Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine

Replaced CKEditor with TinyMCE light-weight html editor.
Integrated AntiSamy.NET for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections.
Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc.
Data access: default provider.

Version 4.0

Released Oct 14 2010

Custom Single sign on using OpenId webring.
Email notifications of new posts
Messages and threads posted by user on user detail page.
Enhanced dashboard for admins/moderators (unanswered threads from every forum)
Highlight animation on selected message
User edit profile page.
Reply to messages

Version 3.0

Released Jul 26 2010

Sign in with Twiter OAuth
Enhanced message replacements (youtube links, cleaner html, etc)
Error logging using NLog

Updated Wiki: Roadmap

jorgebg — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:54:05 GMT

Nearforums Roadmap

Roadmap for Nearforums, showing the features included in previous releases and the new features planned for next releases.

Use the Issue Tracker to propose new features.

Version 9.0

Planned

SQL Azure support #20075
Admin UI for Forum Categories #20060
Avoid html validation for certain roles #20097
Improve profile picture moderation and support #20059
Warn, suspend, and ban users #20037

Version 7.0

Released Nov 3rd, 2011

UI: Flexible layout to handle both list and table-like template layouts.
Theming - Visual choice of themes: Deliver some templates on installation, export/import functionality, preview.
Allow site owners to choose default list sort order for the forums.
Forum latest activity.

Version 6.0

Released May 31 2011

Authentication using Membership Provider for MSSQL AND MySql
Spam prevention: Flood Control
Moderation: Flag messages
Content management: Pages: Create pages (about us/contact/texts) through web administration
Membership authentication for MySQL
Allow nearforums to run as an IIS subapp
Migrated Facebook Connect to OAuth 2.0

Version 5.0

Released Feb 8 2011

.NET 4.0 as target framework using ASP.NET MVC 3.
Views migrated to Razor.
Alternate template (Layout file) for mobile devices

Version 4.1

Released Nov 15 2010

Replaced CKEditor with TinyMCE light-weight html editor.
Integrated AntiSamy.NET for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections.
Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc.
Data access: default provider.

Version 4.0

Released Oct 14 2010

Custom Single sign on using OpenId webring.
Email notifications of new posts
Messages and threads posted by user on user detail page.
Enhanced dashboard for admins/moderators (unanswered threads from every forum)
Highlight animation on selected message
User edit profile page.
Reply to messages

Version 3.0

Released Jul 26 2010

Sign in with Twiter OAuth
Enhanced message replacements (youtube links, cleaner html, etc)
Error logging using NLog

Updated Wiki: Roadmap

jorgebg — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:51:07 GMT

Nearforums Roadmap

Roadmap for Nearforums, showing the features included in previous releases and the new features planned for next releases.

Use the Issue Tracker to propose new features.

Version 9.0

Planned

Version 7.0

Released Nov 3rd, 2011

UI: Flexible layout to handle both list and table-like template layouts.
Theming - Visual choice of themes: Deliver some templates on installation, export/import functionality, preview.
Allow site owners to choose default list sort order for the forums.
Forum latest activity.

Version 6.0

Released May 31 2011

Authentication using Membership Provider for MSSQL AND MySql
Spam prevention: Flood Control
Moderation: Flag messages
Content management: Pages: Create pages (about us/contact/texts) through web administration
Membership authentication for MySQL
Allow nearforums to run as an IIS subapp
Migrated Facebook Connect to OAuth 2.0

Version 5.0

Released Feb 8 2011

.NET 4.0 as target framework using ASP.NET MVC 3.
Views migrated to Razor.
Alternate template (Layout file) for mobile devices

Version 4.1

Released Nov 15 2010

Replaced CKEditor with TinyMCE light-weight html editor.
Integrated AntiSamy.NET for cleaner html user post and add more prevention to potential injections.
Admin status page: a page for the site admin to check the current status of the configuration / db / etc.
Data access: default provider.

