Bitcoin Forum

The forum's software has proven to be insufficient for our needs. In particular, the general architecture of the code is both insecure and difficult to modify, and the moderation facilities are limited. Therefore, the forum is accepting bids for the job of delivering software that meets the requirements listed below.

I don't care whether you build the software from scratch or just create a bunch of modifications for some already-existing software. There are benefits and drawbacks to both methods which will be considered in relation to the rest of your bid.

Bids should include at least this info:
- A description of the general architecture you plan
- A list of any of the optional features I mentioned that your software will have
- Additional features your software will have that I didn't mention
- Samples of your past code
- A price. If you want links or other "perks", include these as part of the price.

The forum has about 650 760 920 1120 1720 2267 3000 5500 BTC on hand at this moment, but you can bid more than that. If your bid is the best, I'll just wait until the forum has collected the required amount of money.

I will consider offers that only have ~95% of the "required features" listed below, as long as you're delivering a usable product. For example, you don't need to use my preferred programming languages. It's also OK for you to deliver an incomplete (but working and stable) product quickly and then add onto the software after it's being used.

You can't bid on just one aspect such as design or programming. You need to deliver a complete product.

This thread is only for bids, questions from bidders about the specifications, and questions that I have for bidders. Other discussion about this process should go in a separate topic.

Requirements:

Overview of problems with SMF

SMF is very good when viewed from the outside. I like the GUI's look, it has many useful features, and it's fast. However, the code is absolutely terrible. It was clearly written by people who don't have a good understanding of security or coding style. Examples:

- Many of the high-level functions like RemoveTopic can only be used in one place because of the assumptions they make, but the lower-level functions (removeTopics for RemoveTopic) omit important stuff like security checks. When doing anything complex with SMF, I often find myself copy/pasting high-level functions except for a few modified lines.
- Even the low-level functions sometimes misbehave when used outside of their intended area by, for example, printing errors. There's often no way of handling errors yourself without hacks.
- The coding style mostly sucks. The conditional operator is used too much. There's confusing stuff like if(!empty($enabled)).
- A lot of data is cached, but it's difficult to know when cached data is available and where this data is located when it is available. The user's profile data might be in $context['user'], $user_info, elsewhere, or it might not be available yet.
- SMF does crazy stuff like scanning binary attachments for "suspicious strings" (like <?php) in the name of "security".
- Many limits and security restrictions can be bypassed easily by exploiting quirks in the code. There are many easy denial-of-service attacks.
- Logic is tied very closely to presentation.
- Pretty much every SMF modification is buggy in some way or other because modification authors are usually amateurs and because SMF's code is so difficult to deal with.
- Database inconsistency can happen accidentally.

Ideally, what I'd like to get from this project is software very similar to SMF on the outside (similar features, fast, etc.), but with code that is clear and secure, plus a few extra features that SMF doesn't have (mostly moderation-related) listed below.

SMF features

All of the popular SMF features should be supported by your software. For example:
- Ignore user
- Ignore board
- Email notifications
- Print pages
- Profile pages
- BBCode
- Polls
- Multi-level subsections
- PMs
- Context search, simple search, and advanced search
- "Unread posts since last visit" and "new replies to your post"
- Forum and user stats
- Avatars
- Various user settings
- Good Unicode support
- JavaScript quick edit

The extensive admin interface is not required, however.

Code

I prefer that the software be written in PHP, C++, or Java, as I have the most experience with these three languages. The code must be clean and easy to modify. I want to be able to make even complex changes in behavior without much trouble.

License

The software can be under any license as long as I have complete access to the code forever, I can modify the code, and I will not be required to publish private modifications I make to the code (no AGPL). It can be based on paid software if the cost of the license is reflected in your price.

It would be fine for you to sell your software after you make it for this forum.

Database

PostgreSQL is greatly preferred. Queries should be well-optimized. I'm not a fan of database abstraction layers.

Database queries should wherever possible be done using prepared statements, something like pg_query_params, or some other method that doesn't require the programmer to manually escape things inline.

Security

Security is very important. Your code should have a "generally secure architecture": it should be very difficult for a programmer to mistakenly introduce security flaws.

Use the hashing scheme described here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84992.0). Passwords need to be automatically upgraded when CRYPT_PARAMS is changed. Legacy SHA-1 passwords ( sha1(password concatenated with lowercase username) ) also need to be upgraded.

No user group should be able to run arbitrary code. SMF and other forum software allow admins to run arbitrary PHP code via modifications or themes. This isn't OK; if you use such forum software as a base for your software, you'll need to disable this feature and replace it with some other method of updating modifications/themes/etc.

All actions must be done by POSTing the server. GET requests must not have side-effects.

UI

The default theme should be minimalistic like the current theme. Nothing that looks "web 2.0": no speech bubbles, no significant space between posts, no significant hover effects, and few rounded corners.

The default theme must work well with all functionality and a reasonable page layout on text browsers without JavaScript. It should also work perfectly on browsers with unusually small browser dimensions. It should be at least somewhat usable (though maybe not pretty) on ancient and broken browsers like IE6.

Same color scheme as we have now: light with some blue.

There should be functionality for allowing users to choose from among several UIs. You only need to provide the default one, though.

Admin settings that are not changed very often can be made changeable from files instead of from a web interface, though changing the settings from the files should be easy. The web interface must not allow admins to add/edit UIs, execute arbitrary code/SQL, or tamper with logging.

User classes

So that you know the sort of membergroup system that is needed, here are the currently-planned membergroups. All of these must be possible with your software. People can belong to more than one membergroup. These will certainly be tweaked a lot in the future, so don't hard-code the membergroup features/permissions.

- Admins, with all powers. Only group capable of seeing IP addresses. It must be possible for admins to make certain groups, certain posts, and certain topics immune to certain types of moderation.
- Global mods, capable of doing everything with posts and posters.
- Local mods, capable of doing everything with posts and posters in their sections. Posters banned by a local mod are only banned in the sections that the local mod has jurisdiction over.
- Jr. mods, who can only moderate posters that are not established.
- Established posters: all posters who have met some easily-configurable criteria. To start with, the criteria will be 8 weighted hours online (see below for info on weighted stats).
- Categorizers: Can move all topics
- Whitelisted: immune from proxy bans, and maybe other restrictions later
- VIP donator: capable of accessing the donator section, able to change his name, and able to assign himself a custom title
- Donator+: capable of accessing the donator section and able to change his name
- Donator: capable of accessing the donator section
- Scammer: Unable to delete or modify his own profile or messages. Has his posts and PMs marked specially.

There should also be "poster ranking" groups based on weighted stats.

These user groups will be hidden and not listed in a user's profile or next to his posts:
- Local mods (when outside of their sections)
- Jr. Mods
- Established posters
- Categorizers
- Whitelisted
- Donator

In addition to the pips ("stars") that most forums have, small image and text "badges" associated with some membergroups should be possible.

Certain groups (including some poster ranks) imply "whitelisted".

Weighted stats

There needs to be "weighted time online" and "weighted post count" in addition to the raw values. It should not be possible for a user to increase one of the weighted values by too much without increasing the other value. If you post 200 posts in 1 hour, your weighted post count should be 1. If you post 1 post in 200 hours, your weighted time online should 6 hours. These numbers should be configurable and should apply retroactively when changed (where possible).

Time online should not increase if you're simply refreshing a page, and it should increase more slowly if you seem to be a bot.

