MyBB Community Forums

OH MY! I didn't mean to cause a framework war! Sorry Folks that is NOT my intention. Just wanted to know if Yii was still being considered or not and Tomm M just answered that above.

I'm going to agree with Tomm M not because he is the dev but rather because of the points he has brought up.

A few months back I researched several frameworks. To be honest Yii wasn't my first choice. FuelPhp, symfony2 and Laravel really had my interest. Symfony ... well ... better than zend is all I'm gonna say Fuelphp and Laravel were just too young for me and that stopped me from pulling the trigger.

CI ... hmmm ... very difficult. Lots of good things going for it but to be honest, I just didn't see what they had lined up for at least php5.3.

I kept coming back to a similar answer, Yii. It's not as "hard" to learn as symphony or Zend and it is just advanced enough to sit above several other "easier" frameworks. Hard and Easy are very objective words

But, the above evaluation was for my own personal use.

Yii, does come off as being bloated, wordy and memory hungry but in reality, it's not really that bad and compares favorably to most other frameworks.

One thing I really have to say is that the Yii community is very active, helpful and there is just a huge amount of activity. I check in to the latest posts through out the day and night. And there is always something new! However, remember statistics is just that

As for the comments about frameworks not eating their own dog food!
Totally agree! Lol, that is probably one of my first posts at Yii!

But, you have to admit that you have 2 choices:
Focus on what your core is
OR
Spread yourself between various projects

Obvious choice for me. And this is why I'm posting here.

I tried to convince FluxxBB to go to an outside framework. Even offered to bring a small team in to help implement Yii. But I keep getting the strong feeling that NIH and most people's lack of understanding why an outside framework is good has basically stalled that conversation. Thus why I posted here, to put feelers out.

Yes, it is true that you are at the mercy of the outside framework team but so are all the iOS, Android, Windows, etc ... developers. Like Tomm M said, end uses really don't know or just don't care what is powering their stuff as long as it works and does the job.


I'm not sure when Yii 2 is coming but I'm going to say that you might as well as wait for Christmas at the same time.

Which leads me to the comment about if it is so good why redo it?
Nothing is that good that couldn't use some more love.
Yii 1.x.x is actually Yii 2.x.x in disguise. It started as Prado.

php has moved a long way from back when it was basically a few bash scripts and then later called php/fi.

Although, it sounds like I'm a Yii fanboy, I'm not trying to convince anybody why it should be used or not. There are way too many points that need to be considered!


Sorry if I ruffled any feathers

(2012-05-02, 01:48 AM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]Yii = IPB
CI = Expression Engine
Zend = PHPBB
kohana = Vanilla
Cake = No forum
Symfony = PHPBB
Prado = SMF

And I'm suppose to be convinced coding a forum is easier with a framework that none of them actually use themselves? To be really blunt...this fact angers me.

You forgot something:
WCF = WBB
Woltlab is using their own framework.

Anyway, just curious guys, did the development team of MyBB ever considered using Woltlabs Community Framework or is this a no-go because it's written by a competitive forum software team? From what I heard about it it's very easy to learn and to code for. Version 2.0 of the WCF is currently in development and will be released by end of this year: https://github.com/WoltLab/WCF

I'm fairly sure it's a no-go for WCF. It's written by a competing forum software vendor and we have no idea how long it'll be supported for or anything.

Quote:Yes, I do have an idea of when Yii 2.x will be available. Chris and I share the concern that Yii 1.x just simply hasn't advanced enough but from what I've read and discussed with the developer at Yii I feel confident that their designs are good. They know where they have gone wrong and are fixing it - including documentation I presume.

Curious if the discussion with Yii developers in the "gone wrong" topic was about their overly complex structure.

Quote: We need a framework that is built for PHP 5.3/4; it needs to be future-proof and while Symfony and CI are excellent frameworks they aren't optimised for what will be used when MyBB 2.x is eventually released in (for argument's sake) 2 years time.

Absolutely. That's a good idea to do such. And I would not be surprised if we were 3 years from a stable release....2 years maybe for a beta.

Quote:Whichever way you look at it any framework attempts to accomplish the same thing; features, performance, scalability, re-usable code.

I think you're right about that. And what's missing is simplicity of use and intuitiveness. CI so far seems one of the simpler to use frameworks. Unsure if that's a side effect of it's age or how they intended it. It just seems more intuitive.

I worry that all frameworks suffer a flaw at some level and wonder why MyBB doesn't go forward with code from scratch. Certainly enough libs exist within the open source community that not all elements have to be written from scratch. Borrow a piece here and there and you can build a sweet lime framework specific for forum software.

