[CS-FSLUG] FOSS Forum/BB Software

[Ritchie, Josiah S.]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Christiansource-bounces at ofb.biz [mailto:Christiansource-
> bounces at ofb.biz] On Behalf Of Timothy Butler
> Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 10:59 AM
> To: ChristianSource Users Group.; FOSS-Cafe at ofb.biz; TechTalk
> Subject: [CS-FSLUG] FOSS Forum/BB Software
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 	I'm trying to help someone move a "group" off of MSN groups onto
> their own hosting account. Here are the things that MSN Groups offers
> that are above and beyond a standard forum package like phpBB:
> 
> 	1.) WYSIWYG Posting -- I guess I could tweak a package to do
this,
> but I'd prefer to go with something that does this out of the box.
> 
> 	2.) Photo albums -- every user has a private photo album where
they
> can upload, well, photos to share with the group.
> 
> 	3.) (Non-critical) Chat integration -- it uses ActiveX, although
> Java too would be fine, to provide chat using the same id's
> (automatically) as the forum posting area.
> 
> 	Anyone know of a FOSS solution that can fulfill at least the
first
> two of these three distinctives? Invision PowerBoard seems to fit the
> bill, but its a non-Free (and non-free, $189) option. Something Free
> would be great, and something free would still be nicer for this
> purpose.

How about a slew of web services? Flickr is better than any photo album
stuff I've seen. Make a group for sharing with the group. Use their API
to post stuff to the pages in a variety of formats.

Then talk them out of the WYSIWYG posting. That is a mess anyway and
really ugly. Then find one of those java scripts that interface with an
IRC room.

JSR/