What forum software does Piston Heads use?
Discussion
Quality discussion between Ted and 'Guest' 
Even made it into the 'best bits' book
All based on .txt files IIRC
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Even made it into the 'best bits' book
All based on .txt files IIRC
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Kinky said:
Quality discussion between Ted and 'Guest'
Even made it into the 'best bits' book
All based on .txt files IIRC
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Even made it into the 'best bits' book
All based on .txt files IIRC
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
I'd completely missed that.Utter class.
turbotongue said:
Does anybody know what forum software this forum uses?
Cheers
Most unsubtle 'I've read Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" and going to h4x0r your site' post *evar*.Cheers
PetrolTed has managed to turn a passion (cars) and a job he's interested in (programming) into a serious learning experience (writing your own forum code from scratch and evolving it to improve scalability and security is NOT to be sniffed at), created a vibrant community, and eventually turned it into real money.
Give him respect for that, at the VERY least.
It's not impregnable, there are a very small number of regulars who can (could, perhaps, if there have been significant security upgrades) hack it, but equally the community is more important than showing off an exploit. After all, a lot of regular people here know each other in real life... I've been here nearly 8 years and made a good bunch of mates, I wouldn't chuck that away just to show I could own the site or annoy a mod.
They'll be watching your IP now.
More importantly, now it's owned by Haymarket, there's a company with a proper legal team backing the site and I doubt they'd be impressed with skiddie stuff. Especially given the volume of trade sales going through PH now - advertisers don't want to deal with unstable sites that have silly skiddie attacks all the time.This is primarily a motoring enthusiast website, remember - yes there is a 'Computers, Gadgets & Stuff' section, but that's because a lot of the original members worked in IT (for some reason, the IT sector is heavily overweight in ownership statistics of TVRs and Lotuses, last time I saw the stats).
Not only the IT types, but also the general demographic of middle aged car enthusiast bloke with disposable income to spend on TVR / Lotus / Porsche / etc. also tend to like the latest gadgets. If Parakitamol was still around she'd tell you (IIRC she is an ace marketing type)...
Anyway, leaving aside talk of hacks, I actually rather like Pistonheads. Not for the technology or the architecture or the security (sorry Ted, but unless it's been completely overhauled, it's duff, but I completely understand *why* things are the way they are, and this isn't a criticism) but for the sheer simplicity of the site.
- No silly signatures with pictures, animated GIFs, and other BS
- No avatars, again makes the page complex and idiots putting 1000-frame animated GIFs of a girl running along with her boobs bouncing just wastes bandwidth
- No 'rankings' and club 'in-crowd' labelling (this actually was tried once, but an American chap got really offended and legal action was threatened... overreaction but all the better for it, IMO)
- Simple non-threaded continuous-conversation layout is MUCH easier to follow and works well on all devices from big fancy systems to mobile phones - even early 'smartphones' like the Palm Treo on GPRS could use PH happily
- Simple layout and restricted HTML formatting means page size is low (this *may* have been an architectural decision to reduce the load on the servers back when there was a membership explosion and scalability crisis), but this is a GOOD thing when many people operate on low-bandwidth mobile links. Big fixed broadband stations are all well and good for heavy-duty content (like watching a MotoGP race - you're going to be sitting down to watch it), but 'chat' type functions (forums being the more 'adult' accepted form of 'chat room') are increasingly shifting to *mobile* access - e.g. you're having an argument with some chap on the Lounge whilst you're travelling from home to work on the train... instead of leaving the conversation to when you have a fixed PC, you're chucking in your 2 pence via an iPhone or similar mobile device
- I like blue and grey, nice simple design, minimalist and *very* easy to read. Makes PH too addictive, since the forums are comfortable to read for HOURS on end. The complex flashing-avatar / animated-GIF / 500kB of fluff for a single line comment (300 bytes, maybe) type forums are just TOO tiring to read, IMO.
I guess old gits like me don't like change, so nearly 8 years on a similar layout is nice, familiar and cosy, like your local pub.
I think internet community landlords should think in terms like this every so often (as Ted obviously has) - 'locals' who have frequented a forum for years don't want change for change's sake.Things that *would* add value in the future, now Haymarket are bankrolling the architecture (I assume they are...):
- Could be faster - and given the HTML simplicity (which I love), any performance problems are unlikely to be web server related unless the web servers are massively undersized. Since the database that underpins the forum data was a home-brew, which has had numerous tunes and re-factors over the years, perhaps more are required
- If Haymarket are providing cash for big bandwidth then a registered-user gallery / picture upload facility (as per the advert picture upload) would help some of the *real* technically illiterate who often need the same handholding and step-by-step instructions on how to upload pictures to a free web photo service (which then loses valuable thread content when the account lapses, or the web photo service goes bankrupt) - alternatively, PH could cache pictures posted from links elsewhere to avoid this bit-rot where old, great threads full of photos slowly degrade as the photo hosting dies away.... this could have legal implications but some of the best PH threads have been pictorial - especially of old cars, spotted cars, motorsport, etc. Would legal issues be a dealbreaker here??
