
Show HN: HackerForums.co, a forum for the crowd that hangs out on HN - dchuk
https://hackerforums.co
======
jasonvorhe
> must contain letters in mixed case, must contain numbers and must contain
> symbols

Please don't do this. Have a minimum length, but don't force me to miss it up.
My password manager shouldn't have to try multiple times to generate matching
passphrase.

~~~
MithrilTuxedo
I've sent feedback to a couple dozen sites over this. Most were government
website (internal military sites are the worst) but when various financial
institutions started updating their policies they forcing this silliness.

When they don't allow spaces in passwords either, I worry.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Keep in mind, there are situations where the website you're using is
interfacing to backend systems that have constraints that can't easily be
changed (colloquially known as "legacy systems"). Feedback is good, but change
takes time.

~~~
zrm
Passwords should be hashed client-side anyway, so the real issue there is how
to encode the password hash in a way that satisfies the legacy system. But
this is usually plausible, e.g. by base64 or hex encoding the hash to avoid
disallowed characters and then appending specific characters that satisfy the
set of required characters.

~~~
lbotos
Do you know of any systems that actually do this? It's the first I've heard of
this technique.

~~~
zrm
Nothing should be doing this. Insecure legacy systems that wrongfully expect
to see the plaintext of the user's password should be replaced with properly
functioning ones. But just because they haven't been yet is no excuse to
actually give them the plaintext of the user's password.

------
dchuk
This site was borne of the discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17068138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17068138)

(Specifically this part of the thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17071224](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17071224))

I spun up an instance of phpBB (trying to keep costs down) and customized a
ThemeForest theme to make it not ugly. I'll post a thread today that lists all
of my notes from the setup process of the site for anyone interested.

I'm a huge fan of the bulletin board/flat forum model of communication, so I'm
hoping this site can blossom into a community of high quality folks having
high quality conversations.

EDIT: Also, this is my first foray into setting up and using phpBB, so please
let me know if I need to adjust anything. I tried to keep most settings at the
default because I assumed that made more sense than me tickering, but I'm all
ears if things are weird.

~~~
chatmasta
Nice man, reminds me of a forum we used to visit ;-)

~~~
Jake232
I miss those days ;)

------
krapp
Good luck. I definitely think personal webpages and self-hosted forums need to
make a comeback.

However...

Your FAQ link leads to a 404 page, and the "legalese" on the registration page
seems like a bit much to me. And why should I need to be registered to see the
"team" page and profiles?

It's just a web forum, don't take things so seriously. You're an admin, you
can literally just ban people for acting up, you don't have to expect to back
it up in a court of law or anything.

~~~
dchuk
All of those things are default settings that I haven't gotten to either from
time available or just not knowing the ins and outs of the software.

All of those items are in my todo list now!

~~~
krapp
Also, maybe consider pinning a bug reporting/code thread in the software
development section.

~~~
dchuk
Good call, will do.

------
gnicholas
I like this idea because HN mods (reasonably) discourage certain types of
discussions as off-topic. But I'm actually interested to know what HNers think
about various topics that may be deemed off-topic by mods. Looking forward to
joining your community!

~~~
VoodooJuJu
I agree, particularly when it comes to political discourse. HN is one of the
most intelligent places on the internet and I think it'd be very enlightening
to hear what such great minds have to say about political topics.

~~~
dchuk
Join us! Bring it on!

------
vinayms
I see a lot of the members are appreciative of this. This venture may or may
not take off, but I have to ask this: Why do we need another forum that will
potentially split the community?

This is 'hacker' news after all. Can't this website release its forum software
so that a bunch of interested volunteers (no me) could improve it? Wouldn't
that be really meta and cool?

The main gripe I have with HN forum is lack of reply notification. Secondly,
the crowd tends to overdo the hacker-nerd-geek thing by discussing unrelated
minutae till the cows come home which inflates the comment count. This sort of
discourages posters to post their POV fearing it will be buried amidst the
500+ comments. We have a visibility problem.

We just need a few tweaks.

Further, looking at all the passionate discussion about AI and ML that happens
here, I am sure some of the regulars would like to implement a scheme that
learns my 'collapse the chaff' pattern and spare me the gory boredom inside a
thread.

(I think what I wrote might come across as snarky, but I assure you I am not
being so.)

