Any PHP developers interested in this project?

georgec

Hi, I'm an experienced PHP developer, currently working on an exciting project, and would love some advice! Mail2Forum (www.mail2forum.com) is at present a MOD for phpBB, and provides an feature-packed interface between phpBB forums and email mailing lists (i.e. in essence forum posts are sent to the list and emails are imported into the forum). However, I am currently hard at work on a complete redesign for version 2.0, which brings me to Vanilla. Rather than the 1=1 relationship we have in version 1 between a phpBB forum and a mailing list, version 2 will be modular, allowing pluggable 'channels' to be configured in a many=many relationship. My focus at first will be to write channels for phpBB and email, but later I will also tackle things like RSS and other forum software such as Vanilla. The new version will allow a huge amount of functionality: imagine synchronised posts between different kinds of web-based forums; synchronised RSS feeds and mailing lists; importing archived emails into a forum - the possibilities are endless. Some of the combinations will duplicate functionality already available (such as converting posts from phpBB to Vanilla, or making an RSS feed out of a forum), but m2f's advantage will be its modular nature, its centralisation and its ease of configuration. What we need is someone to help out with some serious PHP work - to join the team for a great Open Source project. We're writing for PHP4 and PHP5, using OOP and Test Driven Development, with the help of libraries from PEAR, ADODB and Smarty. As well as responsibility for the Vanilla channel, we would really love some help with development of the core code for m2f. Now, is anyone interested enough in the project to want to discuss it with me? Please reply here (preferable) or contact me by email. Many thanks!

bugsmi0

I'm sorry, can you please repeat the question lol just kidding I don't have a clue what you said i'm a php illiterate and very dumbfounded but I'm sure someone here can help.

Toivo

"importing archived emails into a forum " nice one. how will you plan to implement this one?

tjlytle

I ran across Vanilla in the middle of evaluating the listservers I host. Anymore most lists are 'announcement' type, the discussion list has moved on to forums. When I found Vanilla and saw the clean interface, along with the ability to write extensions, my thought was to replace my discussion listserver with Vanilla and an e-mail extension. It's really a great pairing, from the e-mail list perspective all you have to do is write a decent PHP mail processing (sending and receiving) class - something I did when I wrote my listserver years ago. Vanilla then provides a great web interface with archives, and 'web posting' functions. From the forum perspective you have a way to transition e-mail list users to a forum, and one that's really quite straightforward. I've been tinkering around for a while, figuring out how everything works. I'm pretty convinced that integrating e-mail functionality into Vanilla wouldn't be that hard at all. My first thought is that it might be a little much to interface all of what you're talking about with Vanilla, when Vanilla offers a kind of modular base already - why not just use it as the core? Your documentation reads like it will duplicate data - if I post on vanilla is the data both stored in the vanilla database and the list database? A Vanilla core could keep all the data nicely in one place, and share it to the other channels. Do you plan on a design that separates the content storage from distribution and input? So the Vanilla module just connects to generic distribution and input classes, then simply does a kind of field mapping? I know some have been asking for a RSS input extension, this would cover that as well - am I right? I know my questions are a bit random - but can you give a bit more detail on how the modules will work together? I'd hate to be 'reinventing the wheel' to get the e-mail list/forum combination I'm looking for - I'd never heard of your project until I ran across this thread. It's a little tempting to forget coding it myself, knowing there's something out there already, but I think the table strewn layout of phpBB is enough to dissuade me. Depending on the structure of the project, I might be interested. Tell me more...