- A little more optimisation for multitouch smartphones like the ubiquitous iPhone and the newer Android devices. Page navigation (for multi-page threads) is painful on an iPhone. Perhaps if a mobile device is detected, the number of posts per page could be extended, or a different method of page navigation could be used? And a 'go to top' / 'go to bottom' button - rather than having to flick-scroll loads of times.
And that's all that matters really isn't it?
It's still sunny, so I'm off for a drive in my Exige. Long live PH.
^ Nice post.
I myself wondered at first why PH didn't do what other forums do with the avater/rankings. But I quickly realised how much easier it is to read and that the months member/post count works fine as an indicator of rank (which I feel often helps with seriousness of posts/replies).
Personally I've never though of it being at all slow, nor do I now find any problems really with viewing it on an iphone.
I myself wondered at first why PH didn't do what other forums do with the avater/rankings. But I quickly realised how much easier it is to read and that the months member/post count works fine as an indicator of rank (which I feel often helps with seriousness of posts/replies).
Personally I've never though of it being at all slow, nor do I now find any problems really with viewing it on an iphone.
Just to follow up on Cybers quality post, here's some background info
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=626...
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=626...
Unrelated, but one of the things I love about PH is the expertise and lack of bull found in the sub-forums.
I haven't found a better business forum than the one on PH. So many knowledgeable people that will quickly help, and the range of businesses that members run is staggering.
Similarly, the Computers etc forum is fantastic for learning and also asking questions. Even if I don't understand a large part of it, yet!
I haven't found a better business forum than the one on PH. So many knowledgeable people that will quickly help, and the range of businesses that members run is staggering.
Similarly, the Computers etc forum is fantastic for learning and also asking questions. Even if I don't understand a large part of it, yet!
cyberface said:
Most unsubtle 'I've read Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" and going to h4x0r your site' post *evar*...
CF, that diatribe was a wee bit paranoid, no? If I didn't know the forum was a custom job, I would've innocently asked the same question so I could download/buy it to use on other projects. It is my favourite forum interface by far.
In any case, any "real" hacker wouldn't have to ask.
Plotloss said:
Cyber, we've got an image upload facility.
It's not segmented by user but it's there.
Where is the "Belm" smilie? It's not segmented by user but it's there.
Actually I love the site for the reasons Cyberface has stated, it is great on a mobile as it is very quick to load. Very easy on the eye and quite work friendly due to the lack of avatars which would give the game away when the boss walks in.
cyberface said:
Anyway, leaving aside talk of hacks, I actually rather like Pistonheads. Not for the technology or the architecture or the security (sorry Ted, but unless it's been completely overhauled, it's duff, but I completely understand *why* things are the way they are, and this isn't a criticism) but for the sheer simplicity of the site.
Agree with nearly all of this. The one point I'm not in complete agreement with is avatars; I don't think they break up the thread, because they are in the sidebar rather than the body. The only ones I do find an annoying distraction on forums that have them are the animated GIFs, because of the movement, plus the waste of bandwidth and slow page loading times they incur are a pain... so I generally use Opera's "block content" feature - No silly signatures with pictures, animated GIFs, and other BS
- No avatars, again makes the page complex and idiots putting 1000-frame animated GIFs of a girl running along with her boobs bouncing just wastes bandwidth
- No 'rankings' and club 'in-crowd' labelling (this actually was tried once, but an American chap got really offended and legal action was threatened... overreaction but all the better for it, IMO)
- Simple non-threaded continuous-conversation layout is MUCH easier to follow and works well on all devices from big fancy systems to mobile phones - even early 'smartphones' like the Palm Treo on GPRS could use PH happily
- Simple layout and restricted HTML formatting means page size is low (this *may* have been an architectural decision to reduce the load on the servers back when there was a membership explosion and scalability crisis), but this is a GOOD thing when many people operate on low-bandwidth mobile links. Big fixed broadband stations are all well and good for heavy-duty content (like watching a MotoGP race - you're going to be sitting down to watch it), but 'chat' type functions (forums being the more 'adult' accepted form of 'chat room') are increasingly shifting to *mobile* access - e.g. you're having an argument with some chap on the Lounge whilst you're travelling from home to work on the train... instead of leaving the conversation to when you have a fixed PC, you're chucking in your 2 pence via an iPhone or similar mobile device
- I like blue and grey, nice simple design, minimalist and *very* easy to read. Makes PH too addictive, since the forums are comfortable to read for HOURS on end. The complex flashing-avatar / animated-GIF / 500kB of fluff for a single line comment (300 bytes, maybe) type forums are just TOO tiring to read, IMO.
