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AtomBB Forum Software

Azareal

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What is AtomBB? It's a new free forum software which.. You have probably heard other software uttering these lines.. Hopes to revolutionise the stagnant forum market. As I've said in one of my biggest announcements however.. It's not all about you. One of my biggest motivations is creating a forum software which I can use. It's not all about me either. It's about everyone.

I'm not just trying to make a statement on the forum market. I'm making a forum software which solves problems which have been getting in my way for years. For more information, read my "mission statement": http://atombb.com/thread.php?tid=42

What makes us different from these other software which hope to revolutionise the forum market? Unlike many of them, we aren't revolutionising it by "stripping features out" with the whole "less is more" philosophy which I find to be silly. Instead, we hope to abstract the complexity away from the user rather than, making the software itself simple. Also, we're pushing new features while trying to not compromise on the features which you expect from a forum software.

What features do we have? Good question. I've heard this one before, particularly when someone asked how we're "better" than phpBB. There are several features which we have which the competition doesn't:
  • A powerful template system: While phpBB / vBulletin have features like conditional statements in the templates, MyBB doesn't to my knowledge. Additionally, you can do nice stuff within the templates like {include("header")} to load the header template and to render it at that specific point. Template Hooks exist to make it less likely for templates to break between releases.
  • A powerful permissions system: I have less experiance with phpBB's permissions system, however it doesn't seem as granular as MyBB's so, I'll be comparing AtomBB to MyBB here. Firstly, unlike MyBB.. We support permissions everywhere, even in the ModCP (MyBB doesn't have permissions for the ModCP) and we generally have more granular permissions across the board than, MyBB.
  • Solid Custom Framework: AtomBB is powered by my Hadron Framework, which covers permissions, plugins, database abstraction, etc. This framework is evolving to adapt to AtomBB's needs.
  • Speed: I've been keeping AtomBB fairly lightweight and I still have many tricks up my sleeve to squeeze a ton more performance out during Alpha 3. The main optimisation phase hasn't even begun yet.
  • Permission Presets: We have bundled commonly used permissions on forums as presets. For instance, you can hit Staff Only or Everyone or Registered Users only on the drop-down or you can get your hands dirty customising the individual permissions. Feedback would be nice.
  • Staff Levels: With my powerful staff levels system, you can stop lower level staff with editing the higher level staff.
  • Common Next Gen Features: We have the common next generation features which are popping up in many other forum software like mentions, conversation systems instead of PMs, etc.
  • Widgets: We have a widgets system (called Gadgets in the software) which allows you to place widgets in the sidebars (depending on the theme, there could be more than one) / header / footer like the forum statistics or who's online (these were moved into widgets to make things more flexible than adding them directly to the index).
  • Responsive Design: While it hasn't been heavily tested, the AtomBB theme should be a decent responsive design. Feedback would be appreciated, if you run into any issues with it.
  • Third Party Integration: We currently support integration with MediaWiki via a plugin (don't worry, you'll see a wiki going up sooner or later so, you'll get to see it in action) and Wordpress Integration is one of the features which will be done soon.
  • Additional Improvements: We have drop-down loading which is a nice AJAX way to quickly load the last x topics in a forum without having to enter the forum itself, looking for feedback on this.
    Another nice little feature is Quick Topics where the new topic form will appear above the topiclist when you hit the button which was inspired by Steam. This falls back to the usual behaviour when JavaScript is disabled. The ability to reorder forums by dragging them around in the Control Panel.
    Relative Time system is enabled by default, a feature which has existed for a very long time in the paid space but, has never shown up in the free space until, very very recently.

Alpha Two: http://atombb.com/thread.php?tid=30 Some new information about the upcoming alpha release.
And remember, we are currently in alpha so, there's alot more to come.

Feedback is greatly appreciated.
 
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Updated the OP.

abb-alerts-wip2.png

The alerts system is working really well. Mail is next.
Under the hood, I've refactored over a thousand lines of code to bring you the Page API. This should open many new caching opportunities and I've already gotten more performance out of it.
 
abb-design-wip1.png

The experimental smilie background had to go.
Here's the current AtomBB Theme which may end up looking completely different.

Under the hood, asynchronous queries were implemented into the Hadron Framework, so many queries will be converted over to that in AtomBB itself soon for a performance boost.
 
Just finished adding Custom Template Functions. The Custom Template Functions look like this {if(funcname(params))}.
Plugins can easily add their own custom template functions via the Template API with a single method call.

