John M. Dlugosz has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to set up a web-based discussion board, kind of like a mailing list or forum. I don't want the huge and often crummy solutions I see so commonly used, don't need to support many users, and don't want it to be too complex. Is there any Perl solution I might look at, to set up on my Apache server?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: discussion board wanted
by moritz (Cardinal) on Jul 27, 2009 at 17:10 UTC
    The most important question is: does it have to support discussion threads?

    I did a similar search about two years ago, and founds lots and lots of bulletin board scripts in Perl, but the number that actually supported thread views was very small. And at that time I wanted threads very badly (and I still hate discussion boards without threading)

    When I discounted those that were last updated anno 2000 or earlier, there were only a few left: the Everything engine (from which perlmonks is derived), slashcode and liveojournal (actually two blogging engines which can be abused for discussion boards, but far too big for me).

    A bit later tinita wrote battie (a portal solution, actually) to host the board of the German perl community. So far it's the only perl based non-bloated board with threads of which I know that it hasn't been abandoned, but I haven't tried to install it yet.

    Maybe my standards were too high at the time of searching, but I found the results quite disappointing back then

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      Did you simply miss mwForum, or did it somehow fail to meet your criteria? I can't see anything in your post that would disqualify it.

      Either way, I'd recommend John consider it as another option.

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        It seems I just missed it, it looks pretty good at first sight.
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      A bit off topic :
      (and I still hate discussion boards without threading)

      A long time ago that was my sentiment exactly, coming from Usenet and mailing lists. The mere idea of flat discussion boards made me freak out -- "How can one follow a discussion if one doesn't know who's replying to whom?"

      But after years of reading and contributing to flat (linear) forums I have grown to like them. The topic assumes a life of its own and everybody is replying to "the topic". This type of indirected discussion helps reduce confrontation and bad temper and IMO ambiguity is not always something to be avoided in a conversation. In a flat board you can make a summary of discussion or general criticism without leaving the impression that you're targeting a certain user. Of course if you wish to make clear that you're replying to a specific user you can use quotations or specific wording.

      All in all, I can't imagine Perlmonks in flat mode :)

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        I think they make up for it by extensive quoting of what exactly is being replied to. Also, they are not completely flat, as you have top-level discussions under the permanent board category. Also there are private replies ("personal messages") within the board.
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Re: discussion board wanted
by Arunbear (Prior) on Jul 27, 2009 at 16:57 UTC
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Re: discussion board wanted
by Anonymous Monk on Jul 27, 2009 at 16:57 UTC
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