@Mikes Good to know you are having fun and seem fully on board :)

@mikes Thank you for the kind words.

I'm curious, though, what you mean with "social construct" in the title ... ?

@fplanque wrote earlier:

@mikes Thank you for the kind words.

I'm curious, though, what you mean with "social construct" in the title ... ?

I was reading through an Evolutionary debate and someone said, "Evolution is a Social Construct". I got laughing so hard I had to say it to :-)

ok ;)

@mikes wrote earlier:

I found B2Evolution after Wordpress was getting ready to do another update and blow up my website up yet again.

I installed b2evolution and working out the bugs (Proper PHP, site screw up, etc), I checked it out.

Quite the funky backend until you figure out how they do things, then it all makes sense.

I hear you on the WP updates thing. I cringe every time I hit that update button. I did figure out to update the plugins/themes before wp itself which seems to help. Needing upwards of 30 plugins, all by different devs, to make a site that will do some things. Scary. There's a reason everyone's looking for a bridge or integration between wp and other scripts. I think the most requested bridge/integration is for WP and various forum scripts. There's still a gap that needs to be filled. Forum scripts have a lot of features that are necessary for moderation, banning etc but none have a good system for Pages/posts. Forum plugins for wp don't have any of the moderation type features. There's a few all-in-one systems but most are either buggy or archaic or meant for developers. b2evo seems to be the happy medium.

I hear you on the b2evo back office navigation too and just made a Doc suggestion for a quick video on how to get around. I had actually given up on b2evo early last year because of it. Didn't realize how the stacked menus affect each other - or not. The back office navigation scheme works well once you understand it but it probably drives some people away right off the bat.

@poorboy2 Thanks for the feedback on the menus. We have to make a video indeed. It's just so unrewarding as the menus change a little bit with every new version :p

I had actually given up on b2evo early last year because of it.

Did you change your mind then? (What made you persist?)

Thanks.

I don't think you would have to do another video for minor changes and everyone's set up will have some different menu items anyway. Just something to show the concept. I understand your feelings as I've been blue collar most of my life and there's always some nasty part of the job that's no fun at all. In fact, it's usually the bulk of the job and then as one gets older, all of it.

I was looking for an open source CMS with a good forum so I went back through and looked at pretty much everything listed on Softaculous. Found some new one's and had another look at some older well known scripts as well. None of the CMS/forum scripts have all the user management features that a true forum has but the true forums lack a robust pages/posts system and some aren't good on small devices. Some of them have integration/bridge capabilities to pair with a CMS but they're all for outdated version of one script or the other or both.

None of the CMS/forum scripts have all the user management features that a true forum has

Interesting. What would be the main missing features?

A CMS forum seems like it's based off of the commenting system and not just with b2evo, Even with the Big Three, it's a glorified comments system. With forum scripts, you either get the same editor as you do when you create a new Topic/Thread or you get a basic text box but with a button to go 'advanced' aka a wysiwyg editor like tinymce.

Insert image from url.

I've always been torn on that. Hosting all images can turn into a lot of disk space but image hosting can come and go which leaves the site looking bad in the future. The feature to do so and the option in the backend to allow either or is common.

The inline images here is and it would be nicer if it could be done in a reply as well as new topic. That's probably not something one would want on a blog comments feature as you would tend to get spam/porn images.

Forumware tends to have a lot of User Management Features in place to help prevent spammers or trolls and keep out the drive-bys that the comments section a blog or news website would. It's a lot of work to get and keep long term members, especially the ones that are experts in their field or subject.

I'll have to look over a few installs I have and get back to you on the User Management Features stuff. It can be pretty expansive.

Part of user management is forum moderation so multiple user roles are needed for that of course and the forumware tends to have mutiple pre-made roles with permissions preset. Never a fun job but one person or a few persons could do it once or thrice so the script users only need to tweak.

Even the moderators climb the User Roll ladder.

Here's some images that show the features of a few systems. Two are bonafide forum scripts and the other is one of the 3 all-in-one CMS's.(b2evo/ocp/tiki)
3 is some sort of magic number. GM/Chrysler/Ford - WP/Drupal/Joomla and I've noticed it elsewhere. anyway
The systems below have a warning system. Technically, you could just send them a message but the warning system has logs that other moderators see, plus other mods will get a notification when someone is warned. Mods are all kept abreast of each other's modding by way of notification system and/or a central dashboard. Also, the warning system is accessible right from the forum front end, as is banning. With the warning systems, the user's privileges or user role can be reduced for a certain period of time. Sometimes this is called probation. Bans can also act the same. Once their time is up, the system automatically restores their privileges. One of the forum scripts has something called Misery that will give a user errors when using the forum, in hopes that they get tired of it and end up leaving. I presume it's so other users don't see people getting banned and think of the forum admin as overly mean.

@fplanque wrote earlier:

> None of the CMS/forum scripts have all the user management features that a true forum has

Interesting. What would be the main missing features?

Those are great if you want a fat, bloated website that hogs up resources.
Naturally, there are some things I don't like about B2Evolutions forums but it gets the job done. But thats my preference. Most people do NOT like to micro manage websites.
As a website increases in complexity, so doesn't the issues that arises.

@mikes
Empathise with trying to avoid bloat and the issues. I already find b2evo outstrips the resources of my brain, as that I only use 10% of either.
One bit of luck I have is my old VPS host. I have an old reseller account £79.99 / year, limited space unlimited accounts but max of php 5.4.41. So no upgrading to 6.10.6 for me so that will stop the bloat. :)

All the best to your indulgences.

I would think most of it would run from existing code. There's already permissions, notifications, workflows(Item Status) and the existing forum system. It might be better done as a plugin. (Advanced Forum Moderation)

That one feature, Misery, on Elkharte is probably a bit much/odd.