This summer I will have some spare time and I want to begin to learn a new lenguage and develop a new, 2ch like, messege board system, all for fun. And I need ideas and suggestions. What should be implemented? What not?
I'm thinking about develop it in Ruby with MySQL database for the backend and using AJAX for the interface.
I'm very interested in opinions to begin with the analysis and design, and start learning and coding asap.
PD: Sorry for my poor english.
That sounds like a good plan for making a script for fun using Ruby, MySQL and AJAX.
It does not sound like a good plan for something anybody would actually want to use.
If you're only going for the first, go ahead and have fun, but if you care about the second at all, you should re-think your approach.
I want to make that for fun, but I want to do something usefulf for the people.
Why do you think that Ruby + MySQL + AJAX aren't useful for that? I don't want to make heavy use of AJAX, and I prefer MySQL over textfiles or XML.
Can you explain why you don't like that combination?
Ruby is slow and not as widely supported as other langauges, MySQL is more unnecessary overhead, and there's not much to gain from using AJAX, but you'll be shutting out all kinds of users unless you supply proper fallbacks. Neither 0ch, shiichan nor kareha use a database at all, because there is no need for it.
The problem is that you're basing your design on what tools you want to use, not the other way around. That's no way to make good software.
Yes, that's true, I know SQL and have started to learn ruby, and I thinked that I can do something fun for me and useful for people, you have a reason about the SQL and AJAX thing, not sure if ruby is slow or not.
I will re-think the whole idea then.
Ruby is slow. There isn't even a bytecode interpreter. This slowness doesn't really matter, but it's still there.
Also, you can do a few neat things with AJAX (live post preview) but not much else.
>>1,5
Just a suggestion, but you might want to think of using Python. It's easy to pick up, faster than Ruby but slower than Perl, and pretty powerful -- good for a summer project.
Good luck and I'm interested to hear any updates along the way. I'm playing around with an imageboard-esque script myself but I've go a lot to learn when it comes to CGI...
>>6
I don't think live post preview is all that necessary for an anoymous imageboard, seems more of an old-style forum type thing.
Theoretically it's even more useful here. You can't edit posts, after all.
AJAX is fine when implemented properly. People (mostly programmers!) are always complaining about AJAX but as long as you make the site browseable for people who have javascript disabled in their browser, it's all good. So use it if you can use it well. I for one am very content with adding posts to a forum without the whole (sometimes huge) page reloading. I have thought of implementing it in my imageboards somehow.
And MySQL? What the hells is wrong with MySQL?
It's like everyone here just hates on everything, gosh.
And isn't Python the language where you always find self.your typing self.before everything?
My advice to the original poster is to do what he wants to do as long as he does it well :/ Also, you're not going to finish the app over the summer. If you do, it's gonna suck. Habeeb me.
> What the hells is wrong with MySQL?
Any number of things, if you talk to database people, but in this case the main thing is: There's no need for a database in the first place for a 0ch-style message board. You're just adding bloat by using one, and gaining very little.
>>10
Just wondering, which database would you suggest? Not for this project specifically; I mean in general.
If you want OSS, Postgres is well-regarded.
I like SQLite for light-weight databases. It lacks lots of more advanced features, but a lot of simple pages don't need those. It's a good replacement for MySQL, and it's far less of a bother to set up and maintain. It also seems to have better compliance with the SQL specs than MySQL.
If you're doing REAL database code, I assume Postgres is good. I seldom do any real database work myself, though.
MySQL is sort of a combination of the worst parts of both of these two.
why is there never anything even remotely controversial on it? all i've ever seen on it is stuff about star wars merchandise, weather, and other random shit from cnn.com.
zzzz
teset
hello
>>14 all the snippets you see are from webpages that have been blocked by a nation somewhere in the world. CLick on it for more information.
What's all this complaining about shutting off people who disable JavaScript? That's about 0.01% of people. What's wrong with JavaScript?
