Yeah so last Saturday I decided to learn ASP. Previously, I was working on a PHP/MySQL textboard, but I dumped that project so I could move my site to an Windows server. And this is what I've been working on for about 4 days: http://quivr.net/vip/index.asp

What it has:

• Threads
• Replies
• Thread Bumping
• Saging
• MSSQL Database support
• Thread List/Archive
• Admin Panel
• Filters out HTML

What it needs:

• Tripcodes
• BBcode
• Various other features

So what do you guys think? I'll release it as open-source once all the bugs have been worked out.

eh, why not?

If you're having fun writing it, I say press on!

>>3
I shall! Another thing I have to do is post numbering, forgot to add that to the list.

Looks like you forgot to escape ampersand-chars. Also, failed XHTML validation.

Escaping ampersands is impossible in many cases. HTML is just broken like that.

>>5
I can't win with XHTML due to having a body class.

Also, would anyone know how I can tackle tripcodes in ASP? There's no crypt function :/

Moved it over to http://tanasinn.net/beta/

>>6
replacing them all with & works just fine in xhtml.

>>7
body can have a class attribute in xhtml.
here are the problems with your xhtml code and how to fix them:

1. <, >, and & must be escaped, even in javascript. you have an unescaped < in your script tag. replace it with <.
2. you can't have a body tag inside a body tag. also, you have two body start tags but only one closing tag. remove one of the start tags.
3. there is no attribute onLoad. use onload instead.
4. all tr and td tags must be closed. the first tr in the new thread form and the second td in that tr are unclosed. close them.

if you want to do tripcodes you'll probably have to implement crypt yourself.

>>9
All errors were fixed, thanks for your help.

>>9

Only if you're using UTF-8 or some other full unicode encoding. Otherwise, characters outside of the character set are sent as numerical entities.

Also, there should be lots of implementations of crypt() out there. Perhaps even one for ASP, but you can likely also found one that can be easily ported.

>>13
I want a version of crypt that would produce the same tripcode as it would on any other image/textboard.

Now with capcodes and really crappy tripcodes.

>>12
Why would you not be using unicode in this day and age?

>>12
is there any reason not to use a full unicode encoding?

>>16,17

To force Japanese fonts by using Shift_JIS, for instance. Most Japanese sites use it.

>>18
Then you should be using <span lang="ja">. Or, if the font itself is important, and not just any random font that the user has set up in their browser (e.g. if you're dealing with SJIS art, which I suspect is what you're referring to), <span style="japanese"> along with a .japanese { font-family: Mona, "MS PGothic" }..

Next fake reason to use non-Unicode fonts?

>>19

Why exactly are you taking this as some kind of personal insult?

>>20
How do you read that as a personal insult? I'm just trying to remove people's false beliefs that there is any reason to cling to legacy encodings. There really isn't, and all you get out of attempting to support them are more complexities to handling incoming form data sanely and securely.

To try to get this thread back on topic before it's derailed entirely... >>15, what language are you actually using for the board? If I get some time I'll try hunting down a crypt() library for it.

>>21

With that confrontational attitude, you really come off as if you're somehow taking this personally. If you actually want to convince anyone of anything, you'd better cut that out.

>>22
ASP / vBScript

> What it needs:
> * BBcode

How about fucking no.

>>25
It does need some sort of markup, nonetheless.

Pretty much any other markup is better than BBcode. BBcode is about as difficult to use as HTML, but less familiar.

>>29-36 what happened here?

>>28

>One of the most difficult-to-accomplish parts of software design is getting things to do what people expect without requiring them to read stuff first.

There is a simple way to solve this problem that phpBB/etc forums already use. They have little javascript buttons for italics, bold, etc. that add the necessary open/close tags when you click them. Sure, it may clutter up the area around the postbox a little, but it allows people to learn how to use the site's formatting as they format their posts.

I don't like all of the bad rap that BBCode gets, so allow me to make a few arguments for and against its usage.

Positives:

• Most English-speaking people have already come into contact with BBCode at some point from a registration-style forum, so there is already some familiarity
• While sanitized HTML does get the job done similarly well, the benefit of BBCode is that you can make up new tags for common text formatting features that aren't directly accessible (i.e. cannot be used with a single, short tag) with HTML. The best example I can think of for this is the [spoiler] tag seen on many boards, something that you can't easily do with sanitized HTML without spreading some kind of misinformation about there really beings a <spoiler> HTML tag.
• As others have said, site-specific markups tend to (of course) vary between other sites, so you either have to guess about what the site is using, or open up the site's guide every time you forget. While this isn't a huge pain, it's much more obvious when the site says that it is using BBCode that the [b] tag is going to be bold, [i] means italics, etc.

Negatives:

• If you're writing a post with a lot of formatting, it does get to be a pain writing all of those brackets and whatnot. And don't get me started on how long it takes to type [spoiler][/spoiler]! Once you remember which combination does what, surrounding text with asterisks or underscores or whatever is much quicker.

Apart from that, I guess the decision is just a matter of personal choice. Both (all three, if you count sanitized HTML) have their own benefits. This is a minor bit of my own preferences, but when I'm using a site that has a custom markup format, I'm always a little afraid that the site isn't going to recognize that, say, a sentence surrounded by asterisks isn't going to be bolded/whatever'd. Since asterisks are used (comparatively) somewhat often in writing, it makes a part of my brain scream "those don't belong there!" when I write them. "How will the computer know that I'm trying to bold that whole sentence? I could see if it was just a word surrounded by them, but there's spaces and how can it keep track of that?!" Even if I'm familiar with the way that the site processes text (I do realize that this whole sentence is going to be bolded, and that a parser just waits for a close sequence after detecting an open sequence, no matter how "far away" it is), I can't change the fact that writing like that feels just a little bit wrong to me. On the other hand, the brackets (other than parenthesis) are rarely used in text, so the sight of a <b> or a [b] is immediately recognized as something that the computer is going to parse. Maybe I just don't post on kareha/wakaba boards enough these days?