Sympa vs Mailman/phpbb/mail2forum

jwhite · Post by **jwhite** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:20 am

Hi Paul,

From my notes, we decided the easiest, most straightforward way to solve it
was to use sympa. It's highly configurable, and has both a forum and a
mailing list interface, and sets forum replies up in a email-friendly
fashion, and neatly sidesteps the security problems that seem to plague many
of the php-based forum packages at the time. I set aside an afternoon to get
it set up and working, and got it done in about an hour altogether from the
Debian package.

Do you have it up in a publicly viewable test mode? Sympa was not one of the
packages I looked at when I did my survey, so I'm game to take a look.
Their public demo looked interesting, but I thought it would be useful to look at a configuration
that was tuned to be a wine-users mailman/phpbb replacement.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:50 am

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On Wednesday 26 March 2008 06:19:53 am Jeremy White wrote:

Hi Paul,

From my notes, we decided the easiest, most straightforward way to solve
it was to use sympa. It's highly configurable, and has both a forum and
a mailing list interface, and sets forum replies up in a email-friendly
fashion, and neatly sidesteps the security problems that seem to plague
many of the php-based forum packages at the time. I set aside an
afternoon to get it set up and working, and got it done in about an hour
altogether from the Debian package.
Do you have it up in a publicly viewable test mode? Sympa was not one of
the packages I looked at when I did my survey, so I'm game to take a look.

I'm afraid I don't.

Their public demo looked interesting, but I thought it would be useful to
look at a configuration that was tuned to be a wine-users mailman/phpbb
replacement.

I'm a little confused, since that's what sympa is by definition...

- --
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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jwhite · Post by **jwhite** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 11:41 am

Do you have it up in a publicly viewable test mode? Sympa was not one of
the packages I looked at when I did my survey, so I'm game to take a look.
I'm afraid I don't.

Their public demo looked interesting, but I thought it would be useful to
look at a configuration that was tuned to be a wine-users mailman/phpbb
replacement.
I'm a little confused, since that's what sympa is by definition...

Well, when you create a list, you get a range of choices.

Two seem like likely candidates; one is public mailing list, and one is Web Forum.
I'm not sure exactly what the difference is.

I've set up a 'Web Forum' on their demo server:
http://demo.sympa.org/sympa/info/wine-test

So far, the archives aren't viewable yet, so I'm not really
able to assess it. Hopefully that's just a matter of some time
so I can look further.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:31 pm

On Wednesday 26 March 2008 09:40:19 am Jeremy White wrote:

Do you have it up in a publicly viewable test mode? Sympa was not one
of the packages I looked at when I did my survey, so I'm game to take a
look.
I'm afraid I don't.

Their public demo looked interesting, but I thought it would be useful
to look at a configuration that was tuned to be a wine-users
mailman/phpbb replacement.
I'm a little confused, since that's what sympa is by definition...
Well, when you create a list, you get a range of choices.

Two seem like likely candidates; one is public mailing list, and one is Web
Forum. I'm not sure exactly what the difference is.

Aaah. The former is a forum with a mailing list interface, the latter is just
the forum.

So far, the archives aren't viewable yet, so I'm not really
able to assess it. Hopefully that's just a matter of some time
so I can look further.

It wouldn't surprise me if they've disabled archiving to prevent spammers from
abusing their demo server.

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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jwhite · Post by **jwhite** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:56 pm

Paul Johnson wrote: It wouldn't surprise me if they've disabled archiving to prevent spammers from
abusing their demo server.

No, it just took a while.

So I don't like forums, and don't feel qualified to judge whether or
not this is better. So I'd appreciate it folks that *like* forums could
give this a look and see what they think:
http://demo.sympa.org/sympa/info/wine-test

I'm afraid that, imho, the bar for replacing phpbb needs to be set high.
All of the extra traffic is clear evidence to me that phpbb has accomplished
the primary goal - enabling a greater range of users to connect.
(And yes, I'm all too aware that some folks think that it's had some
bad side effects, but still imho, these are all just healthy growing pains...)

Cheers,

Jeremy

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:01 pm

jwhite wrote: So I don't like forums, and don't feel qualified to judge whether or
not this is better. So I'd appreciate it folks that *like* forums could
give this a look and see what they think:
http://demo.sympa.org/sympa/info/wine-test

It's ugly. Can it be themed as well as phpbb? Beauty aside, it really isn't like most forums out there and loses a lot of user friendliness for those who prefer a web forum.

(And yes, I'm all too aware that some folks think that it's had some
bad side effects, but still imho, these are all just healthy growing pains...)

IMHO too.