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Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

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Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#21

Post by dchuk »

mongol wrote: post #20
dchuk wrote: post #2

This site was borne of the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17068138 (Specifically this part of the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17071224 ) I spun up an instance of phpBB (trying to keep costs down) and customized a ThemeForest theme to make it not ugly. I'll post a thread today that lists all of my notes from the setup process of the site for anyone interested. I'm a huge fan of…

I am thinking of starting a forum myself. How did you go about selecting phpBB of all options? I have mostly looked at nodeBB but have not taken any practical steps yet.

It's dead simple to setup, and very cheap to host. Plus I found some decent themes for it that were easy to tweak.

Overall though, nodeBB looks really nice, so go for it!

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#22

Post by jasonvorhe »

> must contain letters in mixed case, must contain numbers and must contain symbols

Please don't do this. Have a minimum length, but don't force me to miss it up. My password manager shouldn't have to try multiple times to generate matching passphrase.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#23

Post by jacquesm »

danmg wrote: post #11
dchuk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

That's how it usually goes with a side channel used to discuss another communications channel. E.g., "Can you believe this trash got on the front page!" everyone proceeds to downvote or "hey my show hn is up!" everyone upvotes.

That's what was going on on the IRC channel as well at some point.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#24

Post by Jake232 »

ploggingdev wrote: post #14

Nice idea. The biggest hurdle with starting a community site is getting the initial users and maintaining a level of activity that keeps bringing back users to the site. If activity slows down a little, you will find that traffic decreases proportionally. How do you plan to solve the chicken and egg problem? After the initial launch, what's the plan to get your site in front of potential users? I am working on a some…

I agree, getting that initial user base is always tricky. After that, things kinda perpetually keep themselves going.

Especially when you're likely talking about interesting topics / questions people google for. It seems in recent years that going has favored articles over forum topics in their results, but I'm sure there's still plenty of search traffic that goes to forums to bring in new users.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#25

Post by Washuu »

dchuk wrote: post #17
jwong_ wrote: post #16

After registering, I'm seeing this: [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions_messenger.php on line 506: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements Countable Probably best to turn off debugging statements.

Hmm, interesting. I'll take a look, thanks for letting me know. Just so I'm clear, this happened immediately after registering? Or did you do anything else that triggered this?

That is happening because you are running PHP 7.2. In that file $this->extra_headers is initialized as non-countable NULL. Basically phpBB needs to update their code base to support newer versions of PHP. A quick fix would be to change "var ... $extra_headers" at the top of the file to "protected $extra_headers = [];".

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#26

Post by shiado »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #22

> must contain letters in mixed case, must contain numbers and must contain symbols Please don't do this. Have a minimum length, but don't force me to miss it up. My password manager shouldn't have to try multiple times to generate matching passphrase.

Yeah this is annoying. Simply consider a^b, what makes that expression grow faster, increasing a, or increasing b? b is better mathematically and for mental overhead.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#27

Post by MithrilTuxedo »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #22

> must contain letters in mixed case, must contain numbers and must contain symbols Please don't do this. Have a minimum length, but don't force me to miss it up. My password manager shouldn't have to try multiple times to generate matching passphrase.

I've sent feedback to a couple dozen sites over this. Most were government website (internal military sites are the worst) but when various financial institutions started updating their policies they forcing this silliness.

When they don't allow spaces in passwords either, I worry.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#28

Post by Jake232 »

Washuu wrote: post #25
dchuk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, interesting. I'll take a look, thanks for letting me know. Just so I'm clear, this happened immediately after registering? Or did you do anything else that triggered this?

That is happening because you are running PHP 7.2. In that file $this->extra_headers is initialized as non-countable NULL. Basically phpBB needs to update their code base to support newer versions of PHP. A quick fix would be to change "var ... $extra_headers" at the top of the file to "protected $extra_headers = [];".

It's probably a safe assumption that they use a similar style elsewhere though, so probably better to just change PHP version rather than edit the source files?

I could be wrong, (I'm a Python guy - not PHP), just seems a safe assumption that it's likely not the only spot.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#29

Post by sneak »

Washuu wrote: post #25
dchuk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, interesting. I'll take a look, thanks for letting me know. Just so I'm clear, this happened immediately after registering? Or did you do anything else that triggered this?

That is happening because you are running PHP 7.2. In that file $this->extra_headers is initialized as non-countable NULL. Basically phpBB needs to update their code base to support newer versions of PHP. A quick fix would be to change "var ... $extra_headers" at the top of the file to "protected $extra_headers = [];".

A quicker fix for a brand new forum would be to not use some janky old PHP codebase.

Re: Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN

#30

Post by maltalex »

Nice job. I've actually been looking for more places to hang out with the HN crowd.

I'm not sure about this approach though. Forums are too centralized and don't feel interactive enough. I'd much rather see a HN community on Matrix or something similar.

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