Re: design of forum applications

Hi Hans, The problem with using PEAR in forum applications is scalability, which is why all major forum applications roll their own database abstraction layers. Unlike simple apps like blogs, forums tend to be complex high traffic applications where the overhead of PEAR is just impractical. As nice as OO design is in many cases it is simply not needed and while certain parts of an application such as forum could benefit from OO, in most cases it would simply be bloat and/or overhead. Keep in mind that as popular as PEAR is it is still a fairly rare thing as far as shared hosting environments go and relying on it would alienate much of your intended userbase. At least that is my opinion, which I base upon a number of benchmarks and other tests when I've designed FUDforum (http://fud.prohost.org/forum). Ilia On May 15, 2003 08:55 am, Hans Westerbeek wrote: > Hi everybody, > > Does anybody know about a Forum application that uses Pear and that has > been designed properly? I have been on the hunt for a forum that uses > pear for db abstraction and is properly written. Reading the code of > popular software didn't make me happy. Many still assume that > register_globals is on and the general attitude is focused on 'cool > features' than on a (OO) design that, for instance, would enable people > to integrate it with a legacy user database. > > Does anyone of you know of such a forum? I have searched all over the > web but haven't come across anything yet... > > If it simply just doesn't exist, would anybody be interested in > developing one with me? The intended audience would be PHP users that > know about PEAR and who would be able to deal with things like > implementing (java-like) interfaces before they can use it. > > So: a forum that requires a little extra work but yields more > customizability. > > Regards, > Hans