Limits

All actions that write to the database should have at least one associated configurable limit. Like "can post x topics per y seconds". There should also be a limit that prevents users from posting too soon after being stopped by another limit. It should also be easily possible for admins to ban certain regex expressions in posts, titles, and usernames (separate ban lists) from the web interface.

The limits may be modified based on membergroup. The actual limits may be relaxed, and the result of exceeding the limit may also change. Exceeding limits can do nothing, reject the action ("you may not post this topic because you just posted one 5 minutes ago!"), or automatically ban the user.

Registration

When a guest tries to post a reply, he will be asked for the necessary account creation info (username and password) on the same page where he can enter his reply.

Email addresses will not be required on registration. However, the board will not send email to the user until an email address is provided and verified.

A user's very first post must not be a new topic.

OpenID

It should be possible to use OpenID authentication instead of a password. The main login method should not be OpenID, though. Maybe entering an OpenID URL into the username or password field will trigger OpenID authentication.

OpenID URLs should not be used as real usernames.

Mod profile view

Mods will see this stuff on the front page of every user's profile:
- A log of everything the user has done in the last few weeks. Entries like "Reported post x", "Posted reply x", "Posted topic x", "Got post x deleted by mod y", "Got banned by mod y", etc.
- The user's recent deleted posts.
- Their last few topics and posts (in different lists)
- Links that will immediately carry out mod actions after a JavaScript prompt: ban, IP ban, whitelist, elevate

Mod actions

Post actions:
- Delete topics/replies
- Split topics
- Merge topics (admin only)
- Clone reply/topic (admin only -- maybe other groups later)
- Create redirect topic
- Move topic
- Edit post
- Lock topic
- Sticky topic
- Announce topic -- put it at the top of every topic index page (admin only)

Automatic poster actions:
- Ban -- automatically permaban poster
- IP ban -- permaban poster and ban for an admin-configurable number of days all IPs the poster has used. Stats should be available to admins about how many times certain IPs and IP ranges are banned in this way.
- Whitelist/unwhitelist -- put the poster in the whitelisted group
- Elevate/unelevate -- Put the poster at the top of the report queue and make all mods do an extra confirm step for any action against this poster. Intended for things that need admin review. This feature is optional.
- Comment -- private mod comments about posters. This feature is optional.
- Nuke -- Deletes all posts.
- Remove reports on the poster

Admins should also be able to create user/IP bans that expire after different amounts of time.

No bans will prevent people from reading posts.

There needs to be something like SMF's "quick moderation" interface on topic pages and user post histories.

All of a poster's deleted posts should be available to them for at least a month.

It should be very easy for admins to undo any damage caused by mods. In particular, it should be very easy to undelete topics/posts and restore them to their original states.

Optional: make it possible to perfectly undo every action of a particular mod since a specified point in time.

Reports

People can send reports by clicking "report" links next to posts and optionally filling in a report reason. This increases the report score on the post and the poster by the reporter's "reliability score". The reliability score starts at 1. For each correct report, it increases by 0.1. For each incorrect report, it decreases by 0.02. The reliability score maxes at 5, and it can't go below 0.

Mods who view the report queue will only see users they can deal with. It should be arranged like this:
Poster 1 -- score: 5 -- details/handled/incorrect links
  post a -- score: 3 -- details/handled/incorrect links
  post b -- score: 2 -- details/handled/incorrect links
Poster 2 -- score: 1 -- details/handled/incorrect links
  post c -- score: 1 -- details/handled/incorrect links
  
The links work like this:
- Details: Lists the actual reports along with the reasons and sender of the reports
- Handled: Removes the reports and increases the reliability scores of all those who sent the reports
- Incorrect: Removes the reports and decreases the reliability scores of all those who sent the reports

Removed reports remain available to admins from a link on the sender and recipient profile pages forever.

Stock PMs

Whenever a mod action is taken against a user, they should receive a stock PM informing them of this. It should be easy for me to customize the text for each PM.

Ban appeals

People who have their user account banned (but not their IP) can use a special ban appeal feature. Each user can appeal once, and then they need to wait for the response.

The appeal queue will be available to admins. It will show the appeal and a link to the user's profile page. It'll have these action links: unban, reply, soft-deny (allow another ban appeal in 14 days), hard-deny (never allow future appeals for this user).

After any action is taken, the appeal is removed from the queue.

The banned user can reply once to each reply that an admin sends.

Proxy banning

There will exist a large list of proxies that are banned from posting except for whitelisted posters. The list should support IPs/hostnames with wildcards and ranges. Checking users against this list should be efficient. I will write code for automatically adding Tor exit nodes to this list, so it should be especially easy to add to this list.

When someone is prevented from posting something due to a proxy ban, the thing they tried to post should be added to a list visible to mods. Mods can then look through the list and whitelist people who tried to post something good.

Proxy-banned people should also be able to manually request whitelisting. The whitelist request queue should be visible to global mods, jr. mods, and admins.

Watchlist

The watchlist feature should be available.

No embedded images

Due to problems with "cookie stuffing" and other attacks, let's just disallow embedded images all together. Transform old embedded images into links. Avatars will still be allowed, but they will always be hosted by the server.

Keep allowing img tags (transforming them into links), as they might be used later.

Other required features

- Tags, as described here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96947.msg1071908#msg1071908). "Tag mashups" are required. A separate report feature for tags and "ignore topic" are optional.
- Whenever you click "preview" when composing a post or PM, a draft of your post should be saved. These drafts should be available for 7 days.
- Good SEO
- Combined mod action log
- Ability of admins to send PM/Email newsletters to different membergroups.
- A page listing all posts by non-established posters
- Post edit revisions visible to all users who can edit the post
- A way to view all of a user's topics
- The bidder needs to provide code or detailed instructions on how to move current database data to the new database.
- The software needs to be at least as fast and resource-light as SMF.
- I like how the SMF post composition page allows you to highlight text and then click a button to apply certain BBCode. This needs to be replicated.
- Post counts should not be shown on topic pages, but should be shown on profile pages.

Other optional features

- A trust system exactly like that of Freenet's FMS would be excellent. Bids including this will be greatly preferred.
- Optional CAPTCHA-protected email addresses listed on profiles
- Nofollow on links in posts and profiles of non-established users while they are non-established
- In addition to normal BBCode, allow Wiki-syntax for bold/italic: ''=italic, '''=bold
- In "Replies to your posts", highlight posts where you're quoted and include posts where you're quoted even if you haven't posted in those topics.
- The ability to completely ignore a thread.
- A "thanks" feature on posts. All people who have thanked a post (up to a limit) are listed in small text near the post. Readers can hide this list in their options.
- An option that expands [img] tags into embedded images. This must not be the default.
- In addition to the default way of viewing topics, allow people to view topics: by purely chronological ordering, unaffected by bumps; by number of recent replies; and by some "hotness" criteria affected by views and replies.
- Allow people to maintain a list of users who are "friends". Highlight topics/posts by friends, topics posted in by friends, and topics/posts thanked by friends.
- An API

Hello,

Our company has experienced and motivated team to build forum software as you specified including optional features. Also we may have our own ideas which implementations you can rule. We have virtual working environment for project management. We keep all our promises and will deliver high quality in schedule. Data migration service and support also after implementation will be included.

For extra: If needed, my company can also offer hosting for forum or for other server software including SLA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement) without any cost. One of our team members has worked as professional system administrator in ESET (http://www.eset.com/). He will confirm all the security aspects of the service.