Apart from that - and "that" really is a very minor point - it's a very good summary of what I too find good about the PH forum software. The lack of sigs is great - most forum software which supports them does allow you to turn them off, but far too few admins do. The clean simple layout is easy to follow and read.
What is particularly appreciated is the lack of HTML bloat in the page code. It is far cleaner and slimmer than pretty well everything else out there (WowBB isn't bad, but it's pretty s
t in plenty of other ways), especially the "big guns" phpBB3 and vBulletin. Apart from the odd occasions where someone cocks up the concentration of phenethylamines in the hamsters' water bottles, or of course image-heavy threads, PH pages load very rapidly and also render quickly. It is excellent in this respect.It is something of a shame that matters like its platform-specific nature, security chasms, and perhaps lack of optimisation, would make it impractical for PH to join the ranks of providers of forum software.
Areas where I do think it could do with improvement are:
- Lack of a proper PM facility as opposed to simply sending messages to a user's registered email address. Proper PMs can be very useful when trying to contact someone when email transmission is disrupted for some reason, and can also be better for privacy and indeed just plain convenience.
- The table-based layout of the forum pages which breaks when an advert appears next to a post containing an image, resulting in lots of sideways scrolling. This happens a lot, and it is a right pain in the arse.
- Ought to accept standard BBcode. "PHcode" isn't quite the same, in particular the url tag is confusingly at variance both with BBcode and HTML A tags.
- Quote parsing needs to be tweaked so as not to break on usernames containing special characters.
- Swear filter has a nasty habit of breaking URLs containing substrings it doesn't like.
cyberface said:
* If Haymarket are providing cash for big bandwidth then a registered-user gallery / picture upload facility (as per the advert picture upload) would help some of the *real* technically illiterate who often need the same handholding and step-by-step instructions on how to upload pictures to a free web photo service
Oh, they require just as much handholding when using a built-in image upload facility one forum I run it seems that about 50% of my PMs are answering dumb questions about how to upload images... some people require a step-by-step guide on how to copy and paste the img tags, one wonders how they manage to type.cyberface said:
(which then loses valuable thread content when the account lapses, or the web photo service goes bankrupt) - alternatively, PH could cache pictures posted from links elsewhere to avoid this bit-rot where old, great threads full of photos slowly degrade as the photo hosting dies away.... this could have legal implications but some of the best PH threads have been pictorial - especially of old cars, spotted cars, motorsport, etc.
Hosting the images "on board" - assuming sufficient server/bandwidth capacity is available - would also be beneficial for page loading times. Far too many of the public image hosting sites are overloaded and/or just plain st, and take geological time to serve images.As has been pointed out PH does appear to have an image upload facility now - I've never looked myself, it's far easier just to scp an image onto my own server - but I gather this is what all these images hosted on thumbsnap.com are all about. Since it is labelled "beta" perhaps it would be particularly appropriate to comment on the deficiencies I have observed:
- Thumbsnap adds their logo to the pics. Bad. Bad. Bad. Never, ever do this.
- It also wipes out the original filename and replaces it with a meaningless hash. Also bad. By all means add a hash for uniqueness, but do preserve the original filename (minus special characters inc. spaces). Far too often people post pics of Ihaventgotacuckingfluewhatthatssupposedtobe and in such cases having the original filename is often very useful. It's also handy when the pic is sufficiently interesting to inspire a search for more images of the same subject / from the same source and search terms are required. OK, sometimes the original filename is DSC0532.jpg, but plenty of times it isn't.
- And it strips the metadata out of the images. Again removes useful clues as to what the image is and/or where to find more like it.
-DeaDLocK- said:
cyberface said:
Most unsubtle 'I've read Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" and going to h4x0r your site' post *evar*...
CF, that diatribe was a wee bit paranoid, no? If I didn't know the forum was a custom job, I would've innocently asked the same question so I could download/buy it to use on other projects. It is my favourite forum interface by far.
In any case, any "real" hacker wouldn't have to ask.
If you were going to run a forum project then your due diligence would have told you what was going on *just by looking at the URLs* before having to ask Ted, who for commercial reasons may be less than 100% truthful about his code (no criticism, just good business).
And as to "real" hackers... you give them *far* too much credit. There are very few "real" hackers in the way I'm assuming *you* mean. Hell, Mitnick was considered 1337 and a big example for the govts to make of - yet his actual footprinting, vulnerability discovery, exploit coding, testing and implementing skills were *seriously* lacking. Most of his exploits were based on being able to pick up the phone and do a good impression of an angry senior manager / trader / top sales guy, scaring or cajoling the IT helpdesk types into resetting a network password for him and *telling him the password over the phone* - as he called it, 'social engineering'. You don't need much in the way of true hacking (which is just *very* creative, expert programming - you *have* to be able to write code. Great code) if someone has given you the CEO's username and password...
