Is NS from baremetal?

[Shredability]

Just a little bit curious on how the site was made...

It's obviously not like any other sites on the internet (good thing). I'm wondering, did you guys use any frameworks whatsoever? or is the site completely from scratch?

Most forums use that shitty "vbulletin" which is boring beyond belief but extremely easy to implement (I did it once)... I mean it's highly customizable but not nearly close to if you make the shit from bare metal. It's my favorite forum because...

1. Community

2. Site design

It's so unbelievably clean and elegant, everything divided into it's own space and just... perfect...

Also what language? I know Ruby is popular these days (Rails framework in particular) but I'm guessing you used something a little older as the site's been around for a while...

Anyways no urgency to feed my curiosity, just if you have the time and feel like it.

 

[Mr.Bishop]

Typical LAMP setup, and it's all custom code. Kind of just what we inherited really as that was how Harvey started it.

We've sort of built our own framework over the years, inspired by shit like code igniter or laraval(sp?).

I think there is some limited pearl scripts and such but I can definitely say no ruby.

Million times over we've thought of going to pre packages code like VB - though these days xenforo or discourse would be a better bet. Problem is nothing out there merges community and content. You either go with Wordpress and have a content site, or you go with a forum package and have forums. Zero things out there actually blend the two experiences together, and gluing them into one unit is a huge fucking disaster from all sides.

That is both NS' curse and benefit though. We can provide this heavily customized community content mixture, but we lack a lot of basic functionality that forum users from around the Internet are used to.

We simply can't keep up with both innovation and the basic features you'd expect. We have to make a ton of tactical decisions around this every single day.

I'd really like to expand our tech team one of these days, but we need more money in the door to do it.

 

[Shredability]

Zero things out there actually blend the two experiences together, and gluing them into one unit is a huge fucking disaster from all sides.

Yeah that sounds like a hack more then anything... I'm extremely limited when it comes to web design, mostly software or firmware design. In a Linux environment it's either G++, GCC or whatever specific C compiler is used with the microprocessor I'm working with.

Then in Windows it's usually VS... but bottom lines it's usually a "C like" language with a little assembly once in a while...

I feel like whenever I'm using a framework or SDK it's more reading then anything, trying to figure out what the original programmer was thinking and how he intended the classes/functions to be used... and then when you encounter some sort of a bug it's a fucking mission trying to figure out what you did wrong (or if you did anything wrong)

I'm not sure if it's the same for web design, but anyways, thanks for the info... iv'e always been interested and personally I really like the site and would be sad if it went to VB...

 

[Mr.Bishop]

Yeah that sounds like a hack more then anything... I'm extremely limited when it comes to web design, mostly software or firmware design. In a Linux environment it's either G++, GCC or whatever specific C compiler is used with the microprocessor I'm working with.

Then in Windows it's usually VS... but bottom lines it's usually a "C like" language with a little assembly once in a while...

I feel like whenever I'm using a framework or SDK it's more reading then anything, trying to figure out what the original programmer was thinking and how he intended the classes/functions to be used... and then when you encounter some sort of a bug it's a fucking mission trying to figure out what you did wrong (or if you did anything wrong)

I'm not sure if it's the same for web design, but anyways, thanks for the info... iv'e always been interested and personally I really like the site and would be sad if it went to VB...

Heh yeah sometime for your own humor try looking at the wordpress/VB integrations. Or anything that claims to actually blend a forum and content experience. Its a fucking joke. VB 4 and higher have been a total disaster, so I'd never recommend anyone starting out to even think about that as a platform. Xenforo, Vanilla and Discourse are all orders of magnitude better. It just never would work to put NS on one of those platforms though, as there's so much else it means to people. So don't worry, it'll never fucking happen.

Our developers tell me that frameworks are awesome once you get the hang of them. Saves huge amounts of time for the stuff that there is no need to constantly re-build. Login forms and the like... building a new one ever time is just simply silly.

If we were to shoot NS in the back of the head and start over, I think the guys would use Laravel as a framework in PHP. Its made huge advancements in the last couple of years and is a really robust tool. I know that Paul often tells me he wishes that we could do that just so making new advancements would be so much easier.

 

[psiemens]

I'd really like to expand our tech team one of these days, but we need more money in the door to do it.

I'll toss in my resume for when/if that ever becomes a reality. Have you considered summer internships?

If we were to shoot NS in the back of the head and start over, I think the guys would use Laravel as a framework in PHP. Its made huge advancements in the last couple of years and is a really robust tool. I know that Paul often tells me he wishes that we could do that just so making new advancements would be so much easier.

Can attest to the robustness of Laravel. It's my go-to framework for PHP these days. The people behind it are doing a great job of bringing lots of much-needed standards/practices to PHP.

 

[Mr.Bishop]

I'll toss in my resume for when/if that ever becomes a reality. Have you considered summer internships?

Can attest to the robustness of Laravel. It's my go-to framework for PHP these days. The people behind it are doing a great job of bringing lots of much-needed standards/practices to PHP.

Definitely have considered summer internships... though its a touchy thing because its really easy to accidentally get someone who is really above their head working on NS. Can lead to more damage than its worth... but I'm open to ideas that is for sure.

The biggest problem a coder faces is when they have to deal with scale the first time. 99% of your ideas are immediately annihilated, and you have to build things to an extremely robust and secure scale. So its sometimes really hard to get a summer intern (has failed in the past) because what they build is either riddled with security holes or it blows up the moment an above average traffic blast hits it.

Email me your resume to have on file though, as well as let me know a bit more about where you're at in life. As mentioned, we don't have anything available right now but its always good to know what is out there.

On the Laravel front, heh yeah... the devs always talk about how much PHP is helped by being reigned in a bit. The ol 'enough rope to hang yourself with' sure seems to apply.

 

[steezyjibber]

Most forums use that shitty "vbulletin" which is boring beyond belief but extremely easy to implement (I did it once)... I mean it's highly customizable but not nearly close to if you make the shit from bare metal. It's my favorite forum because...

1. Community

2. Site design

It's so unbelievably clean and elegant, everything divided into it's own space and just... perfect...

Ignore my last post... let's try this again haha.

Most of this thread is like a foreign language to me, but I totally agree with this statement. I've always thought the NS forums have been super easy to use, super clean, and just awesome overall.

Not to mention so active. Gotta love it for sure.