Version 4.0

Released Oct 14 2010

Custom Single sign on using OpenId webring.
Email notifications of new posts
Messages and threads posted by user on user detail page.
Enhanced dashboard for admins/moderators (unanswered threads from every forum)
Highlight animation on selected message
User edit profile page.
Reply to messages

Version 3.0

Released Jul 26 2010

Sign in with Twiter OAuth
Enhanced message replacements (youtube links, cleaner html, etc)
Error logging using NLog

Closed Issue: SQL Azure support [20075]

jorgebg — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:45:28 GMT

Adapt the membership sql scripts to support SQL Azure and SQL server 2012
Comments: On default branch

Updated Wiki: Documentation

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:03:18 GMT

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Installation: How to setup/deploy a nearforums site.
Setup authentication providers: How to configure Facebook, Twitter, OpenId webring, Custom Db and ASP.NET Membership authentication providers.
Templating: How to change the overall look and layout of a Nearforums site.
Localization: How to install a translation file and switch to another culture.
User authentication: How to authenticate users from an existing db into Nearforums site.
First steps into Nearforums for website administrators: If you’ve successfully setup Nearforums, check these first recommended steps.
Development instructions: Want to fork the solution to extend or override a behaviour?

Reference

Configuration: Configuration elements and attributes.
FAQ: Frequently asked questions
Referenced APIs: External APIs referenced in the solution.
Roadmap: List of features included in previous releases and the features planned for next releases.
Community Guide: If you are contributing to the Nearforums project, please read this first.
Project Governance: See how formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established.

Updated Wiki: Documentation

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:03:06 GMT

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Installation: How to setup/deploy a nearforums site.
Setup authentication providers: How to configure Facebook, Twitter, OpenId webring, Custom Db and ASP.NET Membership authentication providers.
Templating: How to change the overall look and layout of a Nearforums site.
Localization: How to install a translation file and switch to another culture.
User authentication: How to authenticate users from an existing db into Nearforums site.
First steps into Nearforums for website administrators: If you’ve successfully setup Nearforums, check these first recommended steps.
Development instructions: Want to fork the solution to extend or override a behaviour?

Reference

Configuration: Configuration elements and attributes.
FAQ: Frequently asked questions
Referenced APIs: External APIs referenced in the solution.
Roadmap: List of features included in previous releases and the features planned for next releases.
Community Guide: If you are contributing to the Nearforums project, please read this first.
Project governance: See how formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established.

Updated Wiki: Documentation

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:02:52 GMT

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Installation: How to setup/deploy a nearforums site.
Setup authentication providers: How to configure Facebook, Twitter, OpenId webring, Custom Db and ASP.NET Membership authentication providers.
Templating: How to change the overall look and layout of a Nearforums site.
Localization: How to install a translation file and switch to another culture.
User authentication: How to authenticate users from an existing db into Nearforums site.
First steps into Nearforums for website administrators: If you’ve successfully setup Nearforums, check these first recommended steps.
Development instructions: Want to fork the solution to extend or override a behaviour?

Reference

Configuration: Configuration elements and attributes.
FAQ: Frequently asked questions
Referenced APIs: External APIs referenced in the solution.
Roadmap: List of features included in previous releases and the features planned for next releases.
Community Guide: If you are contributing to the Nearforums project, please read this first.
Governance: See how formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established.

Updated Wiki: Documentation

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:02:19 GMT

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Installation: How to setup/deploy a nearforums site.
Setup authentication providers: How to configure Facebook, Twitter, OpenId webring, Custom Db and ASP.NET Membership authentication providers.
Templating: How to change the overall look and layout of a Nearforums site.
Localization: How to install a translation file and switch to another culture.
User authentication: How to authenticate users from an existing db into Nearforums site.
First steps into Nearforums for website administrators: If you’ve successfully setup Nearforums, check these first recommended steps.
Development instructions: Want to fork the solution to extend or override a behaviour?

