Posted by Richard Davey on 11/05/05 20:34

Hi,

Saturday, November 5, 2005, 3:09:01 AM, you wrote:

> AFAIK, there are no "official" forums for PHP. Considering the fact
> that PHP is a web development tool, such distaste for message boards
> is ironic at the least. So why exactly there aren't any forums on
> php.net?

How about some good logistical reasons? php.net does not exist in any
one location. It does not serve any one language. There are over 100
mirror sites across the entire world handling php.net, from Thailand
to South Africa.

The site is offered in 30+ different languages, English, Chinese,
Swedish, Japanese, etc.

To be true to the php project, if it were to start a forum it would
have to be mirrored across all of these servers, unless you're
advocating country elitism for this forum? (and no, it is not fair to
force users in say Africa to have to connect to a US server).

There is NO off the shelf forum software that can cope with a
distributed forum in this manner, with content and user repositories
spread across so many diverse networks. When you post a message on a
US server, how long before it should appear on the Slovenia mirror? If
it's not instant, it is less useful than the mailing list. So unless
this forum syncs across the 100+ mirrors on an application level,
you're left with a hardware level link-up (duplication of the database
perhaps, whatever). Eitherway it's quite some work, not to mention
expense, especially to keep it real-time.

The reason the mailing list *works* is that the content is delivered
to the people, the people don't have to seek it out. For those in
relatively low-bandwidth countries they get to choose which messages
they want prior to actually downloading them (most mailing packages
offer a read-headers option).

So if you want a "hosted in one country / location" PHP forum there
are plenty out there already, I can think of 4 in my bookmarks alone.
I can't think of any that will give you replies from some of the most
talented php developers in the world though.

If you want one that truly offers what the mailing list provides
already - you're going to have to write it, because it doesn't exist.
Start now and we'll check in on your progress in a years time :)

Cheers,

Rich
--
Zend Certified Engineer
PHP Development Services
http://www.corephp.co.uk

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