[CentOS-devel] CentOS Forums again

[Fabian Arrotin]

Tim Verhoeven wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> Having some time to do stuff for CentOS here at LinuxTag I've also
> being building FreeIPA packages for CentOS. The idea that this will be
> core part of a central authentication system. Meaning that you will
> only need 1 account that you can use to login into the website, forum,
> wiki, bugtracker, systems, ...
>
> IMHO the most important system that needs to be attached to the
> central auth database are the forums. There are a lot of users there
> (and a lot of content). So I was thinking, why not fix 2 things at the
> same time. Migrate from the old forum to the new forum that is linked
> to the central auth system. And then later on couple the other
> existing apps to it.
>
> My feeling is that the most productive way to get forward with the
> website/forum update is to split the forum from the website. In my
> experience the forum present in CMS tools aren't made for the amount
> of traffic we are having. So something dedicated sound like a better
> option. So I have been looking around for open source forum software
> that link to ldap without to much effort. I've looked at 3 projects
> (Phorum, phpBB and SMF). They all 3 are good looking, well featured
> and maintained. Though, only phpBB has a decent built-in LDAP
> integration (FreeIPA is built on top of LDAP).
>
> So my proposal is to setup a FreeIPA instance, link it with phpBB and
> try to migrate a part of the current forums and see how all that
> works. And if it looks good migrate to that.
>
> So what do people think, did I miss stuff, other suggestions, ...
>
> Regards,
> Tim
>
>   
is phpBB the only alternative ? i remember we've already discussed about 
phpBB and it seems not a lot of people were phpBB 'lovers' ... due also 
to the fact that because it's the most known forum, it's more than the 
others subject to php attacks ...
When there was a request to host a forum for the centos french community 
, a decision was taken to use punBB (now call fluxBB - 
http://www.fluxbb.org) and put a portal on top (5 minutes install) .. i 
don't know punBB more than than (i've just installed it once for 
fr.centos.org) but Guillaume (he's in CC) did the hooks on the punBB 
setup ...
Guillaume : do you know if the next release (1.3 iirc) will handle 
external authentication mechanisms, like ldap ?

On the other hand, having a SSO solution will be easier for everybody, 
including giving rights faster to people in the wiki for example. But on 
the other hand, it will reduce the number of people able/allowed to do 
modifications (see the RPMRepo story using ldap for the wiki ...)

-- 
- 
Fabian Arrotin <fabian.arrotin at arrfab.net>
"Internet network currently down, TCP/IP packets delivered now by UPS/Fedex ..."