We will deliver the service for 700 BTC but we can always discuss about the final price if possible for our team. We are registered company and we will offer very fair service contract. As a owner of this company I can offer the service for very low contribution margin as kind of donation (I don't need any promotion, there's no "tiny print", I just want to support the Bitcoin community the way I can).

Our customers are organizations from the private and public sector. You can ask portfolio from me via PM.

Thank you for this opportunity,

Request

I'd be willing to do this software for 650BTC however I will have to find someone to do the design for me.

I gotta add that this kind of software sounds highly specific to just rewrite current software you'd have to do from scratch other wise you are risking your self to exploits that your un-aware of. If I were to accept this offer you can expect it to take 3 months until a fully tested, bug free, exploit scanned with more then one software suite, and tested on multiple browsers.

Theymos all these features can be accomplished with SMF 2.0 GOLD and some modifications...

Obviously building something from scratch will better "secure" the forum, but I don't think that's what you were looking for initially.

I can do almost all the features you mentioned above, and we can have a full community audit once the forum is released.

I have extensive experience modding forums, here is my site http://tweetforum.com

I can do this entire project for 250 BTC... And it should take me no longer than a week.

P.S I will also make the forum new custom design as well so don't sleep on this offer!

I'm not sure I want to use SMF again. 1.1.x has a generally insecure architecture. For example, the 0-day bug that affected the forum happened because all POST input is escaped early in the code, then partially unescaped before processing, and escaped again (or not...) before inserting into the database. It is very easy for a programmer to introduce a security problem in this mess.

It's better to avoid the necessity of manually escaping wherever possible by using prepared statements and other library functions that handle it themselves.

Does 2.0 improve this situation much?

Hello Theymos,

Basically SMF 2.0 does not use prepared statements, but instead uses a new "abstraction layer" for interaction with the database in order to support more database engines (at the moment MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite).If used properly it takes care of escaping (using mysql_real_escape_string), quoting or casting the values passed to the queries.

For example a query that retrieves data from the database in SMF 2.0 would be:

In this example the function $smcFunc['db_query'] takes care of quoting and escaping the string ($userName) and casting to integer the int ($limit).

For example, a query used in SMF, Load.php line 2082 in SMF 1.1:

In SMF 2.0 is (Load.php line 2445):

SMF 2.0 Gold should be good . However paid software is always going to be the most secure, but IMHO since this is an open-source project, going with a powerful opensource solution like SMF makes a good statement. Plus SMF 2.0 will be much easier to mod than anything else, the key is always to work with the software and not against it. We are missing out, just go to TF and see 2.0 in action.

Current status:
- Request seemed to have a reasonable idea (which he conveyed to me in private), though I think he underestimated the work that would be required of him. He never got back to me when I asked for more details, though.
- Xenland I am not sure about yet. (My fault for not following up enough.)
- FlipPro's idea of sticking with SMF appeals to me because I've grown to like many aspects of SMF. However, I still don't have a ton of confidence in the code architecture. (The DB handling is an improvement.) TweetForum seems mostly unmodified, so I'm not sure of FlipPro's experience.

The forum now has 920 BTC on hand. More bids would be welcome.

PM with a basic but detailed proposal sent!
I stand at 650 BTC since I don't require any more(or less) then that.

If you have that many BTC at hand you should set up a TEAM , and go for a custom built solution.

P.S Xenland's offer is one hell of a deal, and if he want's I am more than happy to help him out with any design work that he needs :). 

I don't want to manage a team. If you want to create a team and handle payment distribution, etc., you can do that and bid on behalf of your team.

I am representing Someguy123 (on the forums), Ruben (E-Mail PM'ed), and I.

We will bid 390 BTC, and we will go lower if necessary.  I will PM you all of the details within a few hours.  


-DanielDaniel

EDIT:
PM sent with all details, and contact information for the rest of the team.

I Have Several  vBulletin Licences I Would Be Willy To Bid For 450 BTC it Has Admin, Shotbox, Premium, Themes, Message of The Day, New Announcements And Several Member Positions Inc Admin, News Team, Moderator, Premium, Private Premiuim And More Would Be Happy To Set It Up For A Additional 50BTC Would Take About 5days-1week To Fully Set Up

vBulletin alone doesn't meet most of the requirements.

Ones that are designed to be extensible and completely customized out of the box would be well suited for this task. I'm thinking PunBB, as it was designed to be extensible (and the contributors and project leaders have executed this design well) and is licensed under GNU GPL.

Do you have a time frame, theymos? Considering placing a bid, just want to be thorough.

I won't accept a bid earlier than 2 weeks from now. I want to get someone working on code before the end of the month.

Whoops, I meant delivery/milestone time frames, sorry!

I'm not picky about that. Having a usable product in 3 months would be nice. 6 months is probably acceptable.

Can you seriously not have found someone capable of this by now?  It's been months.

I could do this in my sleep (as a matter of fact I do).   

What may I ask, what is the big problem???? Why hasn't this contract began yet?

I'm not ecstatic about any of the bids, and I'm not in a hurry.

I think now it should be attractive?  ::)

Ah, good to know.  I'm thinking it will be interesting to see when complete.

Oh, what kind of budget are you currently looking at for this ? just curious as you probably have many bids already.

There's ~1100 BTC available right now.

My BID is 500BTC

I hope this is still going to be open when my major projects are done, because then I'll be adding a bid...

Going by the current spec, all features and optional features listed would be implemented (as a PHP based system).. Also would include a simple-to-code plugin system for greater flexibility... But with my standard rate you'd be looking at $8000 - $10000 in money or bitcoins...

But I won't be done with current projects until early March (and if I started then it would take 2 - 3 months for implementation and full testing)... Although I would probably draw up a detailed spec in some spare hours...

If you think that's going to be too much (and many people would), can you let me know so I don't waste time drawing up a spec for no reason?

Thanks.


Here's a list of the range of some of the different systems I've written over the years:

E-commerce site with custom credit card management backend and encryption
The Seychelles official tourist board website (2002-2006 version), including a secure ordering API
Secure, multi-device accessible live shipping tracker for Imerys Minerals with offline, encrypted, data archival and remote data destruction in case of device removal
Pupil information manager for a group of colleges allowing both internal and external access to the data, with per user access down to the individual fields of each item (fast system serving approx 20,000 requests/sec at peak times without slowdown)

Pretty much same boat for me, I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to have time in the upcoming months to execute before I even bid on this project, but this is the only thing that has pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to price range for a quote on a web application with these specifications. Just giving my two cents, but from theymos' original post and consequent replies, he knows what to reasonably expect when it comes to this sort of thing, which is why the budget is what it is. (Currently ~$7k worth, with 1100 BTC at $6.90/1BTC)

The forum has ~1100 BTC now (all available for this project) and will probably have a few hundred more by March. At the current market rate this would be over $8000, though I can't guarantee that the bitcoin price won't go down a lot by then.

Starting in March would be fine, but I want to make a decision about who the bidder will be by the end of January. (If there are no great bidders, I will probably abandon this bidding process, start an open source software project, write the forum core myself, and place bounties on all other required software aspects.)

As it has become, I am to desperate to give a shit what I do for what price, sooooooo .. name your desired range and we'll go from there ... I'll do this with a PHP/Postgresql back-end within you budget, it will take about 3-5 months .. ish.

If not .. so be it.

This bid does not exactly fill me with confidence in your abilities... What's your plan for creating a good product?

I say what you should do is create an extremely simple forum that can be created in 20 minutes, and then add functionality every day until it is perfect and secure. 