Quote:As for end users - it doesn't matter which framework we choose. Ultimately, plugin developers copy what the core app has done or what its API does and only adventure into the framework if you're that type of developer.

And that's where I do put my faith in the MyBB team. That no matter what framework they choose that extending MyBB will still be easy. However it would be nice to peek into the framework code and learn some of that kick lime OOP I been hearing about.

Quote:OH MY! I didn't mean to cause a framework war! Sorry Folks that is NOT my intention.

It's not a war. We're just discussing like civilized people do.

I think they're taking a wait and see approach to Yii 2.0 and in the meantime working on MyBB 1.8 which up till 2 months didn't even exist as part of the plan. So kudos to the team for recognizing the need for it and going forward. I really do personally have a ton of faith in the team.

Quote:As for the comments about frameworks not eating their own dog food!
Totally agree! Lol, that is probably one of my first posts at Yii!

But, you have to admit that you have 2 choices:
Focus on what your core is
OR
Spread yourself between various projects

I would think using your framework for you forums and then releasing the code would be the ultimate demo of it's power.

fyi...this is amazing:
http://www.audentio.com/community/forum/

(2012-05-02, 06:45 PM)euantor Wrote: [ -> ]I'm fairly sure it's a no-go for WCF. It's written by a competing forum software vendor and we have no idea how long it'll be supported for or anything.

I see. Well, but it's not like the WCF is a sole property of Woltlab. It's released under the LGPL license just like MyBB and the Yii Framework. Isn't the important thing the product what you get in the end? If Yii has its own forum software, would MyBB rule Yii out? Finally I'm pretty sure WCF will be supported for a long long time. The company exists since a decade and absolutely dominates the german forum software market.

Actually, vanilla has their own framework - garden.
Not that bad but didn't turn me on

@ license
Hmmm, major consideration! Lots of developers and companies are very keen on BSD. Yii is BSD. I like the gpl but will be doing most of new work under the BSD.

@ home grown framework
I'm a dinosaur regarding net time and have seen a lot and remeber the original phpBB developer. My current opinion is to shy away from independent solutions. Unless you go beyond what Vanilla has done. It seems like they're trying to compete with discus. Great but then that means their garden code is and will stay as a forum for the foreseeable future.

The reason why I'm in the Yii camp is that I see an end to independent scripts coming in the next few years. Well, in the desktop pc sense. This means that more sites will be expecting future expansion possibilities out of the box.

Having a plan that is agile is definitely something to consider.

I prefer BSD license as well but LGPL is decent. For a few months a lot of debate and discussion revolved around the MyBB license. I think since using LGPL it's been a non-issue for everyone.

Quote:I'm a dinosaur regarding net time and have seen a lot and remeber the original phpBB developer.

Yes but did you run a forum under WWW Threads? I'm so old school that I remember dialing into BBS systems with my 300 baud modem. Back when the telephone company actually charged you PER MINUTE. Beat that.

I worry that all frameworks suffer a flaw at some level and wonder why MyBB doesn't go forward with code from scratch. Certainly enough libs exist within the open source community that not all elements have to be written from scratch. Borrow a piece here and there and you can build a sweet ass framework specific for forum software. 

That's what I'm thinking. Why not just build a framework from scratch?

(2012-05-02, 10:04 PM)kdevs Wrote: [ -> ]

I worry that all frameworks suffer a flaw at some level and wonder why MyBB doesn't go forward with code from scratch. Certainly enough libs exist within the open source community that not all elements have to be written from scratch. Borrow a piece here and there and you can build a sweet ass framework specific for forum software. 

That's what I'm thinking. Why not just build a framework from scratch?

That's basically what the current system is like. The main idea behind using a pre-rolled framework is the fact that all it's components have been thoroughly tested by thousands of other users and it would improve development time of new features and releases.

Quote:As for end users - it doesn't matter which framework we choose. Ultimately, plugin developers copy what the core app has done or what its API does and only adventure into the framework if you're that type of developer. You can just as easily use your own code - the framework is just there to stop you reinventing the wheel and make your life easier.

The way I see it, MyBB will be using that crazy syntax, and therefore everyone else will need to read a dozen books to comprehend it. Okay, not a dozen... But the code should be where someone just understands syntax and MVC, and then instantly understands the code. Yii has confused the... Uh... Heck... Out of me.

You could always collaborate with Ellis on improving CodeIgniter. And performance-wise, if we are splitting hairs, then understanding code is worth it. I would wait another 200ms for a page if its code was comprehensible. Some of you might not, but to me, convenience oftentimes outweighs 1/5 of a second.

But you make a fair point about the mid-cycle change. That's something you'd need to ask EllisLabs about.