So at the moment I am trying to look for a replacement of the infamous Simple Machine Forum aka SMF. You may ask, what's wrong with SMF?
Well I actually like SMF, I know it as a user and I know the power and the features. As a developer, well is 2016 and LAMPapps are not as fancy anymore, not to mention a bit insecure. Of course I dont want to spread FUD just because, I have seen these apps live the test of time and be resilient whenever is on sites like bitcointalk or Tornet forums.
But in a world of frameworks and as a Pythonista, I want to push projects that are build on python, specially Django.
My task at hand is to test some of the Django forums available in the DjangoPackages website. So far I have tried a couple of them. What I have notice is that even if they do great on the forum threaded discussion, they miss on the other department such as the social networks bits like private messaging, usergroups, and other social features.
Definetly the most feature complete of the two packages I have gone through. These forum package uses some heavy requirements but also have a great look and feel. It supports native avatars, and attachments and syntax highlight and markdown. My issues however is like I mention before, the lack of the more potent features from SMF.
This is a nice little project built in Argentina, it has a simplicity look and feel ever since you step up to the landing page. Not much heavy styling is required here and I think the main goal is to insert into larger project. The way to handle some of the topics and layout are given up to the django admin page, the way to register new users is through email confirmation as opposed to Machina that goes through a more regular sign up process. The good part of this project is that it supports web notification as well as private messaging.
Other projects that I am looking to test are django-bb which by the look seems is also a more simplistic version of SMF; PyBBM is another one I want to look at, I think that this new forum should be python3 compatible so I am leaving most of the ones on DjPackages, but if you know of anyone I should be checking out make sure to let me know on the comments.