Like look at this tutorial:

http://phpeasystep.com/phptu/12.html

I can probably set that up for you guys, and then having the code simple and easy to work on, you could add all types of functionality. 

If you're building this custom forum spec based on a tutorial, you're not the right person for this job. Just putting my two cents in as a professional web applications developer.

that post had me cracking up ;D

lol hey man at least it would be free!  so not one of my better ideas, but it would work.  i firmly believe we should get a vBulletin license and use that for the forum. 

I will be absolutely amazed if we get custom-tailored forum software made, if anyone deserves it it's us, but I am not going to hold my breath.

I did, however, create a bet (http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=179) on betofbitco.in for this :)

Although currently incomplete you can take a look at some of the .cpp source for my upcoming open source project at https://github.com/ciyam/ciyam - bet you've rarely seen code this neatly written (including the copyright comments at the top of each .h, .cpp file).


Cheers,

Ian.

I'm not bidding but I'd just like to pipe up and say that you should consider making it an extension to some already developed and free software solution (ie phpBB3) rather than developing it from scratch.

Economic: This ensures that it's maintainable by anyone with experience in the platform, larger the platform's user base the larger the pool of developers you can pull from. The vast majority of the code has already been written, so it ought to be cheaper.

User: The UI components will have already been tested by millions of people, ensuring a consistent user experience if not a "great" one. It's what users have used before and what they expect.

Security: Because thousands of hackers have already tried to break into it, it's already proven to be robust. When anyone else anywhere in the world gets exploited, you get a bugfix and a security update.

Are you dead set on PHP? I know PHP, but I really am loving python.

PHP or C++ are greatly preferred because I am very familiar with these languages and they are both fast enough. I will consider bids in other languages, though.

Thanks for the fast response.  My friend and I will get a prototype up in python and then post an official bid.

I guarantee the code will be more readable than the equivalent in PHP.

Well Theymos, the longer you take the more the site suffers..

It's a free forum, but with a strong name in front of it..

The first file I randomly clicked on was over 4000 lines long, contains no function documentation, huge stretches of if/elseif blocks (not sure if that's avoidable, but it's damn ugly), magic numbers in your switch blocks and huge code duplication.

I don't mean to crap on your work, but in any mildly successful software company that wouldn't get through a code review. It wouldn't get past me anyway and I'm not even employed as a software engineer.

Wow. I'd forgotten how ugly c++ is.  Thanks for the reminder to avoid it for large projects if at all possible.

Well at least thanks for taking a look - I think you may not be very familiar with working with generated source code. Such code is (for most users) is not even something you would look at (ever used yacc?).

Because the code is generated the "magic numbers" are of zero problem (they will change automatically when regeneration occurs if required). The code is for the most part boilerplate and requires some replication of things in order to support "dynamic dispatch".

It is true I don't write a lot of comments as I learned (the hard way) that skillful programmers *read code* rather than comments (which inevitably become misleading as programmers tend to change code without changing comments).

Perhaps take a look at the file "ciyam_server.cpp" or "ciyam_client.cpp" to get a better idea of how I write code.

In regards to your last statement I did work as a member of the tech team that created on one of the biggest insurance software platforms ever created in Australia (company was called Paxus and eventually become owned by CSC), I also worked for Telstra (an Australian Telco that has thousands of employees) and for a very successful company Hardcat for over 11 years and I have never had any of my software fail to pass code reviews.


Cheers,

Ian.

Also when developing applications using my platform you have *zero* need to be reading or writing source code - that is all done for you.

http://www.ciyam.com/videos/User.html

If you take a look at this video it shows how a minimal web application with login support is created.


Cheers,

Ian.

Instead of assigning a budget to the project, let's use this opportunity to establish BTC-denominated prices for various types of skills needed to pull it off successfully. What I'm proposing is to solicit quotes per hour for various tasks (architecture, programming, testing, etc.) rather than quotes per milestone. Doing so would open up the bidding between all kinds of walks of life.

In a way, it will be a test of bitcoin's viability as a medium of exchange, rather than a speculative digital asset (or perishable gold, if you will). Most importantly, as the project begins to take form (one piece at a time), I have no doubt that some BTC miners (not to be confused with the gold-rush miners) would gladly make the necessary donations just to see the project completed. Who knows, this could become the very first open source project where every contributor gets paid in BTC. Think of the hype it may create in the media circles.

What do you say @theymos?

I have used my software generation system to create a demo prototype for the forum software (it is only a demo so please don't expect it to be feature complete).

If anyone is interested in the link to try this system please send me an email (the link will only work when I am online as it is currently running on my laptop).

The following are some screenshots from the generated system:

http://www.ciyam.com/boards.png
http://www.ciyam.com/board.png
http://www.ciyam.com/topics.png
http://www.ciyam.com/topic.png

Please note that only 1 line of *manual* source code exists in this demo (and it should be gone in the next day).


Cheers,

Ian.

Ah okay, it's fairly neat for auto-generated. Better than most disassembled stuff anyway.

I wasn't talking about comments on individual lines or blocks of code, I actually meant function documentation. I can see that I've irked you though, so I won't offer any more critique as you didn't actually ask for it.

Thanks - guess I should have mentioned something about that in the first place.


Understand - and no real offense taken (the code review comment did get to me a bit having being a professional software engineer for over 20 years).

Documentation for this system is of course essential and something I will be working very hard on in the next few months (its mostly just a bunch of text notes which I have decided are not yet presentable).


Cheers,

Ian.

I think most of this can be built on top of PunBB's existing architecture. It is highly modular, and designed from the ground up to be extensible at almost any portion of its code base. It also supports Postgres out of the box.

(You can check out the developer documentation (http://punbb.informer.com/docs/dev.html) and let me know what you think. Its codebase is also licensed under the GNU General Public License (http://punbb.informer.com/docs/faq.html#faq4_1).)

Most of the features requested are very straightforward and their needs fulfilled by existing functionality or by the development of custom plugins. The only things that deviate this project from a "standard message board application" are the weighted post / weighted time online and the request for an implementation of a web-of-trust similar to freenet's messaging service / bbs. Both of these are possible, however quoting against those two items without a full spec on what's entailed (more so on the weighted time / post, I don't think I understand what you mean 100%) is difficult.

I'm interested in taking on this project but before I give my quote could you expand a little on the weighted time/post item?

I was wondering if I could sign on as an alpha or beta tester for whenever a release is scheduled.

What about invision power boards? i wonder what d2jsp uses.

Noticed arch linux uses http://fluxbb.org/  for their forum software. Looks very nice! ands its php since thats what you asked for. (i prefer python)

see https://bbs.archlinux.org/

d2jsp uses a custom fork of IPB. njaguar himself made most of the modifications.

So while doing some research last night, my partner found http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/

I think the article makes a valid point.  What do you think, theymos?  Maybe bcrypt(SHA-256(password)) if we want to be uber paranoid

I prefer traditional iteration-based hashing. Its properties are better-known. I'd probably just use crypt(). (With a modern hash algorithm and many rounds, of course.)

I will be submitting a bid next week (11th Feb) if that's not going to be too late. I finally have a break between projects.

This is just so you know that one is coming and don't give up waiting because you think they're all in.

Don't feel bad I never write comments either  :P
I do as you said and just read the code

:)

Yes - I learned this the hard way by embarrassing myself in front of a *guru* in my first full time programming position by making an assumption about what the code did from an out of date comment.

