Misago - Python and Django Forum

[Alex.]

Plus if he continues and Misago becomes feature rich, it'll be a competitor product. The more competition there is, the better it is for the consumer.

 

[rafalp]

Today I've launched redesigned threads list on project forums. With redesign I hope to offer better support for long thread names, simpler markup and faster access to information:

http://misago-project.org/forum/feedback-and-suggestions-9/

This is rebel approach to threads list, considered how different it is from approach used by other softwares, so I would love to hear what everybody thinks about them.

 

[Casmic]

Today I've launched redesigned threads list on project forums. With redesign I hope to offer better support for long thread names, simpler markup and faster access to information:

http://misago-project.org/forum/feedback-and-suggestions-9/

This is rebel approach to threads list, considered how different it is from approach used by other softwares, so I would love to hear what everybody thinks about them.

Good stuff.

 

[meetdilip]

When do you think final project will be out ? Going by this rate ?

 

[rafalp]

I'm using incrementing approach to development, so there will never be "final product", however I hope for 0.6 to be first release that will be "feature complete", or if you wish, implement everything expected from forum software.

I admit that development pace is not as fast as I was hoping for, ergo to start working on stabilising 0.6 late summer, but thats reality for you.

As it is now I have no income sources spending my time working on startup with friend and occasionally doing small sidejobs to earn small money that then gets spent in matter of week or two on necessary things.

While my friends are helping me out tie ends together and stay afloat, interest Misago attracted didn't really turn into donations. I didn't expect project to buy me anything, but as it is now I'm wondering how I can get money to pay hosting fees to keep project site running. So if anybody has spare buck and feels generous, I'll be more than grateful for paying project site a visit, hitting that orange "donate" button and sending me few bucks. Thanks!

 

[aomtealfox]

I'm using incrementing approach to development, so there will never be "final product", however I hope for 0.6 to be first release that will be "feature complete", or if you wish, implement everything expected from forum software.

I admit that development pace is not as fast as I was hoping for, ergo to start working on stabilising 0.6 late summer, but thats reality for you.

As it is now I have no income sources spending my time working on startup with friend and occasionally doing small sidejobs to earn small money that then gets spent in matter of week or two on necessary things.

While my friends are helping me out tie ends together and stay afloat, interest Misago attracted didn't really turn into donations. I didn't expect project to buy me anything, but as it is now I'm wondering how I can get money to pay hosting fees to keep project site running. So if anybody has spare buck and feels generous, I'll be more than grateful for paying project site a visit, hitting that orange "donate" button and sending me few bucks. Thanks!

Hey there,

It wasn't very clear to me that you needed donations to accelerate your process so I would recommend making that much clearer on Misago's website. Small donations are always easy to provide but I always want to know what the budget needed is, timeframes, and what donors can expect.

I do think your solution has the potential to become one of the big boys, but to achieve that I'd think you need a couple of people to give you moral and logistical support. It is certainly the first solution I see that really marries beauty in simplicity and a nicely packed web2.0 features list.

Keep up the great work, I think you have more fans than you might be aware of!

 

[rafalp]

Misago is not one man project. L0ud may not look like actual dev (he commits rarely and limits himself in that to translation files), he does awesome job testing Misago, discovering gotchas, bugs and potential issues as well as offering honest feedback and opinion on different parts of software as well as planned features and implementation details.

 

[meetdilip]

Nice. My intention was never to question the pace of development. I mention it to get a rough idea of expected date.

 

[Casmic]

What about kickstarter, or its alternatives?

Here are a few comments:

- Looking at the thread list again, I think you need one more thing to add a bit more interest to it, while maintaining the simplicity. Maybe a few small icons on the right side, or even a five-start rating bit.

- I like the "John Doe closed this thread at 5:00 pm" bit, but you should collapse multiple occurences of these into the latest action. For example, take a look at this thread. http://misago-project.org/thread/please-dont-use-this-forum-for-feature-requests-30/ If that were a dispute between moderators, the website may prefer that that not be visible.

- Trash the registration system and go for openID.

- What password hashing methodology do you use?

- That CAPTCHA is not sufficient for the long term.

- What do multiple subforums look like? While your view forum display has a lot of room for long titles, that can't be said for the forum display, particularly with sub forums.

- "Latest Replies" doesn't contain the name of who posted the reply, making it more a topic list than a reply list. That's fine, but the name seems misleading. The links also go to the first page of the topic. Maybe "Latest Discussion?" Also, you may want to apply an activity based algorithm to this so that larger forums can keep trashy topics off of this list.

- Is "Forum Rules" hardcoded, or a custom page?

- What algorithm does "Popular threads" use?

- It would be nice to use autocomplete on the search box's person selector. The jQuery UI component does this well.

- Instead of pages, use auto-loaded when you scroll down.

 

[GTB]

Do you not think the font-size used for forum titles is a little on large side, should maybe be made a smaller, possibly bolded when made smaller? As that font-size used doesn't leave much room for using long forum name titles before over-lapping onto a new line

 

[Casmic]

Do you not think the font-size used for forum titles is a little on large side, should maybe be made a smaller, possibly bolded when made smaller? As that font-size used doesn't leave much room for using long forum name titles before over-lapping onto a new line

That's an interesting point. I think it should go a bit smaller, no bolder, but only a little bit smaller.