Reference

Configuration: Configuration elements and attributes.
FAQ: Frequently asked questions
Referenced APIs: External APIs referenced in the solution.
Roadmap: List of features included in previous releases and the features planned for next releases.
Community Guide: If you are contributing to the Nearforums project, please read this first.
Project governance: See how formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established.

Updated Wiki: Community Guide

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:01:18 GMT

Participating in the community
Communication
Code to read
Code reviewing

Participating in the community

The community exists mainly through the Issue Tracker, the Discussions and the repository.

There are many ways to join the project, either by writing code, or by testing and/or helping to manage the upcoming features / bugfixes. Go to http://nearforums.codeplex.com/ and

Join the discussions mailing lists by clicking on the E-Mail Notifier box on the right sidebar of the main pages of Discussions and Issue Tracker.
All development questions should go to Discussions, though you might want to check the previous posts.
Subscribe to the rss of nearforums project to see what is happening (commits/wiki updates/etc): http://nearforums.codeplex.com/project/feeds/rss.
See upcoming features and bug fixes on the Issue Tracker. Vote and comment on the ones you find interesting in order to prioritize.
Submit a patch for a feature or bug. To do so, you can create a fork in the source code tab of the project (see how to create forks / pull requests on Codeplex). Each fork is a copy of the full source code repository that you own entirely. You should read the development instructions for further info.

Communication

Despite the online nature of the nearforums project and the human contact abstraction that results from that fact, it is important to realize that there are real people at the end of all contributions. Treat all other community members as you would expect to be treated. Review the contribution, not the contributor; don't annoy others, and don't become easily annoyed yourself.

Code to read

Before you can contribute code, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the existing code base. Take a look at how controllers, views, client services and entities are written.

Get a copy of nearforums repository (anonymously, if you don't yet have an account with commit access) — so you can look at the code.

Code reviewing

The best way to have a healthy development community is to look at each others' code. Again, review the contribution, not the contributor. Code reviewing helps to maintain software quality and helps developers learn from each other.

Reviews should be public using the mailing list.

Project Governance

Formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established. See Governance for further info.

This document is based on Apache Subversion Community Guide, licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0.

Updated Wiki: Community Guide

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:59:46 GMT

Participating in the community
Communication
Code to read
Code reviewing

Participating in the community

The community exists mainly through the Issue Tracker, the Discussions and the repository.

There are many ways to join the project, either by writing code, or by testing and/or helping to manage the upcoming features / bugfixes. Go to http://nearforums.codeplex.com/ and

Join the discussions mailing lists by clicking on the E-Mail Notifier box on the right sidebar of the main pages of Discussions and Issue Tracker.
All development questions should go to Discussions, though you might want to check the previous posts.
Subscribe to the rss of nearforums project to see what is happening (commits/wiki updates/etc): http://nearforums.codeplex.com/project/feeds/rss.
See upcoming features and bug fixes on the Issue Tracker. Vote and comment on the ones you find interesting in order to prioritize.
Submit a patch for a feature or bug. To do so, you can create a fork in the source code tab of the project (see how to create forks / pull requests on Codeplex). Each fork is a copy of the full source code repository that you own entirely. You should read the development instructions for further info.

Communication

Code to read

Before you can contribute code, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the existing code base. Take a look at how controllers, views, client services and entities are written.

Get a copy of nearforums repository (anonymously, if you don't yet have an account with commit access) — so you can look at the code.

Code reviewing

Reviews should be public using the mailing list.

Project Governance

In order to have a smoothly running project, formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established. A member of the community may have multiple roles. See Governance for further info.

This document is based on Apache Subversion Community Guide, licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0.

Updated Wiki: Governance

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:57:30 GMT

Nearforums Governance

Roles and Responsibilities

In order to have a smoothly running project, formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established. A member of the community may have multiple roles.

Users

advocating for use of the project
informing developers of project strengths and weaknesses from a new user’s perspective
providing moral support (a ‘thank you’ goes a long way)
writing documentation and tutorials
filing bug reports and feature requests
participating on the discussion boards or forums and email lists

Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often find themselves becoming more and more involved. Such users may then go on to become contributors, as described below.