He was at least kind enough to set me straight - "Ian don't forget that the compiler can't understand the comments". From that day on I learned to "read code" and became a much better programmer because of it.


Cheers,

Ian.

I know that this is getting off-topic, but this really bugs me. Software engineering is more than just writing and debugging code, you need to be able to design systems and document them too. Programming is the easy bit, design and documentation are IMO much harder problems, and if you aren't documenting then you're missing out on valuable experience in your journey as a developer.

Comments can only go out of date if you describe what the software is doing, which isn't the way to write comments. Good inline comments describe the whys and don't go out of date when the how changes, this is exactly what makes them a difficult ordeal because as codemonkeys we're used to dealing with hows without really pondering the whys. Good function comments describe the interface rather than the implementation, if they go out of date then you can almost guarantee that you've introduced bugs because you've broken your interface.

I don't even claim to be good at it myself, but I do practice and try to improve.

Well said. I'm not putting in my bid until basic unit tests and documentation are ready.

What's the status of this? Does anyone actually code something, or are we still waiting for theymos to pick an offer? If yes - is there still time for placing offers?

By the way - this seems VERY reasonable for me, and it probably would end up better than placing it all in one hands.

I'm still looking through the submitted bids (a lot of material was sent to me privately, and I've been busy). I'll continue to accept bids until I've put a significant amount of time into writing the forum core in anticipation of that alternative development method I mentioned. To be safe, anyone interested in doing the whole job should send me at least a basic bid ASAP.

I do understand the value of system design and documentation - in fact when I release my software platform you might be rather surprised to see that in fact that what you look at and edit with is basically a design document (source code for apps is 100% generated from a sophisticated model that includes specifications that describe in an "intentional" manner all objects and functions of the software).

You might want to read up about what Charles Simonyi has been working on for at least the last 10 years to understand the kind of paradigm shift in software engineering I am talking about.


Cheers,

Ian.

I think that as many, many, many forum admins have done time and time again... You've just reinvented the functionality request of the uucp era internet, except with JavaScript instead of curses... Besides, everyone's good loot is in their browser, not their shell anymore. NNTP is great.

The daemons have handled a lot of abuse, and continue to. I believe someone created an "alt.bitcoin.test" already. The protocol is purely peer to peer, prima facie.

Hashcash to pull subjects and get content, coin or barter to post and be heard beyond your direct peers. Minimal cost for recycling of large chunks of previously delivered recent text along the path (quotes). The idea of focusing on HTTP is kinda silly, otherwise we might as well call it Layer 8. The should be the focus of a good protocol, not the display (imho).

Maybe we(as in community) can use this forum I created http://pipboy3000.com/social and I'll release the forums source-code on Github and we can all contribute and then the funds will be distributed based on the most code contributed?

Its code is very very early but its already well commented and isn't complex it should be easy to contribute upon with little effort.

I think we can all come together and agree on how payments will work as far as contributions go, I was thinking for code distribution to be completely fair I would get paid at a fixed rate of 10% of the total payout that would also mean no matter how much code I contributed I would get paid no more or no less. The incentive for me to contribute greatly to the project will be of course the 10% as well as the success of the forums software which would also increase security, functionality and useably for my projects that will incorporate this forum software and also I would like to see a secure forum and done correctly for once.

Everything is negotiable, its just a thought. pm me for more details to reduce spam on this thread thanks!

You want PHP? So I would try to generate as much code as possible and use a RAD tool like CakePHP.

Determine what the user should/could do here in this forum and create a nice use case diagram.

Do the next step from there and create a data model. I would recommend ArgoUML with the data modeling profile, since it freely availabe and everyone could download and contribute.

Generate sql from the model (I've to admit here, that the available db modules are a bit dated and might have to be modified, but that shouldn't pose a big issue, since everything is Opensource and pretty straightforward).

Once the sql is there, create a database and feed the mysql into it to get a running database.

Install Cake and point it to the existing database and let in create model, controller and views for each table.

Have you considered PHPBB ?

Really, SMF 2.0 + some mods will solve your problems.

Then write it.

I don't think people appreciate how complex forum software is.  I've been working on it for a few weeks (still have to actually put a bid in), and it is not at all easy or simple.

The forum has categories which have boards which can have any number of child boards. All the boards have topics which can also be polls and all of those have posts.  The SQL for loading all of that is difficult enough and that's without any sort of permissions system.  Then theres also all of the stats collecting and personal messages to code, too.

That's why I proposed a RAD tool. Don't write all the SQL queries. Let the tool handle it. Ok, the recursive forums have to be taken care of. Just put a parent_id in any forum, so it could become a subforum.

I have similar models here, if you want any help...

Have you considered MyBB? Imo it is the best forum software.

Seems a lot of people on the forum know very little about *modern* C++.

I have not had a buffer overflow (or even a memory leak) in my code for years.

Status:

Of the bids that have been formally submitted, I'm only considering Request's seriously at this point. If you think I didn't give your bid a fair chance (especially if I don't mention you below), PM me with more details.

- nhodges: I sent you a PM requesting more details but didn't get a response as far as I know.
- Red Emerald's work sounds promising, but he hasn't given me enough detail yet.
- Matthew N. Wright hasn't sent me a bid yet.
- BinoX hasn't sent me a bid yet
- danieldaniel isn't qualified.
- I'm uncomfortable with using CIYAM Pty. Ltd.'s experimental (in my mind) code-generating software for something where security and performance are important.
- windowsdefender probably isn't qualified.
- Maybe Xenland or FlipPro could do it, but I don't feel confident enough to give either of them the job.

There's now 1700+ BTC in the forum fund, and I'm still accepting bids.

I've been too busy (and unmotivated) to do any coding, though I've been thinking about the design a lot. I think it would work well to put all of the business logic into the database. PostgreSQL allows you to create new database functions using any of several languages (including C++, PHP, Perl, and Python). This design would be very modular, easy to extend, and easy to break into parts for many people to work on. Making many different front-ends would also be easy, and the front-ends could be "stupid", working only with views covered by many triggers/rules. I'm not a very experienced programmer, though -- what do guys you think of this design?


Bitcoin uses C++. Hopefully Bitcoin is secure...

I don't find security to be very difficult on either. You do need to know what you're doing, but this is a prerequisite to winning this bid anyway.

Just to let you guys know that although not concerned about getting the contract (and I understand the reservations about my system) I have made some progress creating a "forum package" for my software system (which of course has *zero* manual code).

Although far from complete it handles ordering latest post topics first (after sticky topics which are also in latest post ordering) and allows for topics to be locked and moved. Child boards work correctly with stats totals updating to parents.

http://www.ciyam.com/forum7.png


Cheers,

Ian.

Heya,

At the risk of looking like newbie that should just mind your own business I'd happily assist extending a vBulletin install to meet your additional requirements free of charge and for the good of this community. vB itself is ~$800 and is scalable and secure. I personally don't think a custom forum software is really worthwhile nor more secure.

Just my 2c,

Stu

Right now there's a critical vulnerability in the Bitcoin client (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=69120.20), which just goes to show how easy it is to make an exploitable mistake in C++.

Also from a philosophical stance, if you knew your code had a buffer overflow then you would have fixed it. Malicious developers aside, security vulnerabilities are always unknowns. All code has bugs and some bugs are critical. You can only reduce your areas of risk, and in a language like C++ every pointer is a potential risk.

Of course you can write some terrible stuff in C++ but typically the only problems I tend to find these days are dealing with C style interfaces which are the ones most likely to need to deal with pointers to buffers (and even worse void pointers).

