Xojo has been using esoTalk for a number of years for their forum. It lacks a number of features that really hamper things (search, I’m looking at you!) I know Toby (original creator of esoTalk) has been working on new forum software called Flarum, and it has been under development for several years.
Looks like they are finally reaching late-stage betas for the initial release.
Any chance we’ll be seeing a forum upgrade here soon?
we dont discuss future plans
but you knew that
lather rinse & repeat as necessary
Sigh.
C’mon you’re asking “when” questions and you KNOW the answer before you even ask
So why be surprised ?
We’ve been watching flarums progress
Is there a chance - sure there’s a chance
Soon ? maybe, maybe not, maybe never.
This isn’t a substantively better answer but it IS all I can tell you
You know this
I know of the cone of silence surrounding product plans, sure. I guess I didn’t assume plans for the forum were quite as top secret.
At any rate, am I the only one who finds the forum search feature to be more or less useless? I’ve tried every way I can think of to get it to give me relevant results sorted by date in descending chronological order, and nothing ever works right.
Looks like I’m not the first to bring this up, and it also does not look like anything is planned to improve it beyond punting to Google: https://forum.xojo.com/30945-searching-tips/0#p253791
For instance, if I search for: “Sockets in Threads + #order by newest”, I get this:
Or how about we search for some really disparate terms to see when they ever show up together: Elephant Shuttle Ceiling + #order by newest
I do try to turn to the forum first when I run into a roadblock, but I’ve wasted so much time trying to find stuff …
You’re not alone. I just use Google.
and it needs a “fuzzy” search… which is why sometimes I too use Google (but that usually triggers tons of inWebpage Xojo adds for several weeks)
You have noticed that Flarum is still in beta right? From their website:
[quote]Please keep in mind that Flarum is beta software. That means:
It still has some incomplete features and bugs
At some point sooner or later it will probably break[/quote]
Last time I looked, they hadn’t even reached 1.0 and for me, that’s a non-starter.
Yes, I know that Flarum is still beta. I also know a fair bit about what’s going on under the hood in EsoTalk, as I’ve set up and continue to maintain a few busy forums with it for completely unrelated stuff. EsoTalk has never really been much past the beta stage - the last release of it was 1.0.0g4 before Toby realized it would never scale well and he started over.
At any rate, I’m not married to Flarum - there are plenty of other forum / discussion platforms out there that may fit the bill. I just wish it was not so difficult to find actually relevant results when I look for something on the forums. I know the Xojo team is stretched thin, but this is something that affects literally everyone who uses Xojo, from the newest tire-kickers to the folks who have been around forever. Aside from the IDE itself, this may be the next most important user-facing facet of the Xojo experience.
I created a feedback case requesting something be done to improve the forums generally and the search in particular.
Sign on if you are interested: <https://xojo.com/issue/49219>
you maintain some flarums sites ?
you dont have this exact same issue on those sites ?
if you wanted to fix searching you have the code, could revise it, fix searching on your sites and send us a patch we could apply and fix ours too ?
no ?
I’ve been watching Flarum too. I don’t think it’s ready. Or honestly, even necessary. Search is probably esoTalk’s biggest problem, but search really difficult to get right. Just use Google, you’ll get much better results no matter how much effort somebody puts into esoTalk’s searching.
I don’t think I’ve ever tried to search the forum directly. Why limit your answers to just the forum? Google gets me what I’m looking for every time.
I say give Flarum more time. As it is, I don’t see the transition as being worth the effort for Xojo or its users.
Loading longer topics is getting painfully slow. Not every time I want to search in the Goggle but just this forum.
How long has Flarum been in development? I would prefer something professional and not a hobby project (again).
I no longer speak for Xojo, but when we were searching for something to migrate from phpBB to, options were pretty limited. Discourse was the runner-up, but it didn’t really feel like what we wanted. The other options were far to similar to the same old awful forum software that comes in so many different varieties. Today, the landscape hasn’t changed much. I don’t expect there is much of any desire by Xojo to make the change.
When I proposed (and ultimately setup) esoTalk, it was always with the long term goal of stepping to something better. Geoff and I had ideas of what we wanted to create, but that would take time. And of course, because of Web Edition, we’d need to use that which also meant getting that matured first. So instead of hanging on to phpBB for another 5-10 years, esoTalk was brought in to fill the gap.
Today, I don’t believe custom community software is even on their radar. I don’t expect esoTalk to go anywhere at least for a few years. New software would take resources that Xojo doesn’t have to spare, and off-the-shelf software leaves much to be desired. At best, it would be a cross-grade. That’s a tough sell any way you slice it.
Actually, it is pretty easy to add a Google search box to any site. I would bet this can be added to Esotalk fairly simply. Then the major flaw can be mitigated.
https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/2630969?hl=en
https://www.wired.com/2010/02/add_a_google_search_box_to_your_site/
Famous last words.
[quote=346242:@Norman Palardy]you maintain some flarums sites ?
you dont have this exact same issue on those sites ?
if you wanted to fix searching you have the code, could revise it, fix searching on your sites and send us a patch we could apply and fix ours too ?
no ?[/quote]
I maintain 2 esoTalk-based sites, and they have the same shortcomings for search. The user domain of those sites does not rely nearly as much on the ability to search content of prior conversations, so for my application the stinky search is not a problem.
I was not aware that Xojo was interested in code contributions as you describe, what given all the secrecy around future plans, company direction and whatnot.
esoTalk is open source so …
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