How to become one: Install and use Nearforums

Contributors

Contributors are community members who submit patches to the project. These patches may be a one-time occurrence or occur over time. Expectations are that contributors will submit patches that are small at first and will only grow larger once the contributor has built confidence in the quality of their patches.

NOTE: before a contributor’s first legally significant patch is put into the repository they must sign a Contributor License Agreement or assignment agreement. The patch can be submitted and discussed but it can’t actually be committed to the repository without the paperwork.

How to become one: Submit a patch as a fork. To do so, you can create a fork in the source code tab of the project (see how to create forks / pull requests on Codeplex). You should read the development instructions for further info.

Committers

Committers are contributors who have shown dedication to Nearforums, high technical prowess and the ability to work well with contributors and users. The committers have responsibilities beyond the contributors. In particular, committers formally decide on whether patches are entered into the main code repository and add those requests. Additionally they verify with Outercurve Foundation staff that a potential contributor has a signed CLA before committing a patch to the repository. A committer will use lazy consensus to decide on whether to commit a patch from a contributor. If the discussion is no longer moving towards a consensus, the Management Committee (see next section) will decide on the patches inclusion via lazy consensus.

Management Committee

Beyond the responsibility of merging contributions, committers as a group (called the Management Committee) participate in strategic planning, release planning, and approving changes to the governance model. The management committee also makes decisions on patches when community consensus cannot be reached. The management committee has final say over who can become a committer and will use lazy consensus for approval. Discussion over committer nominations will be done in private.

How to become one: Be a contributor and be nominated as a committer.

Lazy Consensus

Lazy consensus is a very important concept within the project. It is this process that allows a large group of people to efficiently reach consensus, as someone with no objections to a proposal need not spend time stating their position, and others need not spend time reading such mails.
When a member is convinced of knowing what the community would like to see happen, it can be assumed that there is already a consensus about it and get on with the work. Members just assume that they have the communities support unless someone says otherwise.
When a member of the community believes a specific action is the correct one for the community but is not sure enough to proceed with the work, a proposal is made and state that they will start implementing it in 72 hours unless someone objects. This requirement ensures that everyone is given enough time to read, digest and respond to the proposal. This time period is chosen so as to be as inclusive as possible of all participants, regardless of their location and time commitments.

Voting

Not all decisions can be made using lazy consensus. Issues such as those affecting the strategic direction or legal standing of the project must gain explicit approval in the form of a vote. Every member of the community is encouraged to express their opinions in all discussion and all votes.

Transparency

Building community trust in the governance of an open-source project is vital to its success. To that end, decision making must be done in a transparent, open fashion. No decisions about the project’s direction, bug fixes or features may be done without community involvement and participation. Discussions must begin at the earliest possible point on a topic; the community’s participation is vital during the entire decision-making process.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

This work is based upon "Meritocratic Governance Model" by University of Oxford.

Updated Wiki: Governance

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:54:22 GMT

Nearforums Governance

Roles and Responsibilities

In order to have a smoothly running project, formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established. A member of the community may have multiple roles.

Users

Users are community members who have a need for the project. They are the most important members of the community: without them, the project would have no purpose. Anyone can be a user; there are no specific requirements.

Users should be encouraged to participate in the life of the project and the community as much as possible. User contributions enable the project team to ensure that they are satisfying the needs of those users. Common user activities include (but are not limited to):
advocating for use of the project
informing developers of project strengths and weaknesses from a new user’s perspective
providing moral support (a ‘thank you’ goes a long way)
writing documentation and tutorials
filing bug reports and feature requests
participating on the discussion boards or forums and email lists

Users who continue to engage with the project and its community will often find themselves becoming more and more involved. Such users may then go on to become contributors, as described below.