I am not sure exactly what the bitcoin-qt problem is *but* there is no such problem in the older client (so why not blame Qt rather than C++ itself?).

To offer a parallel criticism I remember years ago when Adaptive Server Anywhere first decided to rewrite their C++ SQL query tool in Java (the reason why I could never actually work out as the C++ worked extremely well). The resulting program was such an embarrassment (queries that used to take seconds taking minutes, exceptions being thrown all the time and memory usage ridiculously high) that they had to include the old C++ program anyway (and I don't think anyone would have seriously tried using the Java app more than once or twice).

So can we agree that "crap can be written in any language" and stop with the language bashing?

I won't dispute that C++ has a large (maybe the largest) learning curve but if you learn it properly then I don't see it being more likely to result in poorer quality code.

In modern C++ one rarely uses plain pointers excepting the case of using them for the purpose of adding extra "optional" function arguments. If you don't know about them please read up on "smart pointers".

you did notice this didn't you?

Basic probability says that the more lines of code there are, the greater the chance of it having a bug. As you add lines the chance of software having a bug approaches 100% and this applies to all code. Not badly written code, not code without unit tests, not code written by beginners. All code. For shipped code without unit tests and a dedicated QA team it's about 20 lines, for the best team it's about 100, for the best practices in the industry it's about 300. Does your codebase contain more than 300 lines? I don't care how good you are, even if you're Donald Knuth your code contains bugs.

Some languages are more powerful than others and the bugs are more dangerous. C++ is a powerful language where bugs have a high chance of being loose cannons.


No need to patronise me. Smart pointers prevent dangling pointers, which is only one class of security problem with direct memory access. If you aren't using C++ in a way that is potentially dangerous then C++ isn't the right tool for the job.

Haha. I like this.

If you are using C++ in a way that you are always shooting your feet then you first ought to learn how to shoot.


Sorry if I'm coming across as patronizing it just seems to me that your comments don't show a great understanding of modern C++ as std::auto_ptr (what I can only guess you are referring to with the above quote) is on only one type of smart pointer (and if you look into boost there are various others - http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_49_0/libs/smart_ptr/smart_ptr.htm). The point is not to just prevent "dangling" pointers (which if you choose to use plain pointers anywhere in between you can't stop anyway) but to carefully control lifetime scope and to safely share pointers amongst owners, observers and (if required to) do so with thread safety.

Really guys - this whole "C++ is too dangerous to use" mantra sounds a little like the '90's Java hyperbole that came out from Sun (now try implementing the very useful RAII or as I prefer to call it "scoped object" pattern in that particular language and enjoy all that added mess of try/finally spaghetti you'll need to release your resource at the right time).

You can use C++ in the same way as your more "beginner friendly" languages and it will do the job - only faster. Even a lot of the old parsing ugliness (such as the old auto_ptr<map<string,string> > vs auto_ptr<map<string,string>> which you can now use) has been addressed.

No one is forcing you to use plain pointers or char arrays (I am guessing your bugbears). Pretty much all areas of real risk are API's (especially OS ones) and underneath all your shiny other languages must be the same API calls (which being C are going to have the same risks - just you are insulated one level from them unless of course your OS is written in a higher level language).

BTW I presume you guys did read that the bitcoin-qt *bug* was actually a missing compiler flag and not due to C++ coding.

I have (http://irrlicht.sf.net/) actually (http://bitplane.net/projects/irrlicht/misc/console-device/) done (http://bitplane.net/projects/irrlicht/loaders/ply-loader/) a (http://bitplane.net/projects/irrlicht/tools/gui-editor/) fair (http://bitplane.net/projects/irrlicht/nodes/grass/) bit (http://www.ohloh.net/accounts/bitplane/positions/total) of (http://bitplane.net/projects/games/space-invaders/) programming (http://bitplane.net/projects/irrlicht/loaders/rsrc/) in (http://bitplane.net/projects/games/jetpac/) C++ (http://bitplane.net/projects/irrlicht/nodes/mariokart-billboards/), and that's why I think it's dangerous.

I'm not saying it's too dangerous to use, I'm just saying it's a poor choice for some applications. Higher level languages are a lot more forgiving when it comes to simple mistakes.

For the record my favourite language is Python and I wouldn't advise using that for such a high transaction website either.

Nice set of links. :)

I really do understand the problems one can encounter programming in C++ (and much more so in C or doing C-ish stuff in C++) and have been programming in C++ since the mid 90's (started using C in the mid to late 80's).

My opinion is that if you do things the "right way" then the most "feared" problems really don't come up (such as buffer overruns, corrupted heaps, memory leaks, etc.) but I think now we are really just trading opinions and of course have gone a fair bit off topic.

The software system that I have built (and am still in the process of turning into an open source project) *generates* 100% of the "application" source code in any case so the usual sorts of problems associated with "coding mistakes" are pretty much irrelevant.

The "forum" package that I've been working on (although it's not a priority amongst many other tasks I'm currently busy with) is getting close to completion (as far the functionality excluding the PMs) so if anyone has any interest when completed I will provide information where they could take a look at it.

Will be busy doing some "real" work next week but managed to spend a couple of days this week adding to my Forum package.

Here are a few more snapshots of what I've whipped up in the last couple of days (will be leaving it at this as far as posting snapshots goes in case they are too annoying):

http://www.ciyam.com/forum8.png

This list is similar to the "unread posts" list (currently shows both read and unread but will be adding a checkbox to control this later). The "read" posts appear as light grey.

http://www.ciyam.com/forum9.png

For a post to marked as "read" you need to click the "Mark As Read" button (will take you back to the list so not really such an inconvenience). In order to reduce (IMHO) unnecessary I/O my system does not work with a "view count" and so will not automatically mark topics as read.

The more interesting button here however is the "Subscribe" - no more silly posts needed to do that job here. Also an "Unsubscribe" button will appear for Topics you have posted in or subscribed to which lead us to the last snapshot:

http://www.ciyam.com/forum10.png

This is equivalent to the "show new replies" list (currently shows read and unread but will also be adding a checkbox to control this).

You'll notice the "Introduce Yourself" topic does not appear here (as I used the "Unsubscribe" to get rid of it).

Once again all the server software is 100% C++ and is 100% generated. :)

Why doesn't the admin of this site use myBb or Php

Have you read the first post?

Point me to a piece of the OP that is relevant

Need much handholding? Pretty much the whole post is what you need to read, but pay attention to the "Required Features" section. Hint: no "stock" installation of any existing BB software will work because it is insufficient.

The entirety of it...  Does myBb have all of those features?

I don't know SMF nor much about this project, but even if work on this new system were to be started today, it is many months (or years ?) before this live, production forum would be migrated over to it, right?

Couldn't there be developments to improve (fork) SMF to fix the worst problems in the meantime.   For instance, the ability to stop showing certain threads in the "show new replies"?  Right now there is data destruction occurring as users delete their posts in hopes that they will no longer keep seeing those old threads reappear.

Even if the SMF fork is an all-volunteer effort, at least it is something so that progress forward can start occurring sooner rather than later, no?


Considering how much larger this community is than it was back in November when the first post was made, perhaps there is someone capable and willing to take your design ideas and with the help of this forum's community, launch development as an open source project right off the bat and start building?  Let the bounty go towards building community for the project or whatever.

The package that I have implemented for the open source project I will be launching later this year handles the issues of subscribing/unsubscribing very simply and already handles much of the required functionality (child boards, topic locking and moving).

