My Vision

[Semperfidelis]

Recently Ive been spending a reasonable amount of time intergrating vB with various other bits and pieces.
e.g.
support job tracking, chat clients, project management, toasters....

It has been this work that has led me to ask myself :
"Sure vB is great, but what else can be really done with it?"
"How far can it be pushed?"
"what are its limits? And can they be blown away?"

Below is a "vision" of how Id really like to take vB (or perhaps I should say using vB) truly to a level I had never previously contemplated.
I must warn you, this is not a "Lets bang a portal up as its front door" type of post.
This is thinking well and truly outside the 9 dots.


"The Current Situation"
We are running a vB for a variety of things, but I wouldn't say its being used as a traditional bulletin board.
Some of its current uses include
- an online knowledge base
- an online support job tracking system (intergrated to vB)
- an online document registry
- an online hardware/software registry
- a centralised delivery point for news feeds (from newgroups and other automated sources)

The people using the system arent your traditional sign up for a bulletin board types either.
They are located at various locations globally and their access is set up by us.
You cant even manually register.
Each company, has its own group.
Each group has its own members.
Group and user permissions combined determine what can be accessed, and what cant.
Each company also has its on style
Its basically been 'branded' to suit their corporate image.


"The Future"
I personally think with vB having such a solid, yet flexible base, why not build everything around it ?
As I said above, Im not talking about slapping some bs portal on the front.
Im also not talking a bout 'the odd hack here' and 'another one here' type scenario either
What I mean is taking the fine product Jelsoft has delivered us, and adding to it substantially.

vB would always remain the 'core'
Everything else would just be built into / on top of it.
Call it modular if you will.

Ive included a rough diagram that may explain what Im on about.
Below the image is some basic info of certain modules it might contain.
The ones Ive included are just ideas that spring to mind right now.
In reality, the possibilities are endless.

Anyway, fear me mspaint skills !


Groups and Members
An idea ive got for groups and members is basically propergation
Sorta like a PDC to BDC relationship.

Upon creation of a new group, I see it being populated with its specific members from an external source
e.g
Active Directory on a Win2k server

As users are added / deleted on the domain, replication would transfer to the vB DB accordingly
Members of the board wouldnt be automatically deleted, just expired.
Strict methods would need to be implemented for this to work correctly, but this is an idea, not a tech paper.

All the required details would be entered upon initial creation of the group.
Obviously they could be edited, sync turned off etc from with the admin CP.

Interaction Between Members
In addition to your traditional PM and/or email methods, I see incorporating
- chat as a group
- user to user chat
- direct user to user VOIP (go have a look at gphone for what I mean)

Fully Intergrated Support
Not just an addtiona set of forums
But a total online support solution.
This would be more like your tradional online job-tracking system
Complete with job ID's, status updates etc
The look and feel presented to the end client would drawn from their group / user settings from within vB.
As would the permissions system

News Feeds
Sure, there are a few 'news' (NNTP) based hacks around.
But none really do what Im talking about
Im thinking of providing public (to all members) and private (client specific) news feeds from various sources.
I also think providing the ability for the member, not the group, to be able to select which of the available feeds they want displayed.

Project / Contact / Document Management
Id like to see a total system that keeps all a companies documents, contacts etc up to date.
Whether it pulls thru information from specified locations, or is a manual job.


The key to all of this is to avoid directly modifying any of the core structure of vB
Sure the odd template may need to be added
Or addtitional files
Perhaps even additions to the DB stucture.
But not countless hours of hacking thru exisitng code
Only to have to do it all again when the next version of vB is released.

Make it almost like a plugin environment.
Plugins that can be created to snap straight into anyone else's board with minimal effort.

Hopefully Ive explained what Im thinking
If not, feel free to contact me / reply and ill try and clear up any misunderstandings.

Im not posting this for support on how to do it.
Nor am I asking for hacks to be created.
All I want is to hear your view ponts on what Ive been thinking about.
From both the members and the devs.

So what do you all think ?
Is it worthwhile pursuing and developing ?
Or should I start cleaning my crack pipe ?