With JS, you can do things you can't otherwise. For example, imagine a board the size of 4chon/b/, where you don't have to press F5. New threads and new posts just appear as they are posted. Now of course you could add META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" to the HTML, but that will reload the WHOLE page, while with JS you can load only new content, which means SIGNIFICANTLY less traffic, on a board the size of that.
By the way, I am also thinking about writing a board script, one that scales. I am on /b/ sometimes but even it can be excruteetingly slow and boring at times (to me)... However it's already on the edge of how far server-side-generated PHP/CGI/whatever boards can scale. (Famous "MySQL Connection Error" notwithstanding, MySQL actually scales better than SQLite, but I don't want to flame about that, I don't think a board like this needs a DB or even needs to write to disk at all)
My other idea was to distribute load of a single board between multiple servers but that's not possible with the current XmlHttpRequest implementation in JavaScript becuase they wanted to prevent evil XSS schemes. Any ideas on how to fetch new content from JS from multiple servers? IFRAME:s are not good because a central "index" server is still needed if you get what I mean...
>>21
can javascript on (for example) img.4chan.org pull stuff from www.4chan.org?
The more technical your user base, the more people you will find who either use weirdass browsers that don't even support Javascript, or people who shut it off for reasons of security, privacy, annoyance, or plain paranoia.
You've also got to remember that these days, desktop browsers are not the only thing you have to deal with. Mobile browsers is one big thing where support for advanced features may be lacking.
> However it's already on the edge of how far server-side-generated PHP/CGI/whatever boards can scale.
No it isn't. We're far more bandwidth-bound than anything else.
>>22
As far as I can tell, it can't. It would make sense if it could, but it's kind of hard to implement (you don't want to allow yyy.co.jp from xxx.co.jp, but you want yyy.moo.jp from xxx.moo.jp; and it's different from country to country).
I only tried with Opera though...
>shut it off for reasons of security, privacy, annoyance, or plain paranoia.
Well I never got that.
Security? Sure JavaScript implementations can have some flaws from time to time that say allow arbitrary remote code execution, but even said browsers' HTML parser or who knows... HTTP reply parser can (and did) have these flaws. So why don't these people switch off HTML too following the same reasoning?
Privacy? It looks like one can only connect back to the origin server from JS, so IFRAMES or even images are much worse. Cookies can be set in HTTP headers. Of course if the site has an XSS flaw, injected JS can be evil, but switching JS off is not the best solution...
Annoyance: Yes JS can be used to do some pretty annoying things (this size_field() thing o_O), but sites that stop working annoy me a lot more
So yes, I think it's largely plain paranoia (-_-)
You're right about mobile browsers. It's improving though, my phone runs Opera fine
>>24
Yes, bandwidth-bound. That's why I thought distributing load among servers is good. The server-generated-page style script can distribute images across many servers too, not text, but maybe that's not important. However I SUSPECT that a lot of that bandwidth is from people furiously F5ing large threads, which with this kind of script reloads the whole HTML, and on 4chan, queries the server for new versions of CSS and each thumbnail...
Now that's just a webserver misconfiguration but I don't even want to think about how much bandwidth it wastes for them and maybe people hosting my hypothetical large board would have no access to modify their httpd.conf.
An other solution for this would be an XSLT board, but browser support for THAT is really lacking, even more than for JavaScript...
[Now that I think of it this would not be an imageboard any more but more like a real-time chat just with added images...]
>>25 The point is, it doesn't matter how logical you are in arguing against it; some users will still refuse to use it. You have to at least degrade gracefully for them. AJAX doesn't always do that well.
> which with this kind of script reloads the whole HTML,
Trust me when I say that HTML is laughably small in comparison to everything else. If it's beyond 10% on an imageboard, you've probably done something wrong as an adminitrator. If you've set up the site properly, you'll mostly see HEAD or conditional requests, and javascript just isn't going to save you there.
I suppose you could get fancy and implement an incremental style of get, like you mention, but that'll hurt your load pretty bad.
Personally, I'd like to see a board that combines the two message-board schools of though -- 2ch-style and traditional PHPBB style. Both have their advantages, and something properly designed could perhaps go a long way.
