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AMA Arantor

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Ask me anything! No, really, you can ask me anything! (You might not get a sensible answer though! :p )

But in case it helps, there's a few things I've worked on that might be of interest to folks here. I'm formerly one of the SMF dev team, as well as Wedge and StoryBB if you heard of those, and in my SMF time I also wrote a helpdesk and a media gallery addon for it.

I'm also a web dev by profession, I spent a few years doing Moodle/Mahara and switched jobs last year to go do some Laravel/Vue and some WordPress/WooCommerce in case that's of interest to ask about.
 
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Firstly, what’s your age and how did you find interest in forums?

Secondly, how did you start being an SMF dev and why did it end?

Are there any other board softwares you’d consider being a dev for?
 
So I'm nearly 40 - I came into forums as a regular user around the turn of the millennium when I started to have regular access to the internet, and found it full of hobbyists just doing their own thing. In 2006 I had a need to start a forum for a project I was working on at the time, long since defunct for other reasons, and I ended up staying in the forum ecosystem ever since.

How I came to be an SMF dev... well, that started in 2009, I'd been running a board for a while, I'd done a little customising (since I've been doing PHP since 2003), and started releasing mods that year as well as officially joining the team as a Support Specialist, then a Customizer. 2010 was a bumper year - I wrote SimpleDesk (which was a SMF 2.0 helpdesk replacement for the one on simplemachines.org) and after some of the internal drama that happened, I ended up leaving to go start work on Wedge, as a fork of SMF.

2013 I ended up coming back to SMF and went straight back into the thick of things with an official Developer badge and wrote a fair chunk of the improvements that came out in SMF 2.1 - a fair amount of the alerts system was me, chunks of the infrastructure improvements and some of the profile improvements were me too, but it didn't last much into 2014 after a clash of personalities. (Namely, I don't believe that in a software project, that the developers are less important than other members of the project team. Nor do I believe that changing some terminology needs a multi-page debate, but that's another story.)

After that, I switched jobs, had a job with a rubbish commute so didn't really have the energy for forums much, but in 2017 switched jobs again and this time dove into the roleplay scene; it was something my wife wanted to do as she'd originally run a roleplay forum back in 2000-2013 and wanted to give it another go, and I ended up starting work on StoryBB since I wanted to do things the SMF team wasn't interested in doing. Partially roleplay, partially big round of internal modernisation - SMF's internals still show all the hallmarks of dating back to 2003.

I will say this about SMF: I've asked several times this year since 2.1's release if there is a roadmap and if they're interested in sharing - because it's not like I don't have features I could share back from StoryBB, but I'm not bothering to invest the time if the result is 'thanks but no thanks'. It's been nearly a year and no-one can even tell me whether big ticket items are even on the roadmap, let alone anything else. I have better things to do, no matter how much sentimentality I might have for the 75,000 posts I made on their forum.

But as 2023 comes around, I'm... I dunno. I still love forums. I still love building tools, but it's increasingly feeling like the tools that are there just aren't doing it for me, and I don't know what I need to do about that.

Would I look at the other platforms? Last year when I was job hunting I did have a chat with IPS about joining their dev team but it wasn't ultimately right for me personally or professionally. That's OK, that happens. My path lies elsewhere. I've done some noodling with XF, it's nice enough (I think internally it's nicer to work with than IPS, personally), I haven't looked at the internals of Woltlab any, though I keep meaning to look at both that and Flarum sometime since I'm firmly a PHP guy.
 
@Arantor Sounds like you dedicated an amazing long time to SMF and they took it for granted, while they were lucky to have you. Also looks like SMF is no different in having a bunch of drama. I guess that's just typical humanity and it's found everywhere. XenForo had something similar if I recall correctly. Every software company probably has this once in a while.

I haven't heard of StoryBB before so I did a quick search, looks like it's already packed with a lot of features and I image it being a great platform for roleplaying. I dunno about IPS, I like their software and have always been an IPS fan throughout my years but ever since a couple of year ago, XenForo has won me over and I think they are more solid than IPS. I also believe XenForo will take the high lead from IPS (if they haven't already) since there's a lot more devs backing up the software. And we all know 3rd party devs are the backbone of any software, let's be honest about that.

I think your future ultimately lies either being a 3rd part dev for XenForo, or teaming up with someone to create your own software and compete with IPS and XenForo.

I don't know if you had the chance to look into flatboard, but that software also developed quite nicely throughout the years.
 
Also looks like SMF is no different in having a bunch of drama. I guess that's just typical humanity and it's found everywhere. XenForo had something similar if I recall correctly. Every software company probably has this once in a while.

I haven't heard of StoryBB before so I did a quick search, looks like it's already packed with a lot of features and I image it being a great platform for roleplaying. I dunno about IPS, I like their software and have always been an IPS fan throughout my years but ever since a couple of year ago, XenForo has won me over and I think they are more solid than IPS. I also believe XenForo will take the high lead from IPS (if they haven't already) since there's a lot more devs backing up the software. And we all know 3rd party devs are the backbone of any software, let's be honest about that.

I think your future ultimately lies either being a 3rd part dev for XenForo, or teaming up with someone to create your own software and compete with IPS and XenForo.

