[Beta] - Dove Forums - Download Release !!!

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Hello everyone,

Today I am releasing a very basic version of my forum software that I have being developing over the past few weeks.

Please keep in mind that this is my first project I have built in codeigniter.

Also if you find any bugs please let me know so that i can correct them, please give as much information as you can over any bugs.

Here is the link to the development environment :

Demo :
http://www.doveforums.com/demo/

Features for version 0.1 :

Forum
- Create New Threads
- Post Replys
- Inline Delete/Edit
- Pagination
- Category Sorting

Users
- Register
- Login/Logout
- Avatar's
- Signatures

Planned features for version 0.2

Forum
- Ajax Pagination.
- Ajax Inline Delete/Edit.
- Bookmarking of topics.
- Sticky topics.
- Module Seperation.

Users
- Edit profile information.
- Upload/Change Avatar.
- Edit Signature.

Admin
- Admin backend.
- Ajax Edit/Delete to save page reloads.

Moderation
- Moderator backend.
- Ajax Edit/Delete to save page reloads.

Modules
- Adition of module plugins.

Themes
- Ability to change theme on the fly.
- Full templating system.

For now I am slowly building on what I already have due to the fact I work full time and the only time I get to work on this is nights and weekends.

Download :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/doveforums/
http://github.com/ChrisBaines/Dove-Forums/downloads

Please feel free to sudjest new features that you think would benifit.

Let me know what you think and have fun.

Chris

[eluser]Vheissu[/eluser]
Pretty smooth man. Maybe post the code to Github or something so other people can take a look at your code and see what you've done under the hood and perhaps recommend better ways of doing things.

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Thank you for the comment, I have never used GitHub before but i will take your advice and create a account today and upload my code, I will then update the post and link to GitHub

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Ok i have uploaded the code to GitHub for people to explore ;

http://github.com/ChrisBaines/Dove-Forums

[eluser]Vheissu[/eluser]
Looking through your code you've done awesomely well for your first application using Codeigniter. I only got into Codeigniter a couple of months back myself and now couldn't live without it, I could never go back to generic PHP again (unless I had too).

Something you might find beneficial for your forum application is Modular Separation. Basically it's a modular library for Codeigniter that lets you break functionality up into more managable sections and chunks. I'm probably not that good at describing it, but check out the link to Bitbucket repo here: http://bitbucket.org/philsturgeon/codeig...separation - here is a Codeigniter wiki article about it: http://codeigniter.com/wiki/Modular_Separation/

I'm building an application for my work (a basic client management and signoff app) to help transition away from manual paper project and task signoff and have found that using Modular Separation really helped make the code more neater and more maintainable as well.

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Just had a look into this Modual Seperation and I think I will impliment that over the next day or two and obviously update GitHub at the same time.

I have had a good read and I like the idea and think it will help alot!

Thank you for the sudjestion, and thanks for the comments.

I know what you mean about going back to bare PHP ... it's a daunting thought as CodeIgniter really does make life so much easier.

There is going to be some big changes to the forum application as my design work is not that brillient, neither is my CSS so im going to delve into improving and building on this, also I will be adding in the JQuery functionality over the next few updates.

[eluser]Vheissu[/eluser]
Dove is looking like something I would use myself. PHPBB has become too bloated, same with most other free open source forum packages. You could potentially make this a fast and lightweight forum package with the features of PHPBB but half the size and with cleaner code.

Before you create your admin panel give this awesome article by Phil Sturgeon a read: http://philsturgeon.co.uk/news/2009/07/C...odeIgniter - it documents the different ways you can create an admin panel.

My personal favourite method is to create an admin folder inside of the controllers folder and have a controller for each task so the urls would be like this without routing:

admin/users/add
admin/tasks/new
admin/users/view/2

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
This is what I was aiming for with this project, the only thing i need to look into is integration.

My personal favorite forum out there is Vanilla, its fast, clean and does what it says on the tin, I based this project on that, but I have a few more ideas up my sleeve for this and a few features I would like to see. I have being doing some tweaking most of today to the code and looking back at some things I did at the start of the project ... basically looking for things to improve.

The css is what I am going to have a look at over the next few days and see what I can do there. Also when I run the application through the HTML Validation, it has come up with some 24 errors that I need to cure to bring it on board with being standards compliant.

As soon as these tweaks and bugs are cured I will be releasing for download. Just need to make a Installer for it first

Thank you for the link, I will be sure to check that out when work begins on the admin panel

Chris

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Update :

I have updated the code now and added module seperation into the forums, this should make it easier to maintain, however I have not had chance to break the code up yet and move each part into its own module, but this will come in a later update.

I have also made some minor code & css tweaks. These are still ongoing.

I am in the middle of adding a installer to the code, once this is complete it should be available for public release and download.

[eluser]Bainzy[/eluser]
Update New features & Bug fixes :-

New Features :

- Added gravatar support for avatars (Gravatar Avatars). ** New **
- Signature's added. ** New **
- Settings panel to change profile information. ** New **

Bug Fixes :

- Fixed 'Last Post By' link to show correct profile. ** Bug Fix **
- Topics now sorted by last reply. ** Bug Fix **
- Fixed some CSS problems. ** Bug Fix **

Updates :

- Updated Registration Page ** Update **
- Updated Login Page ** Update **
- Added Signatures ** Update **
- Added Settings Panel ** Update **
- Added avatar support via Gravatar



The software will soon be available for download as I am still going through the website adding features that I wanted to include in the first version to make it more usable.

Please tell me your thoughts on the new features.

Chris