(important) wxCommunity and integrating !?

[Jorg]

The new wxWebSite is under progress and will be released soon. On there I saw for the first time that there is a wxCommunity site which can offer a real cool starting place for the wxForum, have people post links, code snippets, projects statuses of their work etc.

The question is, do we want to integrate with the wxCommunity site? Right now if you are a forum member, you cannot use the forum name for the community site. There is no real link between the two while there should be a link to make people feel more at home, have more information and what not.

So, do we want to integrate with the 'official' wxCommunity site?

The site is at: http://www.wxcommunity.com/

Benefits:
- Users log in with same pwd and name as on the forum
- Users can post news
- Users can post links
- Users can review software
- I assume code snippets as we have in the Code Dump can be more centralized in the site as well, and more easy to be maintained

Regards,
- Jorgen

[NinjaNL]

I'd say go for it, with the proviso that the forum maintains a backup of relevant data for the users.

Assume for a moment what would the result be if the wxCommunity site went belly up. Where would all the good stuff be?

I am all for sharing of information, and possibly of users etc, but wouldn't like to see anything 'bad' happen to the forum should the connection be broken between the two sites.

[Ksmith22]

I'd say go for it, with the proviso that the forum maintains a backup of relevant data for the users.

Assume for a moment what would the result be if the wxCommunity site went belly up. Where would all the good stuff be?

I am all for sharing of information, and possibly of users etc, but wouldn't like to see anything 'bad' happen to the forum should the connection be broken between the two sites.

I agree. As long as everything isn't lost in the process, I see no harm in it.

[Jorg]

I emailed Kevin with the suggestion, I do not know how the postnuke system stores the data, but a first step would be something like a sync script that can add a user to the wxCommunity and vice versa. It would be tricky, but for example;

1. User enters wxCommunity site, adds member info.
2. A php script gets fired on this forum that adds the user to this forum (ofcourse this does not doublecheck if a user already exists or not)
3. The user is added.

For the other way around, that can be done the same. Only issues I have with it is;

1. Exposure of the script will allow spammers to abuse it. A solution could be sending an calculated CRC code along that verifies the authenticity
2. The user might already be present in one or the other lists. So we might need a better solution.

My php / web knowledge is limited maybe postnuke and php bb is easily merged..

- Jorgen

[upCASE]

So, do we want to integrate with the 'official' wxCommunity site?

I'd say yes.
The new site looks promising. I always thought that this forum needed a better, more 'official' state. That way the new site wouldn't need to create a forum and users could benefit from both.

I'm not really sure if registering the users here and there will be that easy, as I don't think that the data will match. But it would be a thing to have a look at. Lets see what Kevin says about this and then discuss the way to go.

[phlox81]

Hm, sure go for it. This should be the offical wxForum...

As for Updating userdata with the site, i don't know to that.
Ofcourse it would be nice, if the user could make a check,
for also register to the forum or community. But no automation.
Still I'd like the forum as a stand-a-lone Site, which is not
part of an phpNuke frame. And we have to see how vital this
new Community is at its start.

phlox

[ABX]

So, do we want to integrate with the 'official' wxCommunity site?

Yes.

ABX

[Jorg]

Thanks for all your feedback guys. I can see now this has become a very valuable resource, where many of us communicate daily.

I recently analyzed the logs and the statistics don't lie. We have 60.000 hits a day on average, about 1.7 million a month so I guess we can call this forum rather popular.

I will do everything I can to let it keep the independence, but yet allow integration so that people can see e.g. the forum from inside the wxCommunity site and perhaps show the latest forum topics inside the wxCommunity site. Which is also a start. If we could somehow sync the members that would be great, but if it is not possible, we might come up with a way that people register on the forum, and are auto-registered on the community part of the site.

This is all very early, I just wanted to know what ya'll think about it. Kevin Ollivier is still busy with the main wx site revamping, I hope the wxCommunity will become popular and then integration would be nice.

We'll see ...

Regards,
- Jorgen