Re: [cobalt-developers] Peer review needed: Message board

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Matthew Nuzum wrote:

> Thanks for your reply Jeff.  I value most of your advise  ;-)

Thank you <blush>.

> I heartily agree, but... enabling on a per-site basis would be very
> difficult.  That means an admin panel written for the thing.  Because it
> would have to get into the httpd.conf to put the alias in on a per-site
> basis, that means the panel would have to be part of the cobalt admin panel.
> I don't know if I have the time to delve into that.

Can't you just do something extremely simple, like not create the
directory automatically.  Then the user can't go there <smile>.

Then a small independent gui could create the directory.

Or create the directory with another name, or give the files the wrong
permissions, and write a front-end to a small script to do the
renaming/chmoding.

> I did think of an alternate solution, but I don't think many people would
> like it, even if it is something that can be easily done.  When the pkg file
> is installed, a cron job could be scheduled to do maitenance.  It could be
> written to look for a "pending job" file in /home/bboard.  If the pending
> job file exists, it will do what's necessary, include creating bboards for
> people.

Why don't you think people would like it?

> The board is written in PHP, which means inittially it'll be a Raq4 item.
> Sorry.

I still don't think it's important or even a good idea to include PHP.

> Believe me when I say that if they want UBB, you don't have to worry about
> this little free-bee competing.  It's very simple.

Believe me, imho, UBB is the most overpriced piece of complex crap I've
ever seen.  I've been trying an upgrade for days now.  The upgrade
documentation says nice things like:

"The first upgrade step is to run the control panel and turn off the
board."

No mention anywhere in their documentation as to where the control panel
is and how to run it.  Their support forum gave me the wrong answer. 
Their tech support didn't respond to their email for three days.  I
finally called and said I'd have to talk to tech support NOW and get an
answer or my customer was going to refuse the product as unusable and
tell his credit card company to reverse the charge.  It took the tech
support person twenty minutes to find out where the control panel is.

Some of the free boards have better support than that.

> Maybe tomorrow, if not, then probably Wednesday.

It's Wednesday <smile>.  Let me know; I'd like to try it on a free forum
I want to set up on an underpowered RaQ4.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Linux and Cobalt/Sun/RaQ Consulting
nobaloney.net
P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA  92517
voice: (909) 778-9980  *  fax: (702) 548-9484