In the meanwhile, more bugs have been crushed in the Alerts System (I had over 1K alerts at one point, a very amusing bug) and the new Permissions UI is looking very good. The Permissions UI will be unveiled when it's complete. I'll have a video demonstration of how it works, as it has a very innovative design.
 
The new Permissions UI is complete, although I'll announce it along with the Penalty Manager and a third feature.

For now, here's what the Forum Manager should currently look like on a tablet (Yes, you can drag the forums around to re-order them):
abb-acp-response-wip1.png




What do you think of removing the avatars from the forumlist on the index for mobile devices? It may cause a larger bandwidth drain and it creates an extra challenge for the responsive layout.
 
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Look interesting but I would be worried about getting something so new.
Two years in development isn't old enough for you? :whistling: So, if you're worried about the project running out of steam before ever reaching release then..

To be fair, it's in alpha (things are almost constantly changing by the week), so even I wouldn't want to use it on a production site. I might start throwing it on production sites during beta. Many of the features which I've added so far have only really been to lay the foundations for the main selling points.
Reaching beta next year should be fairly feasible, if there aren't any problems in the meanwhile.
 
Two years in development isn't old enough for you? :whistling: So, if you're worried about the project running out of steam before ever reaching release then..

To be fair, it's in alpha (things are almost constantly changing by the week), so even I wouldn't want to use it on a production site. I might start throwing it on production sites during beta. Many of the features which I've added so far have only really been to lay the foundations for the main selling points.
Reaching beta next year should be fairly feasible, if there aren't any problems in the meanwhile.
I just avoid alpha and beta testing on principle - I am not skilled enough with software to make an effective tester. Its more a case with something so brand new that finding themes and plug ins is less easy because there are less of them, and I cannot write them myself.
 
I just avoid alpha and beta testing on principle - I am not skilled enough with software to make an effective tester. Its more a case with something so brand new that finding themes and plug ins is less easy because there are less of them, and I cannot write them myself.
Depending on what plugin you want, I might be able to create it for you, especially if it's something easy. I do have plans to create some on launch (E.g. Forum Network type thing, hosting type thing, points system, Integration with other software, etc.).
As for themes, that may be an issue. The default themes might be able to fill that gap, however they wouldn't have that much of a unique feel.
 
View attachment 452
I was experimenting with the new topic layout (the two column one) and turning the user titles into something a little prettier.
Unfortunately, making them look more ribbon-like was trickier than expected.

Might need the GD Library installed to use the "Ribbon Generator" which should be able to use a colour picker for you to generate your own gradients for the user ribbon. This shouldn't stop you from using already generated images though.

Like almost everything else in AtomBB, this is currently a Work In Progress.
 

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On a side note, AJAX has also been creeping along in the background.
I was originally planning to implement it back in January, however I ended up getting really busy doing other work.

This should theoretically open the door to endless scrolling (this might have to be plugin land, if it isn't in the core then, it will almost certainly end up in a plugin).

On the AJAX side, this should allow smooth transitions between different pages on a global level. Or as some people call it.. A more modern experience.
 
http://atombb.com has been updated to the latest build of AtomBB. This includes global AJAX page loading (with a fade effect) and other things which I've described before. Feedback on it would be nice.
 
Licensing is the current big topic. As some people have rightfully brought up, some limitations in the GPLv3 might result in people "steathily" forking bits of the code or possibly large portions of the software or the software in it's entirety with the admins being unaware of this due to the the fact that most people don't go through the actual sourcecode.

My possible solution to this would include a clause specifically making it clear that they should make their users aware of this. Just closing a loophole.
 
The new title system allows admins to create titles with several requirements to unlock (upvotes / likes / topics / level). An alert appears in the new awards feed when you unlock a new title by meeting the requirements. You then navigate to the title manager in the UserCP (or click on the alert) to select the title that you want as your active title.
 
Plenty has happened. The new theme, Cosmo. Alerts of mentions, your topics, upvotes, etc.
The most recent one was the custom content which people can add to their profiles.

And the Menu Manager.
 
I never knew about the AtomBB thread at WGBB before. It's cool to look at this as a timeline. :D I'm looking forward to the release of AtomBB.
 
View attachment 123
I was experimenting with the new topic layout (the two column one) and turning the user titles into something a little prettier.
Unfortunately, making them look more ribbon-like was trickier than expected.

Might need the GD Library installed to use the "Ribbon Generator" which should be able to use a colour picker for you to generate your own gradients for the user ribbon. This shouldn't stop you from using already generated images though.

Like almost everything else in AtomBB, this is currently a Work In Progress.
This looks like a fan made Xenforo type of thing
The design... is quite interesting but not bad!

I would like it more if it looked like esoTalk
 

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