korri78 wrote:
Hey~ BOJ team~

please wake up!!!!!

I have tried many time but no help.....

nanaya wrote:
Well .. I would try agora.. In fact its very Promising ...Not using 1.5 anyway. but the Agora Team is very quick in Responding to any questions about agora. Very soon It will be "THE" Joomla Forum.

I like agora, but didn't like its templates (any of them). None of them are 'glossy enough'.
can't 'attract' users......

Its like 'super model' without 'make-up' and with bad hair-day

I am trying PHPBB2.0 on my Lan setup

Ok, so there have been some interesting solutions put forward.

Regarding Agora, I'm afraid that my experience with Fireboard has tainted my enthusiasm slightly about trying any new forums on my sites. I did have a look at the Agora site at Joomlame, but to be honest, I don't think I would consider it just yet. I'd rather wait and see if it takes off and is still being actively developed 6-8 months from now.

It's a shame really, but I have a feeling that a lot of other users who did what I did (switched from SMF>Fireboard) might feel the same way. What if we switch from Fireboard to Agora and are left in the same situation 6-12 months from now?

I'll probably look at switching over to something like PHPbb 3 and using a bridge to syncronise the users (or might even have a look at the new SMF). The reason for my choice here, is that the likes of PHPbb have been around for a long time and have a huge following, as well as a large team of developers. There is very little chance of your forum system being abandonded if you are using software like that.

Of course, it means trying to find a bridge that allows users to log in using the Joomla (or community builder) registration and still be able to post in the forum (rather than having to log in twice).

Also, I would need to find a converter to convert from Fireboard to another system, however this can be done by someone else quite cheaply (think Rent-A-Coder).

Somebody mentioned in the Joomla forums that a good solution would be for a team of coders to use the PHPbb code as a starting point (seeing as it's completely open-source), and develop an integrated Joomla forum from there onwards. I think this is a good idea, simply because the PHPbb forum system has been around for a long time.

What other thoughts do people have?

P.S. I also think that the Best Of Joomla Website should at least have some form of permanent notification that states Fireboard is no longer in production and is unsupported by the developers. There must be lots of new Joomla users downloading this component who are in for a shock when it comes to getting updates!

iosoft wrote:
FB Died since the release of 1.0.4
While upgrading from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4, they messed up so much that now they can't even make 1.0.5.

Even 1.1 has the same bloody bugs that 1.0.4 has.

Now BOJ team is more interested to make money by showcasing 'commercial templates'



I have started looking for alternatives.
Hope someone will make a totally new version, just like FB came up when we were with JB.


Is this the offical Statement ?????????????????????????????

If yes i deinstall the Forum immediately !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And delete BOj from my fovorite Sides

And think this an insolence to go that way with users who spend there time here

Not official.

We plan on being here a while. We all have dedicated a LOT of time towards this effort MAINLY because we loved FB and were sorry that it isn't reaching it's potential. Our next release is out next week whereupon we start finalizing converters and after that 1.5 compatibility.

As for a PHPBB component there was one a while back based on PHPBB2. I still have it if anyone wants to develop it to work with the current versions of Joomla, which it does not. We thought about revivng this extension and went another route and wound up with Agora. I can tell you that when I used it all the PHPBB templates worked on it, hacks, etc. On top of that PHPBB has probably HUNDREDS of coders working on it. We have 4.

Now to speak to Agora not being "flashy" enough. Most will disagree. But we have learned from FBs mistakes concerning these "super" templates. They break very easily and oftentimes do not work the way they are supposed to. Proof? Hardly anyone has any problem with any of the TRUE default templates. But with Default Ex and Numinu before it the forum BLEW UP with questions on how to fix/customize them and stil is. Doubt me further? Look at the front page. They may LOOK good but they don't work right. Agora's templates are designed with forum SPEED in mind. The "flashy" templates are not. And besides, if you don't like a template you can create your own. For FB or Agora. So that being a reason not to use something is pretty short-sighted IMO.

Hi Marc,

I wish you the best of luck with Agora, but in all honesty, most users aren't tech savvy enough and don't understand (or agree with the reasons) why they can't have a flashy looking template/site. Unfortunately, it's not enough to tell them why, because if they don't accept/understand your answer, you can bet that their end users (who don't understand anything at all about website construction) won't either.

