Vikingboard

As Vikingboard still is in the early development phases, the features implemented are subject to change, but there are a few features we are planning to implement. Some may be present in the 0.1 release, others may not come until a much later release. If there is a specific feature you would like to see, write a bit about it in the Feature Requests Tracker over at Sourceforge.

What we (the developers) want to see, and think is realistic to see in Vikingboard 0.1, is this:

• All the standard posting features found in modern discussion boards (post, reply, quote, multiquote, fast reply etc.)
• Basic moderation abilities (edit, delete)
• A basic search engine (google style)
• A powerful installer with FTP capabilities (converters are not written yet, but are in the works)
• The board performance will be very good, with high stability and extremely high speeds. Currently, the board index page can be loaded by just one (1!) query, making it extremely fast and cheap on server cpu time
• Help pages, guidelines and board rules
• Virtually unlimited forums, categories and posts (up to 99.9 billion)
• User profiles (w/ postcount, location, IM, interests etc.)
• A powerful cache system will ensure the performance mentioned above, and will reduce query time and server load
• Tasks and custom modules are supported
• Runs on MySQL, but other DBMS will be supported and easily installed via modules
• Tranlations will be easy to write
• A somewhat limited Admin CP
• A somewhat limit User CP, with editing of profile fields, avatar and signature
• Powerful BBCode support
• Sending, quoting, replying and tracing of PM’s
• Member lists
• Support for networked forums (multiple login domains), for sharing a forum between different websites in a network
• XHTML-based, W3C-compliant design. XHTML allows for using modules with special demands to the design (ex. Math-modules with MathML)

Features we are planning for later versions (0.2 through 0.9):

• A powerful package manager (APMM, Advanced Package Management Module) for one-click safe installation of modules, skins, mods and other extensions
• A full set of topic moderation options (split, merge, open, close etc.) and a powerful Moderator CP with IP-tools and more
• User CP with theme selection, language selection and avatar uploads
• Admin CP with more or less everything you need for administrating your board
• Nested forums
• A fine-grained permission system, based on the *nix CHMOD
• Wastebin and undeletion of posts and topics
• Conversion from the most popular discussion boards (IPB, vBulletin, SMF, phpBB etc.)
• Rich text editor (like gmail)
• Smart searches
• Blog support, web integration kit and news system are likely to be implemented as additional modules
• Support for gravatars
• Custom BBCode

Precisely when the different features will be implemented, is not planned yet. If you would like to see any of these be implemented rather soon, you could put a request in the feature request tracker. We will listen to the community. After all, we are making software to power community boards…