[Darth-Apple]

Over the past several years, it goes without saying that forums have generally declined as a form of online discussion as facebook, instagram, and other forms of online social discussion have become increasingly popular. The need for forums seems to be something that is left to support forums, etc... but as a community thing, is it still the modern trend? It appears to slowly be on the decline.

IP.Board is an example of forum software that attempts to stay ahead of the wheel. Many elements of social networking are packaged with IPB, but at heart IPB still is, and always will be, traditional forum software. Really, social networking and forums are two incompatible concepts that can't really be merged seamlessly. It's not that I don't like IPB. I love IPB, and it's one of my favorite solutions for forum software, but the concept itself still sticks towards traditional forum software.

It would without doubt be a massive project to take on, but I like taking on massive projects. My concept idea was basically to design forum software with a completely new philosophy altogether. Instead of revolving around boards and predefined structure, it would revolve around content feeds and a self-adjusting structure, and feeds would generated based on how content was tagged. In addition, while the administrator could define many feeds to be "default feeds" on the board index, users could create their own feeds and sort content by different tags, relevance to certain criteria, etc...  And feeds that were popular might show up on the portal homepage to be "liked" and rated by members.

Basically, the goal would be to revolutionize the concept to be less based on boards and a predefined structure, to be more fluid and content based. The ultimate concept is to design forum software that adjusts to the discussions being created and revolves around the content first and foremost.

Of course I have yet to write a single line of code for the project, but I think it might have some potential if it is coded well. Any thoughts?

[simlink]

If done right, it could be great. But you'd need a lot of options, as I've seen people attempt to do something like this with existing software and it didn't go too well. But, like mentioned, they used existing software not built for it. So t could definitely work well...

[Darth-Apple]

If I were to decide to code this, I would without doubt do it from scratch. I might use some frameworks, but I wouldn't be forking any existing projects or anything.

I think the hardest part would be doing it so well that people see the radically different concept as something worth getting used to. It will be different for sure.

[Acko]

It would be cool to see this being made. And possibly being piloted at makestation.

[simlink]

It'd certainly be cool to see, I like the concept. May not work for all communities, but I think it definitely has potential.

[Darth-Apple]

I think there have been some developers that have tried somewhat similar concepts regarding modern forum/online discussion software. I'll have to look into some of those too and see what other developers are doing.

[Acko]

well, seeing from the convo on Simmania Chat, I guess this is official. good luck with this, and I hope it goes well .

[Gmdykfuiygh66476]

I'm working on the website/development page right now.. I'll start a project journal when i actually begin coding.

[Acko]

Any chance that the file sharing software will be easily integrated too? I think it would be pretty useful for some webmasters.

[Gmdykfuiygh66476]

Me and blake discussed integration between FileCave and OpenBoard. We're both planning to work together on both projects, so FileCave will likely be integrated as an OpenBoard module.

[Acko]

Yeah, I thought it would only make sense, because they're made by the same team.

[Darth-Apple]

The filecave software is being designed so that only a few lines of code will need to be changed for basic integration with most software, so the plan is to integrate it.

[simlink]

Sounds interesting, look forward to seeing this develop.

[Darth-Apple]

Turns out the idea wouldn't be entirely original though. It turns out that vanilla (the forum software used at lowendtalk.com) already has a similar concept in implementation, although many people don't really care for vanilla.

[Acko]

Well, it's no surprise, the internet is large. And there are a lot of people with a lot of ideas. Anyways, what do you plan for beta testing? Will this site be used as a test?

[Darth-Apple]

I haven't started coding the project yet. As far as whether this site will be used as a test, that's doubtful. I may test my filecave software here, but when it comes to forum software, we're far better off sticking with SMF. It takes too long to code a complete forum software solution from scratch.

[Acko]

Yeah, it's unfortunately sounding more like a pipe dream.

[Darth-Apple]

I think it has a lot of potential if we have time to actually code it. I may take it on once my filecave software is done, but right now I think it's best to focus on one project.