# Future plans for RForum

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/future-plans-for-rforum/47850>\
**Category:** Ruby-Forum\
**Created:** [October 28, 2005, 9:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/future-plans-for-rforum/47850 "2005-10-28T09:30:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/guest)\
**Post date:** [October 28, 2005, 9:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/future-plans-for-rforum/47850/1 "2005-10-28T09:30:10Z")

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It’s unclear to me from the trac site what the future plans are for  
RForum. I have some personal projects that I’d like to work on (mainly  
a forum-backed blog), and I’d really like to get my hands into some RoR  
coding, but I’m hesitant to attach myself to such a young project that  
has no clear vision (i.e., if the project is likely to have drastically  
different goals that what I have in mind, then I’m probably better off  
working with a more mature but inferior project, such as PhpBB or even  
JForum). Is there any place (that I’ve missed) where there’s some  
discussion or statement of what RForum wants to become? Will it someday  
allow multiple layers of subforums and a rich set of access controls,  
administrative features, and skins, or is it intended to be mainly  
simple, lightweight, and elegant? Or is this all as-of-yet  
undetermined?

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**Author:** ![guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/guest)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 2:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/future-plans-for-rforum/47850/2 "2005-11-03T14:34:39Z")

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The next release (0.2) will have:

- mailing list support: the forum can be used as a web interface for  
reading and posting to any mailing list
- multiple search backends (Odeum, SQL, MySQL fulltext, Lucene)

Features planned for later versions are:

- file attachments (0.3)
- Matt’s module system (0.3)
- Rating system for posts (as a module, if possible)
- source code highlighting (module)
- access control

There is no concept of “skins”. The design is 100% based on CSS, so you  
can make the forum look completely different simply by using another  
stylesheet. To emphasize this point it might make sense to include an  
alternative stylesheet in the distribution.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Andreas

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**Author:** ![guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/guest)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2005, 2:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/future-plans-for-rforum/47850/3 "2005-11-03T14:37:49Z")

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Regarding administrative features: It is already possible to create/edit  
forums, edit/delete/undelete/move posts/topics and block IP addresses of  
authors in the web interface.

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**Author:** ![guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@guest](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/guest)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2005, 8:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/future-plans-for-rforum/47850/4 "2005-11-24T08:55:01Z")

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andreas wrote:

> There is no concept of “skins”. The design is 100% based on CSS, so you  
> can make the forum look completely different simply by using another  
> stylesheet. To emphasize this point it might make sense to include an  
> alternative stylesheet in the distribution.

I would really like to see what you can do with an alternative  
stylesheet because currently RForum doesn’t look nearly as good as the  
PHP alternatives