How to become one: Install and use Nearforums

Contributors

Committers

Lazy Consensus

Voting

Transparency

Updated Wiki: Governance

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:53:36 GMT

Nearforums Governance

Roles and Responsibilities

In order to have a smoothly running project, formal roles with corresponding responsibilities are established. A member of the community may have multiple roles.

Users

Contributors

Committers

Lazy Consensus

Voting

Transparency

New Post: SSO - Single sign on

jorgebg — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:28:33 GMT

Hi,
As is today, there is no built-in functionality to enable SSO with a customdb authentication provider.
Kind Regards,
Jorge

New Post: SSO - Single sign on

gstella — Wed, 15 May 2013 10:25:45 GMT

Hi all,

I successfully integrated NF with an existing MVC4 website (thanks to the customdb auth provider https://nearforums.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Authentication%20providers&referringTitle=Documentation)

Is there a way to implement a single sign on between the 2 sites? They are both on a dev stage running on the same domain.

Thanks for your reply.

G.

New Post: Yourlogo - where to go to change this?

Wukong59 — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:42:35 GMT

The templates all have a Yourlogo area. I have a jpg logo I'd like to use but don't know how to change it and was unable to find it listed here anywhere?

New Comment on "Admins First steps"

Wukong59 — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:37:46 GMT

Nevermind, I had another look at the page where it says it was successfully setup and noticed at the top right it had a login. Once I logged in I was able to access the forum. By the way, the URL is your website followed by the name of the forum you setup. I used nearforum as the forum name so mine is located at www.mywebsite.com/nearforums.

New Post: how to start nearforums?

Wukong59 — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:16:23 GMT

lol, found it on the screen that appeared after the successful install. Didn't notice at the top where it had the facebook, twitter, and login options. I just noticed the link in the middle of the page that said to click on it for more help. Would recommend to put just above that a statement to say "Click on the Login above to setup your administration account."

New Post: how to start nearforums?

Wukong59 — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:03:22 GMT

I'm not a programmer so need a pretty basic explanation. Nearforums says it installed properly. I obtained an autho code from facebook. Nearforums is installed in the following directory...

/Home/mywebsite.com/wwwroot/Nearforums

I ftp into the site and do not know where the html page is that I need to link to from my website to open up nearforums. I wasn't able to find this information in the documentation. Can someone explain what is the path to the default page for nearforums?

Thanks,
Patrick

New Comment on "Admins First steps"

Wukong59 — Wed, 15 May 2013 03:49:09 GMT

Ok, silly question, but I've successfully set it up (so it says) and now need to know how to access it? What is the webpage file that I link to from my website to start up the forum?

Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine

Updated Wiki: Roadmap

Nearforums Roadmap

Version 9.0

Updated Wiki: Roadmap

Nearforums Roadmap

Version 9.0

Updated Wiki: Roadmap

Nearforums Roadmap

Version 9.0

Closed Issue: SQL Azure support [20075]

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Reference

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Reference

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Reference

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Documentation

How-to's / Tutorials

Reference

Updated Wiki: Community Guide

Table of Contents

Participating in the community

Communication

Code to read

Code reviewing

Project Governance

Updated Wiki: Community Guide

Table of Contents

Participating in the community

Communication

Code to read

Code reviewing

Project Governance

Updated Wiki: Governance

Nearforums Governance

Roles and Responsibilities

Users

Contributors

Committers

Lazy Consensus

Voting

Transparency

Updated Wiki: Governance

Nearforums Governance

Roles and Responsibilities

Users

Contributors

Committers

Lazy Consensus

Voting

Transparency

Updated Wiki: Governance

Nearforums Governance

Roles and Responsibilities

Users

Contributors

Committers

Lazy Consensus

Voting

Transparency

New Post: SSO - Single sign on

New Post: SSO - Single sign on

New Post: Yourlogo - where to go to change this?

New Comment on "Admins First steps"

New Post: how to start nearforums?

New Post: how to start nearforums?

New Comment on "Admins First steps"