Does miniBB use gzcompress() and gzuncompress() to transparently compress/decompress large strings before storing them in a database.

What do you mean by "large strings"?

miniBB doesn't use no of such functions.

I actually just read this article, #8 is about gzcompression and was thinking about my forum and how a lot of posts are tutorial like and large. I also noticed you can set a limit on the length of a post too with miniBB. I also got the idea for validating emails from this article. These questions probably make no sense.

http://blog.rightbrainnetworks.com/2006/09/18/10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-php/

I've read this...

PHP is simultaneously the most infuriating and joyful languages I've ever worked with. I say "infuriating" primarily because the function names are so inconsistant.

...and what could I say. The person who writes this looks suspicious in giving the advices.

For me personally PHP is the MOST comfortable and understood coding language. I still haven't found the server side task which could not be implemented in PHP with the minimum effort. All functions are very well documented, and if the author can't remember which function means what, he could browse the manual and find the answer in seconds.

As about the article itself... well, there are few meaningful points and there are few doubtful. I think visitors already commented them all so I won't repeat here.

About gzcompression - it doesn't make sense for miniBB. First of all, we're using TEXT type fields for storing the messages, not BLOB fields like the author uses. TEXT type is limited in size to 64 Kbytes and most often forum messages do not overlimit even 2-3 Kb. Second, this field is used in the internal search algorithm, and gz'compressed fields can not be searched by regular text. The author writes about it too, "The only exception is when I need full text indexing capabilities."

About validating the emails - as I already wrote in the linked thread, it's not a way to validate the emails in full, so it's not even useful to use such approach. As you may read the author refers to this method as to "Partially validating email addresses."

The only interesting thing I discovered is that author suggests "to store IP addresses as integers instead of strings in a database". This was a known issue for us when we started miniBB, however until these days the IP is stored as character field. Most probably it would be more efficient to implement this issue in the future...

Thanks for the information.

I figured it might be useless but I thought I would ask. I love the forum and am always thinking of new features and ways to do things.

I love the forum and am always thinking of new features and ways to do things.

"If it ain't broken, don't change it" ;-).

tom322

- I agree ;-)

Anonymous

- Well, what do you actually need to think about if the software generically works - how to get more profits from the visitors, not improving "the new features" ;-)

Thats what you need to think about because your the one who will see the profits. The average user needs to think of how to make the forum faster, safer, smaller etc and pass it along to you to implement. The more features, faster, safer, smaller etc your forum becomes the more profit you will see and in return the user gets a better forum. Open source development :)

The average user needs to think of how to make the forum faster, safer, smaller etc and pass it along to you to implement.

Trying to achieve "faster, safer, smaller" by adding additional (and sometimes useless) features is like trying to lose weight by eating more hamburgers ;).

The more features, faster, safer, smaller etc your forum becomes the more profit you will see and in return the user gets a better forum.

When I look at a forum script, most of all I want it to be bug-free=safe (and fast, of course). I won't be interested in a forum just because it has cool range of avatars or "who's reading this thread" feature; just the opposite, I start to wonder how much more used resources versus how much more usability such new features would bring.

You mentioned the gzcompress function. Now if I think about it... I realize the idea of this function started after some lousy programmer wrote a software using a non-efficient code. After a while he concluded it worked too slow so it would be good to make it faster, somehow. That's how this function became popular ;). If he didn't unnecessarily use inefficient code in the first place, no additional complex-code-tweaking would be needed :).

I won't be interested in a forum just because it has cool range of avatars or "who's reading this thread" feature

But a lot of users are and will join a forum if it has these features. The trick is to have all the features possible, add-on or not and still keep the miniBB feel of safety, speed and space.

The trick is to have all the features possible

- I think the trick is to know what your forum needs first. By profits I don't mean the popularity amongst open source market. Open source will not bring the money if it doesn't come from the customers who use the software. And if you use the software just for fun, for your own hobby for example or in small group of people of the common interest, but it doesn't give you away any cent, thus you are wanting more and more features - why developers should be interested in it? What it will give them?

I'm just trying to say that a lot of people looking for a forum to use choose because of the features that package provides.

By profits I don't mean the popularity amongst open source market. Open source will not bring the money if it doesn't come from the customers who use the software.

If you get "popularity amongst open source market" then you get "customers who use the software" then you get "bring the money"

If you get "popularity amongst open source market" then you get "customers who use the software" then you get "bring the money"

I would not like to gain such popularity :-) When I look at other open source products, it seems their authors are implementing each s8it which comes to somebody's mind, and which is probably not useful for the others. As the result most of the software is overwritten again and again. The bugs story never ends.

Currently, miniBB offers almost everything the basic forum might have. There are a couple of add-ons left which could be developed, but even without them, the software could run well.

Everything depends on you as the maintainer of the forum and the visitors. If you have some specific area of discussion, trust me - it doesn't matter what kind of "features" this forum has. Discussion content stands in the front of any "rich" software. Even if you have thousands of unuseful overcomplicated features, that doesn't mean your forum will be popular. Otherwise if you have a lot of visitors who come to discuss things, not look for the "hot buttons" and other technical stuff, they won't be even interested what kind of program you have installed, if it just brings them what they would like to get.

These ideas around "a lot of powerful features" were already discussed many times ago when we've just started miniBB, and I am happy that by this time we were strong enough implement only what we find necessary. That's why the final product is clean and clear.

I wouldn't say that we deny "new features" development - if you are ready to be a sponsor, you're welcome... I could program almost everything for your forums as a custom task. But that doesn't mean everybody will need it and we should overload the basic version with yours only specific stuff...

Else it would look like if you want to calculate 382828 * 292992 + 18004 then instead of opening Calculator (or even using a pen and paper) you purchase the Microsoft Excel, then install it withing few minutes, then study the manual of how to program the formulas, then insert these values in 3 different cells and proceed to the calculation finally... at the end you discover how many of the other powerful features Excel has, including it has a "hidden egg" which looks like a little DOOM game!! It looks exciting, but will you ever use them? I doubt.

Thus I think for miniBB it's a bit late to become a leading platform. The leaders are already known, and here, the first who run into this business, have all chances to fight each other on a big market. We are trying to be different from the others sermonizing "the popularity is in your hands" concept.