I am working on the project every day and hope to be ready for launch in a couple of months (the delay being due to my having to now start documenting a project that has taken me over 10 years to build).

Whether or not a suitable platform for the actual forum I am quite certain it would be a very suitable platform for at least prototyping it.

Who ever ends up winning this thing should go with a facebook messaging system, where your PMs are always in conversation format i dunno how many times ive replied to people or recieved replies from people not knowing wtf we are talk ing about all becuase they didnt quote my last message im sure im not the only with this problem.

Just drop $200 on the vbulletin software, Its the best and most feature filled of all the BB software.

Vbulletin is exspensive but its worth it.

Not anymore, orig devs split to make Xenforo I believe, now they are suing each other out of existence.
Vbulletin 4 is total garbage

Of all the available forum software phpbb has the least amount of bugs reported (only 5 since 2003-2012) but that really doesn't mean anything. Maybe somebody is hording all their phpbb bugs for future exploits

+1. I suggest you contact Paul Taulborg. He created D2Jsp forums which is easily the most feature packed forum I've encountered.

Xenforo looks nice, I just tried the demo of it, Looks pretty sleek.

Phpbb is decent but i have found its admin cp to be a bit of a cluster fCK, Also its templates are ugly same with mybb, ugly ugly ugly.

Unless you want to pay someone to professionally design you a template and make it look nice but i had rather spend money on a forum with good tech support.

Opensource forums are good but they lack good tech support and usually (at least i find) ugly templates.

IMHO.

So, what is a status of this? Are bids still accepted?

My partner and I are still working on this.  Forums are way more complex than we originally thought, but it is coming along.  He has been busy with his "real" job though and hasn't had as much time as we had hoped.  Once we get the user system finished, I'll show off what we have and put a real bid in.

If there is wisdom in the crowd, then see:
 - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=179

(hint: These prediction markets work in this manner -- if someone "knows something" better than the rest ... then generally the odds will change as wagers from those with access to that information are made.  Currently these odds are about 30:1 that there won't be new  software running by Jan 1st.)

+1 vote for approaching the D2Jsp guy and buying/renting his software. He specifically designed it for online trading between users have to say it's the best out there, and fast.

Thanks for the vouch. His contact details are here:
http://forums.d2jsp.org/contact.php

Interesting offer, yet indeed a complex proposal.

@BitAvenue - Know nothing about the software you've used, but if trading is the #1 detail here, perhaps you've found something that is the way go.

However, do know some things about the Xenforo software, thought it might interest you involved in this decision, what I know is only a small fraction compared to the 2 guys that put together the site now running that platform here:
http://timemonkradio.com/

Both good friends, both likely to be happy to talk to you via Skype with that purchase decision & it's good/bad points from a backside operations standpoint, both want to do anything they can to help out the BitCoin community.  All I've heard from them is nothing but great stuff about how the Xenforo platform is 1000x better than what we're running over on the old closed vBulletin forum where I hang out most, got to say though, this place has really got me addicted at the moment!

Anyway, the Xenforo beta software was purchased last year, while still in beta & TMR really only got launched in a working fashion this last January, the site is still a work in progress, all of us work full time with day jobs, but it has come along fast since that launch, in a big way thanks to the software.

Yes, I've heard of the cat fight involved between the two company's, not sure it's slowing down the development team's product development though, if anything it's been spurring them on to greater levels of innovation.

Foxx, Neo and myself, we've been a team together, going on 5 years.  If we can be of any service, please don't hesitate to ask, everything we've been working on up until now, has been for free.

You can contact both directly from the site, just tell them GroundRod sent you or PM me here for direct contact details.

For my part, know very little about it, only on the audio backup, editor and sometimes interviewer tasks team.  Haven't worked with forum code since closing down my 10 node CPM-86 based PCBoard/FidoNet machines back in '96.

It's only been since March that BitCoin's came to our attention in a major a way, now we're doing everything we can to bring the first 1K people into the BitCoin world, some kicking and screaming all the way....

That was over a month ago now with that total.  Sometimes using a big round number like "2, 000 BTC worth over $10,000 USD" is something that can generate a  higher level of interest by prospective bidders.

In Ed McMahon's voice ...  "Tympani"!

I think it's the other way around.


Negative statements in bets always mean you have to stop and think for a bit about which is which. The majority of the bets are on the double negative, that is, a positive outcome.

Speed reading fail on my part.  Great, so 30:1 odds saying that in about 8 months this WILL BE running on new software.



At $5.30 current that 2,200 BTC is $11.6K USD for this project.  

This is by far now the biggest open project, in terms of both bitcoins and the value once converted to USDs ever.

I think it's official some entity needs to make a forums software that satisfies the requested requirements instead of presenting proposal/offers/mock up code or anything of the like.

Who gonna man up?

We have objectively compared different forum platforms available in the global market against requirements on this topic. We wanted to know is there any ready platform available that could fulfill these requirements with some modifications or could it be better to build a new platform from the scratch.

We made a deeper investigation to four (4) different forum platforms: Vanilla, IPB, phpBB3 and SMF2 (we dropped vBulletin out because of poor support for PostgreSQL database). There is over one hundred pages of documentation intended to the administrators of this forum sent privately to theymos.

Our summary is that SMF2 with modifications is the best solution for bitcointalk.org. All required and optional features can be included.

Our offer is still active. We have upgraded downgraded it to BTC700 BTC400 but still we are ready to discuss about the final price. We have in-house team ready to start work.


This is included to the default installation of SMF2 platform.

Thanks,
Request

SMF2 platform is free, bitcointalk should just upgrade to 2.0.2 and be done with it...

I did sent a PM asking to create a new forum from scratch, I think it was around d. 2 May. So just say the word, and I'll start cooking.

I saw this and thought it was amusing... http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=179

You would not consider Python / Django? It's really good for making quick, strong, scalable apps, easily modifiable, and "comes with" an awesome admin panel.

You're right, SMF2 is free. But please notice that there is some feature requirements which are not included to default installation of SMF2, and that's why there is need to develop those features. Also comparison of feature requirements vs. forums on the market, and especially documentation of that, toke several work days.

EDIT: There is some forum demo from us available at http://feuer.viuhka.fi/SMFDemo/

EDIT2: Good news: We have downgraded our bid to BTC400. Forum could save BTC1800 for other purposes! What do you think of that? :)

So your demo site is.. SMF default? 

Hi theymos,

I've been a long time lurker on this board, but more active just trading bitcoins and spreading the word. Most people can't get me to shut up about bitcoins.

I run a consulting company with my business partner, Masha. I would like to put ourselves out here as a candidate for building your new forum.

Here are our resumes:
Me (Colin): http://bit.ly/ccres (http://bit.ly/ccres)
Masha: http://mashalifshin.com/cv (http://mashalifshin.com/cv)

To make a somewhat accurate estimate will take some time, but I'd be happy to discuss either here or in PM. Please let me know which you'd prefer.

Thanks a lot,
Colin

No, it's includes several code changes. I will specify those on this topic a little bit later.

We haven't change the default template or designed our own. Of course, with some outsourcing we could do that.

I just found this topic, sorry if I'm a bit late to the show.

I do professional IT Consulting & Systems Analysis as my day job.  I also have more than a decade of professional software development experience. 
I have a resume I can send to you upon request, just PM me.

