saturday, April 23, 2011
- 18. Phorum The first PHP/MySQL message board Brian Moon Senior Web Engineer - dealnews.com http://brian.moonspot.net/ @brianlmoon Saturday, April 23, 2011