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Need Advice on Forum Software

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brahman:
Hi everybody,

when I attended a conference about physiological research over the weekend in Holland, the attendants agreed to stay in touch and continue collaborating through the internet.

So it fell into my lap to start a forum on the net, something I have never done before.

Therefore I hope that with the combined brain power of our dear Donationcoder members, I will be able to whip something up in a jiffy.

Now in contrast to the "jiffy" thing is my tendency to be overly thorough and perfectionist as well as forward looking :).

So here are my thoughts/questions/requirements:

1.) Could you recommend free forum software which is

a.) Easy to use and administer, while still having an (overly) full feature set and which is rock solid.

b.) Preferably it should be able to handle HTTPS, be strong on privacy/security features (no search robots access, invitational password to sign up, if possible for a certain board only), and have fine permission granularity (childboards and even subchildboards with different permissions). F.e. one group of researchers working on a particular project has access to a certain childboard, but not to another one which deals with another topic.

c.) Some aspects of "Social Networking" should be incorporated into the board, so that every member can in some way have there own little space and a list of friends or something like that. I want the members to be at home and not feel the necessity to go to one of those evil places on the net, where the dignity of their personal privacy is compromised even before they signed up for their service (by already profiling non-members on the basis of invitations they received -- sorry I am getting OT  ;)).

d.) Multimedia should be easily incorporated: f.e. a movie of physiological measurements in a subject over a period of several minutes as shown on the computer screen of the researcher - or help screen casts on using complicated medical software.

e.) Download repository

f.) Oh - and did I mention free and open source?


2.) Beside being a collaboration ground, I also would like to have companion/integrated Wiki- or Knowledge-Base software with the forum. Again, that software (which I hope you can also recommend) needs to have granular access rights. If a common password facility could be used it would be perfect (am I dreaming???), so that people only need to sign up once for the forum and then have access to the corresponding wiki or knwledge base.


3.) Another possiblity/(dream?) should be integration with mumble, so that voice chats for collaborating groups may be possible in the future, if the bard takes off. I think it would be too  much for me to install murmur or integrate a murmur server right now, but I think it would be nice to have in the future.

So that's it for now, I hope more considerations will become clear in the lively (I hope  :)) ensuing discussion.

Thanks in advance for your comments.

Kind regards,

Brahman

sri:
Try http://elgg.org/

40hz:
Hi everybody,

when I attended a conference about physiological research over the weekend in Holland, the attendants agreed to stay in touch and continue collaborating through the internet.

So it fell into my lap to start a forum on the net, something I have never done before.

Therefore I hope that with the combined brain power of our dear Donationcoder members, I will be able to whip something up in a jiffy.

Now in contrast to the "jiffy" thing is my tendency to be overly thorough and perfectionist as well as forward looking :).
-brahman (December 10, 2009, 08:12 AM)
--- End quote ---

It's good that you want to be thorough, but I'd advise getting something up on the web as quickly as possible while the memories of the conference are still fresh in everyone's mind. Once you have a basic web presence, your membership and you will gain a better understanding of what it actually wants, as opposed to what merely looks good on paper.

The reason I mention this is because of an experience I had helping set up a specialist website.

When it was originally conceived, one of the "most important" features was going to be providing file downloads. During the development stage, a huge amount of effort went into the design and implementation of a secure download server. However, once the site was launched, it became obvious that most of the membership was not interested in file downloads. So virtually all of the time and effort that went into providing that capability went to waste.

Oddly enough, the one thing that was not planned for - but was very much wanted - was an advanced member profile feature. This group passed a lot of grant, client, and job referrals back and forth between its members. So having detailed profile information for each member was extremely beneficial when deciding who to pass a referral to.

So I'd suggest prototyping. This would allow you and your fellow conferees to stay in touch with each other while interest is still high; while still giving you time to adequately evaluate other products and services.

You could try using something like  Ning to set up a test space before you go and scratch-build your own. It's a remarkably good "starter environment" for community building. More than a few Ning users originally intended to do nothing more than set up a temporary site only to end up staying there permanently once they realized it was all they needed.

Info on Ning can be found here: http://about.ning.com/product.php

brahman:
Thank you for your advice, Sri and 40hz. :)

I agree: Time is of the essence. There needs to be something up for the weekend. Right now I did an SMF install on x10hosting. Can't get the email notification system to work though. SMF just does not want to send emails. >:(

But I just found something very interesting that sounds like it would exactly fit the bill: www.liferay.com

Though I am not sure if I won't be in over my head with liferay. :huh:

Anybody has experiences with it? Can I install on a free x10hosting account?

About Ning: Looks interesting - can I migrate users to another system if I decide to change the platform?

Thanks,

B.

mouser:
Regarding suitability of SMF (Simple Machines Forum) -- the forum software we use here on DonationCoder:

I think SMF implements one of the best combinations of hardcore forum features while remaining easy to administer and manage.  Full stop.
It's free and while not technically open source, is close enough for most people.


However, it does not excel in some of the areas you mention, including the c,d,e,2,3 areas you listed above regarding multimedia, social networking, download repository, and ancillary stuff like wiki.  It has no CMS features to speak of, and it sounds to me like you might be better off with a CMS that includes forum functionality as part of it.

There are a lot of modifications for SMF, but the mechanism for extending SMF is pretty messy and i'd avoid it as much as I could if i were you, and instead look for something that includes all the features you already know you need.

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