Opinions about phpbb v3?
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So I may end up running a very small private forum for a family group to coordinate genealogy work. My web host has a quick-install package for phpbb v3.
The forum would be
- very small numbers of posters (5-50, max)
- invite only, non-members can't view or post
- very low traffic (10s of posts per day, max)
Thoughts? Experiences? I'm looking for lightweight but can have images. Preferably low maintenance.
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Sounds fine.
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@benjamin-hall said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
So I may end up running a very small private forum for a family group to coordinate genealogy work. My web host has a quick-install package for phpbb v3.
The forum would be
- very small numbers of posters (5-50, max)
- invite only, non-members can't view or post
- very low traffic (10s of posts per day, max)
Thoughts? Experiences? I'm looking for lightweight but can have images. Preferably low maintenance.
I've run a phpBB forum for longer than I'd care to think about it. I'd say phpBB meets your use case but as far as maintenance, I'd make sure your PHP installation is secured properly and you can keep phpBB up to date. Since phpBB has such a large user base, it's a big target for bots that are trying to use security holes in whatever version you may have to try to gain a foothold on its host.
Edit: Just noticed your host has a quick-install package. In that case I'd say do it. Those tend to be set up in a fairly secure configuration (for obvious reasons, don't want to "quick-install" a vulnerability) and can be automatically updated, either by the host or via the ACP.
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phpBB is fine. Just make sure you stay on top of security updates, as with any piece of software.
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@thegoryone that was in my plan, since it's a private forum. I've also set permissions for guests and bots to no access.
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@benjamin-hall I played around with it (an empty one, without real users). It was annoying that avatar images doesn't resize automatically, but I didn't find any serious problem. You can host it ridiculously cheaply. (There are even free offerings, but they make it hard to migrate it out of their systems, and have ads).
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Fuck you and your garbage family's uncivilized discussions. No wonder you're wasting all your time looking to the past, when the FUTURE is Discourse. Buy a REAL server, hire a full-time admin, and start Docker Droplette Installation Procedure!
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@lorne-kates Automatic down-vote for suggesting Dis***** even in jest. That's not cool, man.
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@benjamin-hall Use Geni? Sure someone in your family has to cough up like $50 but... it's built for that.
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@blakeyrat said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
@benjamin-hall Use Geni? Sure someone in your family has to cough up like $50 but... it's built for that.
We actually have a full genealogy package that we're using. This is for coordination on who's pursuing which line, requests for help, discussion, etc. We have basic information on one side of my family back to before the Norman Conquest (1030 AD or so).
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@benjamin-hall Flarum would be interesting if bugs and missing features are acceptable
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@sockpuppet7 said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
@benjamin-hall Flarum would be interesting if bugs and missing features are acceptable
Yeah, no thanks. Most of the users are older people (my dad and his siblings), so stability and ease of use are much more important than glitz and features. Oh, and low maintenance on my end is also critically important.
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@benjamin-hall Ah. Well I'm American, our genealogy is all just "mutt", and we're pretty proud of it.
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@blakeyrat said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
@benjamin-hall Ah. Well I'm American, our genealogy is all just "mutt", and we're pretty proud of it.
I'm American, with some ancestors here since the Revolutionary War (and before). I'm as "European Mutt" as most (mostly British Isles with some German and Czech thrown in for good measure), but knowing about my history is important to me.
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@benjamin-hall said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
@lorne-kates Automatic down-vote for suggesting Dis***** even in jest. That's not cool, man.
I deserved that.
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@lorne-kates said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
@benjamin-hall said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
@lorne-kates Automatic down-vote for suggesting Dis***** even in jest. That's not cool, man.
I deserved that.
But it only takes
half an houran hour if you're already somewhat been saavy and have things already set up, such as a DNS and email provider. !!!!
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@benjamin-hall said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
We have basic information on one side of my family back to before the Norman Conquest (1030 AD or so).
Not to criticize the work that you (or someone else) did, but I would very much doubt the accuracy of such a line, except maybe if you managed to reattach it to some royal line (and even so...).
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@remi That's just it. We did hit a noble (not royal, but a collateral branch of such) line. Most of the non-royal lines we get back to the late 1700's or so. This is also a distributed effort--my family proper only did a small fraction of it. But when you go back far enough, there are lots of people looking at the same lines.
For this project we're more worried about correctness and widening the branches (following children/siblings/etc) than reaching far back.
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@benjamin-hall said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
We did hit a noble (not royal, but a collateral branch of such) line.
Even so, lines get dodgy very quickly when you get to the high middle-ages.
Genealogies written from there onwards (more recent ones) were only concerned with proving nobility and did not care that much about actual accuracy (as long as the name matched with a bit of twisting, that was a good-enough link!), and relied on older genealogies (low to high middle-ages) that were only ever concerned with proving links to mythical figures (usually Charlemagne, Arthur, Brutus or Caesar...). Those were as much poetry as genealogy. So you can find some documents with names and ancestry, but they should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
(probably the most reliable documents you could find would be charters and diplomas that would mention names and parentage as a way to identify individuals, not to establish lines, and tracking back ancestry one step at a time through those, but even those have been widely falsified, or even invented centuries later...)
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@remi Yeah, that's always a concern. In practice, we don't really care about going back that far except for bragging rights =).
I'm going to be taking a trip this summer looking for the actual grave-sites for some mid-1800's ancestors. We know roughly where/when they died (a county), but not enough information to go from there.
This is a religious obligation as well for LDS members, so it's serious business. The LDS church maintains (and makes available to everyone) a huge database of information and names and has volunteers digitizing all the records they can get their hands on.
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@remi said in Opinions about phpbb v3?:
only ever concerned with proving links to mythical figures (usually Charlemagne, Arthur, Brutus or Caesar...).
Not that hard to do, at least for the ones who actually existed. Anybody who had a decent number of children/grandchildren more than a few hundred years ago is more than likely an ancestor of anybody with any ethnic history in that area.
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@jaloopa Or even on the same continent (cf Genghis Khan).
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@jaloopa Proving your descent from a mythical figure (Arthur) might be a bit difficult, though.
Anyway, while it's likely all Western Europeans descend from Charlemagne, actually proving it in a reliable way is a much harder problem.