Also, I suggest that the software be licensed using something a bit less restrictive. GPL is really a radical license which is pushing an agenda. If you really care about freedom, as in actual freedom, then you should use something simple like BSD, MIT, or at the very least LGPL.

 

[rafalp]

In reverse order, because thats how multiquote here works

Also, I suggest that the software be licensed using something a bit less restrictive. GPL is really a radical license which is pushing an agenda. If you really care about freedom, as in actual freedom, then you should use something simple like BSD, MIT, or at the very least LGPL.

Unless somebody presents me with good reason for not using GPLv3, this matter is off table. I understand GPL is virulent license with agenda and I very much like it for that. Keeps Misago enviroment OS and leaves gate open for double licensing model in case I'll decide I actually want to try to profit from it.

That's an interesting point. I think it should go a bit smaller, no bolder, but only a little bit smaller.

Do you not think the font-size used for forum titles is a little on large side, should maybe be made a smaller, possibly bolded when made smaller? As that font-size used doesn't leave much room for using long forum name titles before over-lapping onto a new line

I actually like it that way, forces forum admins to keep forum names compact and obvious.

- Looking at the thread list again, I think you need one more thing to add a bit more interest to it, while maintaining the simplicity. Maybe a few small icons on the right side, or even a five-start rating bit.

Depressingly large whitespace on righthand is one of downsides on threads list I admit to and thinking about getting rid of. I've received some interesting ideas on this I'm considering, but will take time before I find time to roll them in and actually try them out.

- I like the "John Doe closed this thread at 5:00 pm" bit, but you should collapse multiple occurences of these into the latest action. For example, take a look at this thread. http://misago-project.org/thread/please-dont-use-this-forum-for-feature-requests-30/ If that were a dispute between moderators, the website may prefer that that not be visible.

Good suggestion but case you are bringing in can be solved by moderators deleting/hiding (that's controlled by ACL) outdated checkpoints.

- Trash the registration system and go for openID.

I dislike dependency on 3rd party services. OpenID/FB/Twitter may come in future as extra auth providers, but in-house registration will still remain.

- What password hashing methodology do you use?

Django periodically automatically updates password hashing algorithm accordingly to security advisories publicated. Currently it is PBKDF2.

- That CAPTCHA is not sufficient for the long term.

In my experience it works great until somebody actually takes effort to attack your form specifically. There's always reCaptcha as alternative however.

- What do multiple subforums look like? While your view forum display has a lot of room for long titles, that can't be said for the forum display, particularly with sub forums.

You get dropdown just like in xenForo. Also long forum names are actually cut to force you into finding shorter one and using forum description and category for extra context.

- "Latest Replies" doesn't contain the name of who posted the reply, making it more a topic list than a reply list. That's fine, but the name seems misleading. The links also go to the first page of the topic. Maybe "Latest Discussion?" Also, you may want to apply an activity based algorithm to this so that larger forums can keep trashy topics off of this list.

Hey, are we discussing semanticks here? As for keeping trash off the list, you can use in popular threads instead, this list is exclusively for promoting discussion on not so active forums.

- Is "Forum Rules" hardcoded, or a custom page?

Misago allows you to define exactly one extra page dedicated to forum rules. I wont be adding "static pages" feature to the core because I belive its outside project scope and opens path to more "hey, add more CMS features!" requests.

- What algorithm does "Popular threads" use?

As it is now, its simple thread scoring where each thread gets X starting points, every reply counts as another Y points vote and every night there's inflation that lowers threads scores by Z%. Values are configurable.

- It would be nice to use autocomplete on the search box's person selector. The jQuery UI component does this well.

On roadmap once MVP is there. (0.6)

- Instead of pages, use auto-loaded when you scroll down.

I find autoloading anything else but activity streams and variations bad UX. Some stuff works best paged, like threads lists or posts list, while others are cool autoladed (search results, last XYZ posts/threads).

Thanks for opinions!

 

[Casmic]

I get this error when following the installation instructions:

vagrant@precise32:/vagrant$ sudo python manage.py runserver 192.168.33.10:80
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "manage.py", line 8, in <module>
from django.core.management import execute_from_command_line
ImportError: No module named django.core.management

I followed all of the previous commands, including setting up vagrant.

 

[rafalp]

I'm guessing Kasper (Vagrant chapter author) assumed installing dependencies is self explanatory (it is for pythonists).

Before running manage.py, get pip, which is python utility for installing dependencies:

$ curl -O https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py
$ sudo python get-pip.py

Then cd yourself to directory with requirements.txt and run this:

$ sudo pip install -r requirements.txt

That will install Misago dependencies and let you run it.

 

[Casmic]

vagrant@precise32:/vagrant$ sudo python get-pip.py
An error occurred while trying to run get-pip.py. Make sure you have setuptools or distribute installed.

 

[rafalp]

Then one more command to install setup tools:

$ python ez_setup.py

 

[Casmic]

Where's that script?

 

[rafalp]

Under your python path, so you dont have to care where it is

 

[Casmic]

vagrant@precise32:~$ python ez_setup.py
python: can't open file 'ez_setup.py': [Errno 2] No such file or directory
vagrant@precise32:~$

 

[rafalp]

Allright:

wget https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/raw/bootstrap/ez_setup.py -O - | python

(May this discussion be split to "How to set up python enviroment" thread, please? )