Forum Made With Flash

[ministoner]

Hey all you flash lovers!

I am in the process of developing a forum/bulletin board made from flash. The reason i have come here is for your views on what you would expect from a flash forum, eg. template design, customisation etc.

So if you could spare a bit of time and reply with your views and opinions of a flash forum/bulletin board and features you would like or expect.

Thanks again.

[cancerinform]

thread moved.

[Rhysie]

Hey all you flash lovers!

I am in the process of developing a forum/bulletin board made from flash. The reason i have come here is for your views on what you would expect from a flash forum, eg. template design, customisation etc.

So if you could spare a bit of time and reply with your views and opinions of a flash forum/bulletin board and features you would like or expect.

Thanks again.

Isn't that ridiculously complicated and largely unnecessary? If you sit it on a DB (which must be assumed to be true...) then the large it got, the larger your BB would become. Unless you modified it so that only requested info is displayed, which then makes everything else much more complicated.

Love the idea, but the development behind it just seems much too complex to realistically consider...

[Frets]

I've seen a few.

Very unimpressed. a gentle wind and the house of cards falls apart.
too many parsing issues. too much code replication and still not enough features that everyone has come to expect from a bb.

[Chris_Seahorn]

I love them. I don't code them for profit but only for fun or opensource. I try to build one every year (I even have one submitted here at Flashkit). I personally only use them if my website if full Flash for continuity (I hate full Flash sites that fire php boards for instance) and if I run a Hybrid site (Flash as content) I normally run an opensource php board since that visually makes more sense to me and offers SEO (although I was just shown some Flash deep linking examples that may even the field a bit). This year the biggest change for my boards is that instead of a bbcode type setup for tagging I've integrated full wysiwyg html editors board wide. Both posting panes and editing panes are full html. The entire board runs off two php backends and is MySQL stored. Searching, pinning, stickies, permissions....the whole shebang. Every year it gets better. I also have coded them for Flash, Koolmoves and Swishmax and will most likely build a Flex board based on the Data Services in 2007 just to say I did
It's a perfect way to learn and develop your backend skills and integrating dynamic data with a flash enviro. If you can code a board...you are definitely doing well IMO (not many people can).

If you need someone to hash out board thoughts with...I'm familiar with this type of code and would be glad to respond to whatever thoughts you have on the subject.

PM me ministoner. We'll talk.

[Chris_Seahorn]

Also, I should ask WHY you are coding aboard.

If for commercial purposes...as a standalone....your choosing badly. It's a business model destined to struggle IMO (too many guys like me make it easy to find a free alternative). 2 years ago...a commercially sold Flash board made more sense than in 2006/7. Friends of Ed, T U F A T and many more made forums a no brainer for cheap.

If coding it as part of a suite of options for websites YOU design ("Need a forum?..no problem...we can add one to your Flash website for xxx dollars") it makes more sense. Even just as an addon to someone elses Flash design I would guess it would struggle since they would then have to incorporate it into what they have existing (and their userbase or database if their existing is a DB driven site). All eggs in your basket is the only way to glean it as a profit bearing item toward the whole (again...if a designer/developer) in coders opinion.

So...what are your plans for your board and more importantly....where can we see it right now (surely you have some mockups)? If you can't provide this info I will guess it's for commercial purposes and would be less likely to be interested. Just being honest

Looking forward to your response.

Chris

[nocrapchurch]

I agree with Chris and others. Unless you've got some practical idea none of us have considered for the message board, going with Flash is ridiculously unnecessary. It would have been four years ago, but it's the last thing anyone would want in a forum.