>>30
Wouldn't it be simpler to allow anon posting on a phpbb style board and implement spam detection?
>>31
it would still look like shit and be infected with php.
would it be possible to create a distributed imageboard? all the users run the software and collectively host it. this would solve many of the hosting issues the *chans have been having lately.
Impossible in any useful way. It would require everybody who reads to download and run special software, and nobody is going to do that.
Hi all,
OP here a year before, what a coincidence.
I started in April developing my system, after learning a lot more in my studies and a lot more that I have still to learn.
I'm developing it in PHP and the data stored in XML, is working ok right now after so much optimization of the XML reading and writing. For the interface I'm using only a bit of jQuery for somethings plus a clean design, I don't want to overload the browsers of the users or make it unusable.
I have decided to no implement tripcodes, don't like them, maybe I use an alternative that I have in mind or maybe I will not use any kind of authentication.
I hope to have a non dev version ready for august.
Also I want to say that I'm doing this for fun, but will build a large comunnity for my country if it works as I want.
Any suggestion or feature that will be great? I will appreciate it.
Hi all,
A new imageboard fully developed from 0.
Is called www.gamerachan.org
Is the same concept as Futaba, but with different channels.
It's funny, just check it out.
They are improving very fast, and it could be a help for imageboard developers.
Nice effort. It just seems so... Bare :(
Anyway, how many lines of code you got?
>>38
I like the YouTube board idea
I would suggest not embedding the video directly on the thread view, but opting instead to generate thumbnails based on the video preview and linking that to a new window with the video embedded
If anything, it would prevent the board from getting cluttered quickly
Yeah that's kind of cool.
I've been pondering how to properly pull off a video board for a while now. I think TrevorChan has a video function? There was another site I remember that let you simply embed videos in the post text itself (instead of a faux file field), but I can't remember what it was. The size of embedded videos is troubling; but if you shrink the embedded they kind of become too small to enjoy.
It would probably be difficult to automate the making of screenshots of the video given only a link to the video.
Maybe some kind of javascript function could make it so that the embedded video is small (within the 250x250 pixels range) until played, at which point it expands? And shrinks when a different video is played? I don't know balls about javascript so I don't know how feasible it is or how one would pull it off. If someone implemented it I would probably steal the sauce, though.
>>42
573chan has had video embedding for quite some time, and Magmachan does it too. Don't follow Trevorchan's lead; it's crap software and looking at the source will probably rot your mind. Better off doing it yourself.
Screenshots wouldn't be too difficult with the right software -- mplayer can do selective framegrabs from a cleverly written script and it plays flv files, so if you can figure out how to get the direct link from youtube, you can download just enough of it to throw at mplayer to convert the first handful of frames, and then do image analysis of some sort to find the first one that's "interesting" (i.e. not black). You might have to serve the page response first and make the thumbnail later, though, since extracting the frame will be noticeably less than instant. (especially considering network lag while pulling the flv file)
I'd love to have some way to get a screencap of a frame in an swf file. That'd make a flash board so much more interesting...
That sounds like a nightmare from a bandwidth, CPU, and coding perspective. Here's the thing, when one clicks on a YouTube video, he or she is taken to that video on YouTube anyway, so I don't know why I would want to take a screenshot when I can at the very least embed the video with shrunken dimensions, which would allow the user to both watch it from there or choose to visit YouTube to see it in all of it's 425x350 glory! I kind of feel that redirecting to YouTube by default is a bad idea for the sake of the board, in the same way that it would be kind of absurd to redirect to ImageShack when a user clicks a thumbnail.
I've implemented video embedding on my board I'm just not happy with the underlying code or the presentation.
I hijacked this thread so bad.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken, the screencap one sees on an embed is a JPG file already generated by YouTube
I was thinking that the software could transload and thumbnail that
Still sounds kind of difficult. At least beyond my skills. Let me know if/how you pull it off.