The *real* blackhats, those who spend weeks without getting caught, creating a new zero-day, and never telling people about it.... they are the *true* hackers. And there aren't many of them. If you want a humorous glimpse (some of it exaggerated, of course) then google for ZF0 (zero for owned) and read the 'zine. Very funny. People with skills like that are few and far between, remember that. Most of the so-called 'hackers' either buy or steal exploits off the *real* hackers, or copy them from 'altruistic' hackers with real skills who believe in full disclosure.
Also, knowing about a vulnerability and writing an exploit to *practically* use that vulnerability are two very different things. Look at the iPhone jailbreak world - most of the jailbreaks eventually get coded in assembler after someone finds a baseband command (e.g. AT+XEMN) that crashes with a buffer overflow - finding the crash usually happens *months* before the exploit is productionised.
Errr... more paranoia, too much cider. Way too much credit is given to all these so-called 'hackers' - most of them are skiddies. A very few talented people make the *real* clever hacks - hell, there are MILLIONS of iPhones, a VAST market for unlocked devices, and only George Hotz and the 8-10 man strong 'Dev Team' are capable of writing sploits? FFS. It's a market worth hacking too - yes the underworld 'crackers' are paid for by organised crime these days but no criminal group is going to hack PH as there's nothing in it. Only a d
head with a grudge who has the cash to hire a zombie botnet to bring the site down for a few days would cause trouble (and did) - but no data was stolen by them.After all, you wouldn't know that the "real" hackers had stolen any data... the system would still be working, everything would look just A-OK.....
:tinfoil:
And, by the way, I'm not a hacker. I don't have the skills, I'm a mere f
king n00b when it comes to hacking. Everyone here who knows about hacking knows that I'm ste. So take *everything* I say with a pinch of salt... I have been known to enjoy a cider or two And my GF and I have been together 15 years today, and I'm still pissing about on my computer and she's annoyed with me upstairs. So I'd better go calm her down Ta ta chaps, and all those 1337 h4x0rs listening in ETA:
Cyberface got in before me, I was referrimg to his previous post not the one that appears directly above mine
So. My post....
Agreeing with Pidgeon and Cyberface hare. (here hare here) That was a typo I intentionly left in.
There is beautiful simplistic presentation on this website. I hate all that flashing avatar nonsense.
I hate 'sigs' too, when you scroll through posts on other forums and see the same sig after each post, stating the same thing that was posted further up the page, it rattles me.
Why? Bandwidth. And I suspect much like Pidgeon and Cyberface and many others on here (that might include you too Ted) we understand the concept of light weight data transfer.
I just want the data, fvck the advertising, fvck the avatar picture, the post, just the post.
I'm interested in the simplistic advertising that is not a picture, the words that are supposed to resemble the state of mind.
In fact. If a picture paints a thousand words then I'll summerise it in 10 or 20 words and not really bother with the picture at all thank you very much.
Thinking back now, I can remember a time from at least 6 years ago where I mailed Ted and stated "You do realise that PH is using HTTP 1.0 and there is no compression on your outward bound traffic even though browsers are asking for compressed HTTP data?"
After a quick check he confirmed I was right, and he had alledgely forgotten to renew a license on some software... However he never did indicate how much money that saved him! Nor indicate that I was due a few pints.
Nevermind.
So.... the PH forums are great, utterly unclutterd, straight to the point.
Long may it continue this way.
Cyberface got in before me, I was referrimg to his previous post not the one that appears directly above mine
So. My post....
Agreeing with Pidgeon and Cyberface hare. (here hare here)
That was a typo I intentionly left in.There is beautiful simplistic presentation on this website. I hate all that flashing avatar nonsense.
I hate 'sigs' too, when you scroll through posts on other forums and see the same sig after each post, stating the same thing that was posted further up the page, it rattles me.
Why? Bandwidth. And I suspect much like Pidgeon and Cyberface and many others on here (that might include you too Ted) we understand the concept of light weight data transfer.
I just want the data, fvck the advertising, fvck the avatar picture, the post, just the post.
I'm interested in the simplistic advertising that is not a picture, the words that are supposed to resemble the state of mind.
In fact. If a picture paints a thousand words then I'll summerise it in 10 or 20 words and not really bother with the picture at all thank you very much.
Thinking back now, I can remember a time from at least 6 years ago where I mailed Ted and stated "You do realise that PH is using HTTP 1.0 and there is no compression on your outward bound traffic even though browsers are asking for compressed HTTP data?"
After a quick check he confirmed I was right, and he had alledgely forgotten to renew a license on some software... However he never did indicate how much money that saved him!
Nor indicate that I was due a few pints.Nevermind.
So.... the PH forums are great, utterly unclutterd, straight to the point.
Long may it continue this way.
Edited by The Excession on Saturday 10th April 23:39
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