~~~
el_cid
You are right... HN is starting to have a visibility issue. But I can't see
how it can be fixed. All successful online communities have to deal with this
aspect eventually. They all become too popular at one point and it's hard to
maintain the quality.

I can't see how it can be fixed.

~~~
vinayms
Its actually quite simple - push the thread with the latest comments to the
top. But in order to stop such threads from hogging the front page, there can
be another tab for 'active' threads that people can visit to check out latest
discussions. The current front page remains unchanged, with whatever algorithm
that's used to order the threads.

~~~
dchuk
This is a good idea, and I'd be very interested to see if they ever added
that, as it would essentially solve the long running conversation problem that
exists on HN now.

------
jwong_
After registering, I'm seeing this:

[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions_messenger.php on
line 506: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements
Countable

Probably best to turn off debugging statements.

~~~
dchuk
Hmm, interesting. I'll take a look, thanks for letting me know.

Just so I'm clear, this happened immediately after registering? Or did you do
anything else that triggered this?

~~~
Washuu
That is happening because you are running PHP 7.2. In that file
$this->extra_headers is initialized as non-countable NULL. Basically phpBB
needs to update their code base to support newer versions of PHP. A quick fix
would be to change "var ... $extra_headers" at the top of the file to
"protected $extra_headers = [];".

~~~
Jake232
It's probably a safe assumption that they use a similar style elsewhere
though, so probably better to just change PHP version rather than edit the
source files?

I could be wrong, (I'm a Python guy - not PHP), just seems a safe assumption
that it's likely not the only spot.

~~~
krapp
> so probably better to just change PHP version rather than edit the source
> files?

NO.

It's better to improve the code than roll back to an older and less secure
version of the language.

This is PHP we're talking about, after all.

------
ploggingdev
Nice idea. The biggest hurdle with starting a community site is getting the
initial users and maintaining a level of activity that keeps bringing back
users to the site. If activity slows down a little, you will find that traffic
decreases proportionally. How do you plan to solve the chicken and egg
problem? After the initial launch, what's the plan to get your site in front
of potential users?

I am working on a somewhat related idea : a site like reddit, but which also
has a chat room for each subreddit/topic + public moderation logs among other
features. I launched with only the chat rooms part of it and I faced the
issues mentioned above, so I'm interested in hearing about your approach. Good
luck!

~~~
dchuk
Thanks.

Totally agreed that forums (and communities in general) have the cold start
problem, and there's no real good solution for it.

I do have some ideas though.

1) I'm interested in whipping up a simple phpBB mod that enables Link posts
(like here on HN). That will help with the News posting aspect of the
community. Thread here: [https://hackerforums.co/the-lounge-f3/idea-extension-
for-php...](https://hackerforums.co/the-lounge-f3/idea-extension-for-phpbb-
that-allows-users-to-subm-t6.html)

2) I'm going to write up a fairly detailed thread later today that explains in
more detail the Why of setting up the site, and the How I did it (literal
technical details for those interested). I'll post that here and on Reddit and
a few other places to hopefully get some exposure. Cool kids call that
"traffic leaking" where you get valuable content in front of active
communities, so might drive some traffic.

3) I'm debating setting up a contest of sorts, where members can earn a
special badge/title by actively participating in the forum. So for example,
start 10 threads and post 25 replies in threads and earn a special badge on
your account for eternity. Silly, sure, but could be a simple fire starter.

But yeah, overall, it's a challenging thing to do, and I've failed at it a few
times over the years in trying to start forums. I still really love them
though, so I wanted to try it again.

BTW: Post your project here! :) [https://hackerforums.co/show-
hf-f7/](https://hackerforums.co/show-hf-f7/)

------
greggyb
I've already registered. I'm super hopeful that this grows into a real forum
community for extended discussions. I, like many other posters in the
inspiration thread, used to have a number of forums I frequented which mostly
died off between the rise of Facebook and Reddit. I'm a fan of the
conversation format, and I hope enough others are as well (:

~~~
dchuk
Thanks for signing up! I have the same hope, let's see how it goes.

------
CM30
Well, I just signed up. Not sure if I'll be active here, but I always like to
support forums over social media sites and other corporate silos.

That said, if I can give you a bit of advice:

Change that captcha on the registration page. It's really annoying to
decipher, and likely doesn't do all that much to stop bots.

