We had some developers set up a site for us using joomla. I have a few problems with it

Problem 1 -The forum is set up using Fireboard but when you post, it's not in wysiwig mode. You can see what an end-user would see by going to another mode (Preview mode) but while entering your post, you see code (which seems to be the way that this forum is set-up). My initial user testing with K12 teachers is that it's unacceptably confusing. What are my choices at this point?

Problem 2 - When you post, the board has a little message bar above the post. If you put the cursor over a button, the message board shows a message. In some ways, this is useful. But, in the case of going over Preview, the message that appears above says "Click here to see what you message will look like when submitted". Of course, this message then stays there. Although we are still in beta test, we're getting users reporting that as a bug in that they start clicking on the "Click here to see what you message will look like when submitted" and of course, nothing happens. Again, any ideas about what to do?

I'm somewhat frustrated. I thought using joomla would cut down on programmer time and simplify usage. So far, the opposite has been true and we are still very far from having a site that satisfies our basic end-user ease of use requirements.

the board is up at www.spellingcity.com/index.php?option=co...eboard&Itemid=21

Sorry you're having issues. Did you specify your requirements to your developers? If you did they didn't seem to listen very well. Fireboard has a lot of kinks to work out and those are just a few. Possibly the next release will solve most of these but there is a possibility of bugs still remaining. Fireboard is still a "young" add-on so this is expected. Why your developers didn't pass that on to you is questionable.

Possibly you need an all-in-one solution instead of Joomla. Perhaps something along the lines of E107 which has all it's add-ons solid right out of the box.

The problem of creating specifications....Yes, I gave them a spec. It was a high level spec the type that a trusting individual who has been told (and confirmed) that joomla is a leading open source content management system might write. For instance, I think the spec said:
- an easy-to-use forum customized to our graphics in which members who have already joined elsewhere on the site (for a blog or to save a spelling list) are automatically members. When joining, they'll get the option of receiving our newsletter.
I don't blame the developers for not highlighting that joomla doesn't have a wysiwig-type forum.

It never occured to me that in late 2007, the question of whether a forum has a wysiwig posting mode could be an issue. I'm still confused over whether this is really the case

Does Fireboard have any plans for a wysiwig mode? Will there be an upgrade? I'm in way deep with joomla now having written custom componets for our spelling application. Is there another joomla forum that has wysiwig?

It was said that the parser was being replaced. With what I don't know. Hopefully the next release will fix things. When that will be I don't know. Can't say more than that as I am an uninformed individual.

There are other component forums to be sure. Development on them has seemed to stop though.

thanks. Could you help with a few more questions:
- who might know when Fireboard becomes wysiwig? (is that what a parser replacement would do)? How would I find "informed" individuals?
- If I felt that I needed a wysiwig interface, any ideas on what I could fit into or next to my joomla world? We already manage a phpbb board which works fine for us.

The people to ask would be the developers. Their presence around the community forums is rare lately. Even more so on the developer forums. I am hoping that is because they are diligently working on getting most, if not all, of these kinks ironed out.

Not too sure I understand your second question though.

Here's background, then my problem and question.

Background - As you can tell from using this forum, Fireboard is not wysiwig. (Of course, once you get used to html-like stuff, we tend to overlook this fact). An example of what this means is that when you highlight some text and then click the bold button, the user sees the text enclosed by a pair of "b's" in brackets and a slash. To normal people, like teachers and students and parents, this is incomprehensible. Normal people don't parse code, they read English expecting an underlined comment to be underlined.

We had developed a spelling test site. Then, we paid a developer to put it in joomla to create a forum, to set up a newsletter mechanism, and to provide a way for teachers to save lists and for students to retrieve them.

Problem - The user interface is awful. In some places, we can clean up the design. But the forum is built using Fireboard which our initial user feedback indicates, is unusable by non-techies. So I need to drop it or fix it or something.

Question - Is there a different interface for fireboard? ARe there other joomla forums/ Should I just go use phpbb which seems to be reliable and much easier to deal with than the joomla-based forums? All this talk of community and how helpful the joomla people are....here I am ....looking for some advice.....Am I in the wrong place? ........