To give some very general advice: I think you need a much more user-friendly interface than kareha. Sure, it's very easy to use for us experienced users, but you need to think from the point of view of a stupid 40-year-old who is new to the Internet and has a very short attention span. They will not be able to figure out how to post a new thread or reply to threads without someone pointing out how to do this. Unfortunately, I can't give any specifics on how to make this easier except maybe make the reply button big and obvious. Also, the thread view should look clean and easy to read, maybe more in the style of PHPBB where each thread gets its own line, instead of having all the topic titles run together.
Hope this helped a little bit.
How about figuring out how old posts you are replying to are? I guess that's currently sort of tricky?
>>48
That's pretty trivial, current time - posted time.
To be honest I didn't pick up on it at first either. But I'm autistic, so.
So my idea of creating a chan script using Flash would probably not be welcome here, eh?
It would be welcomed as a hilarious joke!
Nobody in their right mind would want to use that, though. Flash is a usability nightmare.
>>54
I've always wanted to tackle something like that, but I have next to no AS knowledge.
So it is. But frankly, usability isn't always the deciding factor. What I would like to test out is how I could distribute dynamic loading of content and utilize the control over session cache. I might just do it, for the heck of it.
If you want, I can make it possible to scale your font size on the fly using the browser shortcuts, but no way are you accessing this using a mobile device!
>>57
Or from anything besides a Windows, OS X, or x86 Linux, which pretty much leaves me out entirely since I have a Linux PPC system, and an AMD64 box with FreeBSD... unless you plan on writing for an older Flash version so that I can look at it on my Wii, which is also stupid. And in any case, basing an entire site on Flash is a phenomenally stupid idea. Look at what happened to Sagubooru, learn from history, and don't repeat dumbass mistakes.
>>58
you can run x86 linux binaries on amd64 freebsd, i was using linux firefox and flash player on amd64 freebsd on my laptop for a while before the crappy motherboard in it died.
Sagubooru was a stupid thing indeed. I'm not so much thinking of creating a wakaba style chan in Flash (no purpouse other than doing it) so much as an alternative and experimental approach to anonymous posting. I'm thinking some fancy and dynamically interactive stuff, and although it won't be accessible it will be a creative outlet for some (could be) neat ideas. If there is one thing I like about Flash it's that there are far less boundaries to take into consideration when developing a rich media experience.
>>59
I know, but it would spontaneously crash for me. Too many places for things to go wrong (what with the Linux and x86 compatibility layers on top of each other)
Things might have gotten better since I last tried it but it definitely sucked about 16 months ago.
>>60
I wish you luck, Anonymous. I'll be looking forward to it if it's made.
Less boundaries for the developer. More for the user. This is why it will always fail, and why this is a temptation to face and overcome.
> it would spontaneously crash for me.
i've always the same problem on windows, so i think it's probably a problem with flash, not with the linux or x86 compatibility layers.
Any progress?
If you're thinking about the Flash imageboard, currently no. I have more work than there are hours in the day, but it's in the back of my head being worked on unconsciously.
>If you're thinking about the Flash imageboard, currently no.
Yeah that's the one. i was curious because I started working on my own imageboard last week, and thought flash would be an interesting choice of development.
I don't know flash, so it's just valid HTML, CSS and speed. Lot's of speed. I'll be posting more here and on /prog/ shortly.
If you think you can make an imageboard with html and css, you're a fucking idiot.
>>69-70
Oh shit, are you guys serious? Unless the next wave of image board software is to simply host an open XML-based API, how do suspect the kiddies should view the pages?
>>71
you can't make an imageboard with just html and css.
So you think creating an imageboard only in Flash would work any better? Flash, as well as HTML and CSS, is about structure and styling of information.
It goes without saying that any system relying on user interactivity requires a backend.
Speed is certainly of great importance. That, and minimizing overhead. I would also love to use this project to demonstrate that Flash doesn't /have/ to be a slow and cumbersome affair, and that if done right can actually enhance an experience.
>>74
doing flash right means making it still usable for people who don't have the flash plugin installed.
I don't find Flash slow or cumbersome; it's just buggy, inaccessible, rigid, and generally distasteful.