I don't know if you had the chance to look into flatboard, but that software also developed quite nicely throughout the years.
Every place has drama after a while; that's just the function of people growing away from each other, and/or more people coming in wanting to make their mark on the place. It's just frustrating that SMF's particular drama evolved the way it did, in a way that left nobody happy.

I think this time of year is leaving me with a lot to think about, the last few days being ill (again) and with the new year coming, it's given me a lot of time to think and reflect on what I've been doing and where I want to go. Reality is I don't sit well when I'm waiting around; all of the XF 2.3 roadmap discussion irks me because I've had the exact same discussion on SMF and it's like... yo, you guys, I have a bunch of things I want to give you but I'm not spending the effort cleaning it up etc. only to be told it's not on the roadmap. I found myself being a lot more 'going my own way' for my free time projects.

We shall see what the new year brings.

What are all the web development languages you know?
On the front end, it's HTML, CSS, JavaScript (plus jQuery/jQuery UI, Vue with some passing React; they're not languages at all but people talk about them as if they are), though I suppose I could experiment with anything that'll transpile down to WebAssembly, but I find I'm a) not really a frontend guy, I just make do, and b) I definitely find I need a project to learn something with, I can't learn it 'in theory', so I would need to find a project that made sense to me to do in WAsm and go from a different language, one which I probably already know, to it but I'm not sure that would really get me anything.

For the backend though, where I habitually live, it's a lot more complicated. You can do 'web stuff' on basically anything that will talk to a network and handle TCP/IP, though the protocols have gotten more and more complicated over time (especially if you're doing HTTPS without having Apache or nginx handle it for you). PHP is my go-to, but I've done web stuff in Python, ASP Classic, ASP.NET, Node, Go and Ruby over the years. I don't know if Rust has gotten to the point where it can be used (realistically) for web stuff, I know it's certainly been *doable* but there's a difference between tech demo and real world production use at scale.

I run SMF forum. Since you said you have worked in the SMF dev team, I would like to ask a few questions.
How do I install SSL from Let's Encrypt (my host does not support Let's Encrypt)?
When I migrated to a new host, all the images, including avatars, vanished. How do I address this issue?
This isn't really an SMF problem, because this is a webserver problem, either Apache or nginx, and SMF sits above that layer in what we would normally call application space.

If your host is using Apache, you *may* be able to set up the necessary things in Apache yourself, but this is not for the faint of heart. If they're using only nginx, then you'll have to use whatever certificate features they offer because you won't have access to any of the configuration directly to do this yourself.

I think you said in another topic that you were using Namecheap, which I'm mildly surprised doesn't offer LE certs out of the box, but in this case you can supply certs yourself as I understand it (I don't have a Namecheap hosting account, all my personal stuff is on Linode), but you'll need to do it every 2-3 months because that's how long LE certs last for. I believe - though haven't verified - that you can manually produce certificates and upload them, but no-one wants to do that manually forever. They do offer certs for as low as $5.99/year if you're buying for 5 years, but honestly I'd look for a better host.
 
I have 20 websites. Imagine how much I will have to spend to buy certificates. I normally keep my expenses low. I use Let's Encrypt on wordpress sites but I have not figured out how to use them on forums. Namecheap offers free ssl only for the first year, you will have to buy from the second year. I am with namecheap because it offers a lot of other benefits.
 
Imagine how much I will have to spend to buy certificates.
Nothing, because you can set it up manually on LE and import the certificates - just doing it manually every 3 months. There are plenty of video tutorials - I found a bunch just by googling 'Let's Encrypt on Namecheap'... but I can't verify any of them because I don't use Namecheap for hosting.

Or you can find another host that lets you run multiple sites off it - plenty of hosts out there support Let's Encrypt. It's honestly not an application problem, it's lower down the stack.

But any host that gouges you on SSL is one I'd seriously consider moving off.
 
What's the last coding you've done?
 
Last coding I've done, I'm back on StoryBB. I floundered a bit during 2022 with the rampant rise in anti-Harry Potter sentiment (which was good for running a Harry Potter themed roleplay)

But I'm planning on a new one and it's about time I finished some of the features that will help me build it. Today's project has been building out the features for adding blocks/widgets around the place; the actual support already existed to add widgets but it was directly in the DB, now I'm adding a UI for it.
 
Professionally, I expect to be in the same company, but with a couple more devs with us so I'll be spending more time planning and helping rather than being the primary dev.

Personally... I don't know. I'd like to say that StoryBB will have had a resurgence and that some of my other forum plans amount to something but, who knows? Life is entirely whimsical at times.
 
Something in life been keeping you busy lately, out of curiosity?

I'm used to seeing you on about every day, but you've been MIA for a few days.
Taking something of a break for mental health reasons.

What wasteful expenditure would you make if you had unlimited funds?
I'd buy XenForo Ltd and make forums great again.

What is one phrase that you actually hate the sound of?
People that say 'lol' out loud. It's not a word, it's certainly not a replacement for a fullstop that you're meant to say out loud.

How do you hang toilet paper: over or under?
Over. Over forever.
 

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