I used to run the website http://www.hof.org.uk. Basically, it's a load of static HTML pages, with a bulletin board that was cobbled together from scratch by me in Perl. The board was written to emulate the venerable old WWWBoard from Matt's Script Archive AND also provide a linear/flat-type option (because nothing at the time did both).

The code is now beginning to creak - it was never written with security in mind - and I want to hand the website over to others. Nobody seems to write their own code any more and certainly no-one stands a chance of reading my obscufated Perl!

So I'm looking for an off-the-shelf system that could both serve as a portal to the main site but, most importantly, serve as a bulletin board system.

The trick is, of course, to maintain as much of the look and feel as possible while still moving over to a supportable platform.

So, here's the question: can UBB.threads be put together to ape the board below:


(thread index in "threaded" mode)


(thread index in "non-threaded/flat" mode - ie. linear in UBB.threads terminology)


(viewing a thread in "threaded" mode)


(viewing a thread in "non-threaded/flat" mode)

The trick is that the modes can be mixed. Someone might view the thread index in threaded mode, but view the threads themselves in flat, or the other way round. Or they may go flat across the board, or threaded across the board.

(there is also only one big anarchic discussion board, not subdivided into category or topic areas, but I suspect it's not an issue if we wanted to maintain that single-board format)

So, basically - could we use UBB.threads to produce something similar to our existing setup?

It *might* be possible, but it would definitely probably require some hacking of the core code. The mixing of flat and threaded in different areas isn't possible out of the box.

You'd also need to heavily modify the templates to maintain that same look.

Anything is possible if you're comfortable with php, but it really depends on how much you want to modify the code. It's pretty safe to say with the amount of modification you'd need to do it would be pretty tough if you wanted to upgrade to new versions as they came out.

If anyone manages this - I would also be very interested in such a template / look.

Ought to say, I tried to create this with threads 6.x and didn't get too far

if the basic threads templates DIV'd the major parts (breadcrumbs, navbar, header, footer, content and more), it could be css'd to be quite similar and then easier to maintain as upgrades show up.

EXCEPT for the flat/threaded combo bombo stuff.