Can I set a custom font? Right click to save a linked image? Drag a block of selected text to save it, or from elsewhere into a text box? Nope! Those three points rule out decent AA (can't use Mona font, Flash doesn't recognize it for me), ease of access for an imageboard (can't save images quickly, have to go through some process to show the image in a separate window and then go to File->Save or similar), and kopipe for textboards (ok, maybe this one isn't quite as big a deal, if you're focusing on mostly "serious" boards, but it's still a usability issue and an area where Flash is seriously lacking).
Don't get me wrong; Flash does have its uses. Amazon's new player in the MP3 store is a hundred times simpler than downloading Real Player or Windows Media clips. YouTube et al. would certainly never have caught on without the Flash video streaming. And for animations and constant interactivity, Flash is much, much better than the alternative -- Java. Let's face it, Flash has pretty much entirely killed Java on the web.
I must point out, however, that most of these have one thing in common: they are all presenting multimedia. Flash video/audio streaming is clearly superior to Real Player, and Flash animations clearly beat embedded Java applets. On the other hand, using Flash for plain text and images doesn't have enough of a justifiable benefit.
I agree that it's a decent platform for prototyping, inasmuch as Visual Basic is an excellent environment to work out the surface details and basic feel of an application before actually writing it in another, more capable language. The latter part is the key; too many overgrown applications start in VB and outgrow their foundations, and what you're left with is a mess instead of a good design. The very same goes with prototyping stuff in Flash. It might be a quick way to get started, but after you've got a foothold on how it's supposed to work, perhaps Ajax would be more user-friendly. Maybe not as developer-friendly, but if you have a clear idea of how it's supposed to work, the design will be inherently cleaner (so it should be sufficiently easy to maintain).
"Can I set a custom font? Right click to save a linked image? Drag a block of selected text to save it, or from elsewhere into a text box?"
Yes, as long as it's in a format recognized by your system and does not contain unrecognized (i.e unstandardized) character information
Yes, you can if people bothered implementing two lines of code to enable that in the right-click context menu
Yes, but sadly it hasn't been implemented prior to Flash Player 9+, which is now standard.
I do agree; Flash for /plain text/ is pointless. You use HTML and CSS presentation for that.
But Flash is far from buggy, although it is inaccessible due to it being a plugin. However, accessibility is not always a prime concern. Currently I'm writing a PowerPoint-ish net based software for corporate use, using Flash. What does it matter if it isn't accessible to people who don't have Flash installed? It's still more accessible than an application you have to download, install and let loose upon your local system. Flash has its uses, but can't be used for every thinkable scenario. The same goes for anything that is to run in a browser.
>>77
How do I change the font? There's no configuration page, it doesn't honor my browser's font settings, and I definitely can't change the font size (most of the time).
> Flash is far from buggy
Maybe for you. It is pretty much the only reason my browser crashes. And yes, I'm running the latest version.
As for accessible, I mean that both in terms of being able to run it in the first place, but more importantly in the Section 508 interpretation of the word. Also, trying to compare Flash to installed applications when the topic at hand is an imageboard is silly.
I agree that the comparison is pretty OOT, however it's slightly relevant to the point; depending on the nature of an experimental imageboard, it might very well have its uses. My idea of experimental is not layout-wise or mere looks, but more about the fundamentals of an imageboard. What I want to do is experiment in presentation of human interaction in a different way, and I have a few ideas that might turn out interesting. To me, Flash is just the obvious choice for what I have in mind, not the other way around :)
various people here have mentioned ajax, referring to it as difficult for developers.
This is pretty much only true when its hand coded.
one post mentioned jQuery
this is a ~14 kb JS library which makes all java scripting easier
it vastly simplifies AJAX type operations, and can be used in such a way that the system would degrade nicely
(i.e. a link that would initiate a scripted response, would load a new page when java was off, and the new page would contain the scripted response via some simple backend coding)
guides are available at jquery.com, but this page from IBM is much more concise and useful
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-ajaxjquery.html
Okay it's >>68 here,
I've got my HTML, CSS, and speed board running. ;-) It's not actually 100% complete but should be fairly usable. And although it doesn't (and probably won't) validate, most of the pages are pretty semantic.