Instead, get a few questions and answers set up, and make them forum specific.
Like, what startup aggregator is Hacker News associated with? What's FANG
mean? What language are the frameworks React, Vue and Angular written in?

In other words, stuff a dedicated community member would know/could easily
look up, but which a bot might not want to bother with.

That's much better to stop spam, and less annoying than figuring out what
letters and numbers are in a captcha.

Still, hope the forum works out well!

~~~
dchuk
Thanks for signing up and thanks for the feedback! I agree that that captcha
sucks, but it's the default so I left it for now. I'll add all this to my todo
list!

~~~
RealityVoid
I have a different problem in that the captcha will not get validated for me!
I tried registering, but it seems that no matter how many times I try the
captcha code shwos invalid. I'm not a bot, I swear! :)

~~~
dchuk
Damn, sorry to hear this. Email me at me@dchuk.com and let me sort this out
for you

------
danmg
Nice idea, but I have a feeling that 'Hangout' will turn into 'brigade things
we like/don't like' aka Reddit.

~~~
dchuk
How so?

~~~
danmg
That's how it usually goes with a side channel used to discuss another
communications channel.

E.g., "Can you believe this trash got on the front page!" everyone proceeds to
downvote or "hey my show hn is up!" everyone upvotes.

~~~
jacquesm
That's what was going on on the IRC channel as well at some point.

------
sevensor
Neat idea. I generally like HN, but it's definitely not a hangout spot.
Discouraging idle chatter cuts both ways.

~~~
dchuk
Agreed, and thank you! Come join us!

Another major upside to forums is the ability to easily directly connect to
folks. I've made many friends that way over the years in various forums, and
business partners.

~~~
sevensor
Registered.

------
danmaz74
I really miss a way to connect with other interesting people from HN. I'm
afraid that a simple forum won't work, though, because of (social)
scalability: there are good reasons why HN practically bans all banter, light
exchanges, or turf wars that usually come to dominate popular subreddits and
similar places.

As a matter of fact, I'm thinking about a possible solution focused on
allowing remote hackers to at least do professional networking. It could
become a real project; anybody interested, feel free to contact me (email in
my profile).

With this said, I hope I'm wrong, so I'll subscribe and wish best of luck to
this new forum :)

~~~
dchuk
Thank you!

Regarding this: "It could become a real project; anybody interested, feel free
to contact me (email in my profile)." Start a Show HF thread on the board!

~~~
danmaz74
> Start a Show HF thread on the board!

I will - when I'll have something to show :)

------
ivm
The problem of a community like this is the future growth. How will you
attract more HN'ers after this submission is buried?

~~~
dchuk
No clue! Ultimately it's completely unrealistic to expect to siphon off users
from anywhere, instead we should have this as a complementary community I
guess.

------
cryptos
Am I the only one preferring hierarchical forums? Longer discussions in flat
forums are almost always a mess.

I think that we need a forum with the good hierarchical overview of the good,
old usenet clients (but with updated UI, of course).

------
alexozer
Just a heads up, using an external password manager on Firefox for the login
screen is broken. It seems that if the username or password field is selected
and then Firefox is unfocused and refocused, the field is no longer selected.
Works in Chromium.

See: [https://github.com/webcompat/web-
bugs/issues/16938](https://github.com/webcompat/web-bugs/issues/16938)

~~~
dchuk
Whoa, interesting. Thanks for submitting this, I’ll do my best to help solve
this!

------
happertiger
Is it possible to do this in discord? I think it would be much more successful
than phpbb.

~~~
dchuk
How so? (Not doubting, genuinely curious).

Discord seems to be a chat app, which is quite different than a forum and even
HN itself

~~~
severine
I think parent meant Discourse:
[https://www.discourse.org/](https://www.discourse.org/)

[https://www.discourse.org/about](https://www.discourse.org/about) (FWIW)

------
devcpp
Excellent initiative. However, I wish you had adopted some more compact and
minimalistic system like
[https://www.simplemachines.org/](https://www.simplemachines.org/) (also
FOSS). I think the compactness is a big reason of the success of Reddit and HN
with the tech crowd. UX people be damned, we don't like wasted space.

~~~
dchuk
Thanks for the feedback. I briefly looked at smf but it didn’t seem as well
supported as phpbb was (though it did look nice). Any specific examples of
wasted space you think I should address?

------
justboxing
FAQ = 404

[https://hackerforums.co/help/faq](https://hackerforums.co/help/faq)

------
keithnz
I wonder if a discord for HN would be better?

I've been keep track of HN related things people have built and added this
also

[https://github.com/keithn/HackerNewsCommunity](https://github.com/keithn/HackerNewsCommunity)

~~~
LambdaComplex
I feel like most of HN would rather have an IRC server/channel

------
psychometry
The banner should be about 10% of its current height.

~~~
dchuk
To be fair, it's only really big on the homepage, all other pages it gets much
smaller.