Just look at the success of template providers such as RocketThemes etc. Most Joomla admins want a website with all the bells and whistles and aren't particularly concerned with the ins and outs of PHP coding or the small development teams' woes of a missing apostrophe causing an error in a script.

This is the reality of internet users.

I feel that what you might end up doing here with Agora, is spending a lot of time producing a technically perfect Joomla component that not many people end up using. You need to ask yourself if that's what you want to do over the next couple of years.

Let's face it, if vBulletin suddenly announced that they were giving away free licenses and had also developed a component to integrate the forum software into Joomla sites, nearly everyone using Joomla would choose that. Why? Whilst you may have coded a perfect forum, people just want more bells and whistles!

There is a forum software rapidly gaining popularity called myBB (has over 15,000 members) which is just like vBulletin, except it's FREE and OS. They have already managed to produce a bridge for use with Joomla, and seem very helpful towards Joomla users. Now imagine if you and your team of 4 developers were to use their code (as in all of the hardwork has been done for you in creating a forum that is like vBulletin), and simply dedicated your time to integrating it as a Joomla component (rather than it having to be run as an external link or in the wrapper).

THAT would be very popular! Pretty soon, you'd find that the user uptake on it would be rapid, and that the other component developers (community builder et al) would happily provide modules that worked with your forum component.

But as things stand with Agora, I just can't see it really taking off. My feeling is that people don't want to wait while a whole new forum system is developed (that let's face it, will always be behind in the feature lists of the big names). They just want something exactly like myBB, vBulletin etc. to work inside their Joomla installation with the minimum of fuss but with as many bells and whistles as possible.

Sorry if it's not what you want to hear, but I just thought I'd share my experience and opinion on this.

Who said no bells and whistles for Agora? We are adding features on a daily basis. We have functionality OUT OF THE BOX that was promised with FB early on and has yet to materialize. We have features you WON'T ever see in FB but are comparable to other STAND ALONE forums. OUR forum component is based of of PunBB and is pretty damn fast, stable and EASY enough to code for anyone out there savvy enough to want to add their own extensions and functionality. We have bugs. Sure. What software doesn't? But NO WHERE NEAR the level FB has and. FB cannot say that.

As for popular. We just arrived on the Joomla extension scene a scant 5 months ago. We already forsee the main reason for MORE people NOT switching RIGHT NOW is (1) inability to since there are no converters available yet and (2) no 1.5/1.6 support yet. We're working on both.

Outfits like Rocket Theme or Yootheme do indeed have flashy templates BUT they break easily or cause other things to break. Example? Mootools VS JQuery. Breaks FB. Check the forum for how much of a problem this is. Let's not even get into the fact that J1.5 uses MooTools exclusively and so will anyone writing extensions for it. The FACT is people want a forum that works. Proven with FB. Looks nice but it's so full of bugs and SLOW that people like yourself are leaving it in droves. So they may be drawn to the flashiness AT FIRST but once they realize that it doesn't work then they're pissed and are looking for the exit.

But there is room on the planet for more than one forum solution for Joomla. This isn't a competition like many people keeping making this out to be. "Agora VS. FireBoard." If we don't get very big then so be it. BoJ had and still has the opportunity to rectify the mess they have gotten into with FireBoard. Time will only tell if they actually succeed in doing so. I've seen posts like this on other support forums and they usually DO signal that development has no future. I hope for the FireBoard community that I am wrong.

I've been following the Agora story for the past several months and the progress they have made is quite remarkable. I think that once they release a 1.5 version (even if in Legacy), it will start to attract more to use and more to help which should speed up the entire process. The devs over there really seem intent in making it the defacto choice for Joomla. I have only installed it to test with no production sites running (I need CB support) but from what I have seen so far has been pretty impressive.

I'm pretty frustrated like everyone else that we can't get a feature rich, stable, integrated with permission control system like other forums. I hate using the bridges myself but our choices seem pretty limited.

I hope Agora is that longterm choice we all want.

Does it work with Joomla 1.5 in legacy mode?