[Kier]

I personally think with vB having such a solid, yet flexible base, why not build everything around it ?
As I said above, Im not talking about slapping some bs portal on the front.
Im also not talking a bout 'the odd hack here' and 'another one here' type scenario either
What I mean is taking the fine product Jelsoft has delivered us, and adding to it substantially.

vB would always remain the 'core'
Everything else would just be built into / on top of it.
Call it modular if you will.

That is exactly what we have planned since we decided to do such a major rewrite for vB3

[Jerry]

I have the mental software engine™ churning out designs at the moment

Not really ™ just my mind at work

[Bema Jinn]

Well i built my site (www.squirrelspit.com) around it, although most of it is just edited versions of viewthread and newreply template changes, but it still gets the job done brilliantly.

[Semperfidelis]

That is exactly what we have planned since we decided to do such a major rewrite for vB3

Outstanding.


Actually Kier, what are your thoughts on populating member groups from external sources ?

[Kier]

Outstanding.


Actually Kier, what are your thoughts on populating member groups from external sources ?

Should be fairly simple:

$membergroupsarray = explode(',', $userinfo['membergroupids']);
if (!in_array($newgroupid, $membergroupsarray))
{
    $membergroupsarray[] = $newgroupid;
    $DB_site->query("
        UPDATE " . TABLE_PREFIX . "user
        SET membergroupids = '" . implode(',', $membergroupsarray) . "'
        WHERE userid = $userinfo[userid]
    ");
} 

[someuser190826]

I have used vB2x in the past as a major backend core, for shopping carts, article management, link management, free hosting (one of my harder projects with vb). I ahve used vB for projects where a nice user management + interaction was needed.

At the moment I am extensively testing InvisionBoards capability to integrate seemlessly into the back-end project of URStuff.

I am actually working on having vb3 as the core for a muti-site project, similar to that of your case, and it will be integrating as the main system for a Messenger Service, so sort of like the MSN Passport system.

[Jerry]

Outstanding.


Actually Kier, what are your thoughts on populating member groups from external sources ?

LDAP.

[N9ne]

LDAP.

LDAP?

[Tolitz]

LDAP?

LDAP

[N9ne]

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

I see...still confused though

[Jerry]

How about this .

[N9ne]

How about this .

Now I understand

[InSite]

Sorry to fly in the face of public opinion, but I think this is a dangerous vision for any website. I love the idea of standards and interoperability, and vBulletin is certainly the centrepiece of many sites. However, I think it is limiting to base everything on a single product.

The better solution, in my opinion, would be to have a separate, central application which other vendors / developers can interface with. User accounts could be floated between all applications, and publishing / db access would be easily set up.

I would love it if Jelsoft produced this software (assuming they opened it up to other developers), but I definately feel it should be separate to the forums software.

Ok - flame me

[Jerry]

Sorry to fly in the face of public opinion, but I think this is a dangerous vision for any website.

I'd call it more of an starting place than a vision, anything that isn't flexible is doomed, I'd say it was a bunch of good ideas.

I love the idea of standards and interoperability, and vBulletin is certainly the centrepiece of many sites. However, I think it is limiting to base everything on a single product.

It would not be, buy the single fact of compliance to standards and interoperability. Interaction with a system does not mandate dependency.

The better solution, in my opinion, would be to have a separate, central application which other vendors / developers can interface with. User accounts could be floated between all applications, and publishing / db access would be easily set up.

Their are many that do this, and there are pros and cons to both methods. I believe many people have extended vB as it is. There is no reason to not use component based development.

I would love it if Jelsoft produced this software (assuming they opened it up to other developers), but I definately feel it should be separate to the forums software.

A car may or may not have a sun roof, even it if it is there is does not stop me driving the car, and if I really want to I can open the window.

There are a lot of aspects to extending a piece of software or building a new system that interacts with the first and is standalone, and I usually just think about the technical ones being a software designer, once the product direction is included and all the other factors, there are even more variables.

Which is why we think about things a lot