~~~
combatentropy
And there I think it should be 90% smaller too

------
Jake232
Cool idea. HN can get a little annoying / slightly unwieldy when threads get
large. A forum is a much better format IMO.

~~~
dchuk
Thanks and agreed! Good seeing ya post here btw

------
frasinet
I hope this gets enough traction. That much orange (on all pages) is
unbearable during night if you're using flux.

~~~
dchuk
There actually is a night mode for this theme that users can toggle to. I'll
get it enabled tonight.

------
RickS
UX nitpick: The form entry links (lounge, etc) have hover states for the
entire row, implying they're clickable, but in reality only the name within
the row is clickable. Best to make the whole row clickable for maximum ease.

also +1 to shaving that banner height by 50%

but good on you for shipping a thing

~~~
dchuk
Great feedback, I'll see what I can do to adjust for both things!

------
maltalex
Nice job. I've actually been looking for more places to hang out with the HN
crowd.

I'm not sure about this approach though. Forums are too centralized and don't
feel interactive enough. I'd much rather see a HN community on Matrix or
something similar.

~~~
caitlinface
What about a Discord server?

~~~
mykull
Don't you think many HN posters will object to using a chat service with a
fishy as-of-yet probably-not-profitable business model and a big ol' database
of all the messages sent? Discord is a great service for now, but it's unclear
to me what their plans are in terms of monetization and user privacy.

~~~
unicornomy
I don't think HN users will actually object using this service. Although I
dont understand why would you call it FISHY - because what's there on Discord
that's not anywhere else on Google :) or Alexa ;) About Monetization Here you
go : [https://goo.gl/Af7xwR](https://goo.gl/Af7xwR)

------
slater
After registering:

[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions_messenger.php on
line 506: count(): Parameter must be an array or an object that implements
Countable

~~~
dchuk
On my list to fix. It's interesting, doesn't see like everyone is getting this
issue.

------
LeoPanthera
A forum for hackers that doesn't have an NNTP interface? ;)

~~~
LinuxBender
I might spin up some NNTP servers if there was enough interest. I would likely
keep it text-only.

~~~
Jaruzel
'comp.misc' exists on USENet and has done since the dawn of time. It's fairly
spam free these days, and a few dedicated people post stuff to it. It's in a
perfect place to be used again and turned into a meaningful discussion hub.

~~~
LinuxBender
I've noticed a lot of the spammers have vanished. Good point. I am certainly
lazy enough to not stand up more servers or buy feeds again.

~~~
Jaruzel
A nice simple USENet <-> Web gateway would be useful tho, as Google groups is
hideous.

------
Kagerjay
I think its a great idea.

Topics shouldn't be the same as those found on hackernews, those would be
redundant though.

I would suggest using discourse.org instead of rolling your own phpBB instance

~~~
dchuk
Well, it's been rolled :)

I'm honestly not the biggest fan of discourse, though I do appreciate it as a
project. I like the old school BB style.

One opportunity we have as a forum is to create continuity between the
trending conversations and more "long term" discussions that are difficult to
have on a platform that is churning out new content constantly and lacks
notifications about replies etc

------
JdeBP
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17060619](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17060619)
.

------
irunbackwards
Turn PHP errors off!

~~~
dchuk
Added to my list!

------
zippoxer
God I miss forums.

~~~
dchuk
Join us!

------
lokufda222
It would have been nicer to just use discourse.

~~~
dchuk
Why's that?

~~~
thesmok
I personally avoid all the classis PHP-based forums because they've been
outdated for 10yr now. Discourse is much more usable, especially on mobile.

------
Mandatum
Don't make me provide my email address.

------
tluyben2
Great! That captcha is bloody awful but I got in :)

------
merinowool
Are you compliant with GDPR?

------
mabynogy
Consider making something without login (like on 4chan).