Check it out, break it, let me know.
That "fluxing page" thing is really annoying.
>>83 Urg, contrast is too low (dark blue on black?) and everything's too big (I have to scroll around way too much for the amount of content I'm seeing). And what the hell is /slurry/?
Also, lol javascript popup!
All good points. I've adjusted the font size down on three of the four themes (there will be more to follow in a week or so).
Slurry... there are several different ideas behind it. First, it's a free for all zone. Second, each freak is erased after 48 hours of no activity, so any potential evidence is automatically deleted. Also, the 48 hour limit means they can be kept alive, indefinitely, if you're so inclined...
Second, simple obfuscation or hiding in plain site. If you were to reference that URL on paper, here's what it would look like:
/channel/5j/freak/834b808bde2c20165692a05a5046e4fce24a01a6
And in a couple of days there will be over a million freaks, visible 480 at a time, divided into 260 channels. Without knowing the URL in advance, it's going to be practically impossible for someone to accidentally stubmble inside one...
Third, I personally just wanted some quick and easy, uncensored, throw away place to post shit. It takes seconds to type "so" into the url bar, hit enter, click slurry, click a random channel and freak and be posting whatever you want (no cp!)..
To me, /slurry kind of rocks.
>>83 doesn't work at all for me. No matter what I click on, I keep getting redirected to the "you must be 18" page, and then back to the front page. (Firefox 2 on OS X, and yes, JS is enabled :)
> /channel/5j/freak/834b808bde2c20165692a05a5046e4fce24a01a6
Ugh.
Personally, I enjoy sharing stuff I find on the net with my roommate and friends. I don't think I'd be able to read that filename out loud and know they would get it right.
What I would do, if your goal is a random name that people won't be able to guess, is use a diceware-style naming algorithm. Telling someone "go to blahblah dot com slash monkey golf cube salad polka dot j p g, all one word" is a lot faster than reading off some 40 hex digits -- and then they just get a 404 because they got one digit wrong, and you have to read it again two or three times. If you have a decent sized dictionary, the names can be both short, sufficiently random, and quite readable. (Plus it adds a whole new entertainment aspect to it :)
>doesn't work at all for me.
Er, whoops.. after >>86 pointed it out, I re-worked the JS popup into an internal redirect last night and must have fucked something up. I'll get that fixed.
>I don't think I'd be able to read that filename out loud and know they would get it right.
And that's intentional. Those 40 byte random URLs are not suppose to be something you read aloud. In fact, they were specifically designed to be difficult to transfer outside the realm of copy and paste. Your point about mistyping one character and being off is exactly the way it's suppose to work.
Imagine some entity trying to bring legal pressure down onto one specific freak. Although still possible, the freaks were designed to make that course of action as difficult as possible.
At some point tonight, auto-destruct codes will be working. These allow every post flagged with a specific code (20+ digits) to be deleted with a single HTTP POST operation.
Now pair the freaks and the destruct codes together and you've got a fairly handy new tool.
> doesn't work at all for me.
I must have put a JavaScript agreeToTerms function in the wrong place or something. Shit, I always do that, I always mess up some mundane detail.
Uh.. that's embarrassing but yeah. You and a dozen or so people that hadn't already accepted the terms couldn't get in today.
My apologies. 48 hours down..
> I must have put a JavaScript agreeToTerms function in the wrong place or something.
Yeah, like in the source.
It's really a horrible, horrible idea. Try hitting the page for the first time and open up a couple boards in tabs to see just how bad.
Oh ninety-one, you silly, tell me you got the Office Space reference?
And re: the popup/terms, this is the first adult-oriented site I've ever developed. The terms and popup were an easy route to cover my own ass. Lucky for me the Society has helped me realize the popup was a severely bad idea and I have since corrected the problem.
ie. You don't have to agree anymore, there are no popups or notices, and we can all live and learn.
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