I wanted to let you know that there is already a plan to implement a forum with most of the features you are asking for.  It's a functional component of another project I'm planning (see my original post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83752.0 for more details on that project although no mention of a forum is made there).  I plan to deliver the forum portion of the product by the first week of August and there would be no cost for bitcointalk.org to use it. 
Nothing would be expected on your part, you would also have full source code etc so that you may make your own modifications/customizations in the future.
If you decide to run with it and would like further modifications the rate is a 20BTC per hour in consulting fees for the design stage and a flat fee contract for delivery.

I am willing to do this for two reasons, first off it's being done anyways we may as well re-use it, and secondly bitcointalk provides a valuable service to the community and I want a chance to be part of that.

PM me if you are interested.

this will never happen.

ever

How was Vanilla found lacking? Seems like a solid piece of software to me.

I think it makes sense to tackle the problem in small increments. Start with an well crafted, easy to modify platform like Vanilla and add functionality via plugins. Pay bounties for each piece of needed functionality in the requirements gap. The overall requirements list is too overwhelming for any firm or individual to commit to.

any reason not to use vbulletin?

Well, it's not open source for one thing. It also seems kinda over-built and old fashioned. Sort of like SMF.

I was over at another BTC forum :o and was really impressed with their forum software to the point that I scrolled down to see who made it and went to the developer's website. Then I saw your post so here it is:

https://bitcoin.org.uk/
and http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/ is the software

What's gonna happen to the current forums? Will the data be imported or somthing like that?

I would hope that's part of the deal :)

@ keverw I reckon so.The admins will need a converter type tool or importer to import data into the new system.In the case of invision power boards,The converter would be this : http://www.invisionpower.com/suite/convert.php (http://www.invisionpower.com/suite/convert.php)

Looks great. I guess buying a forum software with a importer available is a major plus. I would be sad if the forum had to start fresh again.

What's the update on this ? 

We'd be much better committing 2200BTC to contribute improving an existing software that to write one.

Incidentally, ...

Watchlist feature has been added:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90136


Also, 3,000 BTC .., valued just under $20K USD.

Writing this feature made me hate SMF even more.

It supports PHP 4.

I am willing to "bid" on this project as well if it's still available.
I have a 6yr+ php experience and a 5yr+ jquery/javascript experience.

All i did was freelancing and if pmed i can give you a list of websites were i have been working.

I am planning to code your project in php, but also to take advantage of the jquery jsonp (cross domain json) and my own framework.
I don't want to use any existing open source forum, and i plan to use my framework because i will code into it only what is required for the project, without any extra functions.

I could code the project and also think it's arhitecture, something designed for future use, for cluster (as you probably noticed, bitcoins will attract more and more visitors), and probably in future you will have to move to a cluster.

Planning to use a mysql cluster with a http cluster (separating the mysql from http, to ensure a minimum load on the server side).
We will take advantage of the available technology, we will code the http cluster in javascript (jquery with jsonp) so that the ressources required by your servers will be at the minimum, and no plugins will be required by the client side (browsers).

Everything you requested will be implemented and i will be using my framework with or without smarty integrated (as you wish).
Something else will be added at the security, because of the jsonp cluster a token will be created to monitor visitors.
Another key factor is that i will code a module to detect xss or sql attacks and to be tracked down to ip, banning it for a limited time if detected and mailing admins/dev crew.
The design will be unique, and will try to make it clean, but again, we will take advantage of technology such as canvas/css 3/jquery effects.

Because i plan to use something unique/new (jquery for the http cluster) wich will improve the costs and the ressources of the server and that i am going to take advantage of the latest technology and methods that are available (without the use of plugins, just native codes) i will have to ask abit more than it's offered, 3600 BTC.

Example of my framework implemented into a game(not fully developed): http://code.google.com/p/v2ge/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2FV2GE


Let me know if you are interested in my offer and send me a pm.

I am interested in giving this a shot.

I have bitcoin project experience. Nothing published at this time but I do have over 25 years of web development experience.

I do have published works that are not bitcoin related. I can pm you my list of links if you are interested.

My skill sets besides bitcoin technologies are:

I have BOLDED the technologies that I am currently involved in.

PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, PHP, XHTML, AJAX, HTML5, CSS, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla! Platform and ASP using VBScript/C#; ActionScript, Bash, BASIC, Batch, C++, Objective-C, Perl, Python, VBScript and Visual C#

SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS
Microsoft, Visual SourceSafe, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, Powerpoint, Project, Visio, Word, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, After Effects, Bridge, Dreamweaver and Illustrator

OPERATING SYSTEMS
Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/7/Server 2008, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and Ubuntu 11.10

You don't value the free software philosophy which made possible the system (Bitcoin) this community is about. Shame on you!.

please visit http://glari.ch:3000
3000 BTC funded to the Glari Mining Project listed at https://cryptostocks.com/securities/9?locale=en
I think this is the enviroment the bitcointalk comunity needs as a basis for future development

Environment:
  Redmine version                          2.0.3.stable
  Ruby version                             1.9.3 (x86_64-linux)
  Rails version                            3.2.6
  Environment                              production

http://www.redmine.org/

You don't think custom services by geeks who go out of their way to meet the requirements of the job should be properly paid for?

Is it just me, or am I the only one who couldn't make out head nor tail of this post? What does funding 'Glari Mining Project' has got to do with modifying the forum?

No, it wasn't just you. I even looked at the username/avatar and post count two more times to be sure it wasn't just an automated spam reply lol

This is a serious offer, glari.ch is able to deploy Redmine for bitcointalk: you can see the example for a Redmine instance on glari.ch (http://glari.ch:3000) or Redmine (http://redmine.org).

Redmine Project (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQv4OtR5T_M)
Redmine Collaboration and Document Management  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obqIIHLO6bM)

Since this is not just a small task, project donators are welcome to acquire shares and show this way there agreement and support to build a Redmine based port 3000 for bitcointalk. When the project reaches more then 30k public hold GMP shares; we start to deploy Redmine.

Whats wrong with email? I would like to see normal lists. Because of less traffic Mailman would be a good choice. Very easy to set up also. Forums are for little people. It is stupid to have to use something like that. Very susceptible for XSS and other attacks. When I came here I was wondering if you really know what you are doing. Sorry if I have to say it so plainly. I'm surprised that nothing has happened yet.

I would prefer simple mailing lists. So I can read new messages and be simultaneously logged into Mt Gox. On the same machine, at the same time with the same account. Add to this a sensible archiving software and you have a professional environment. Animated smilies are nice but perhaps not misson critical. Also I do not need a profile and stuff like this. Why bother?

For Donation and FAQ there can be a normal site. Keep it simple stupid. Just my two cents.

Redmine is a flexible project management web application. Written using the Ruby on Rails framework, it is cross-platform and cross-database.

Redmine is open source and released under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 (GPL).
Features

Some of the main features of Redmine are:

    Multiple projects support
    Flexible role based access control
    Flexible issue tracking system
    Gantt chart and calendar
    News, documents & files management
    Feeds & email notifications
    Per project wiki
    Per project forums
    Time tracking
    Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users
    SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)
    Issue creation via email
    Multiple LDAP authentication support
    User self-registration support
    Multilanguage support
    Multiple databases support

Read more about Redmine features. (http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Features)

Redmine Plugins list (http://www.redmine.org/plugins)

BTW
The Bitcoin Development Team allready use REDMINE
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=80019.0
why the guys have to pay for a service at bettermeans.com when they could have the same tools on bitcointalk avalable for free?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlnMWlvw9g

Quote: (http://devwiki.pietrust.com/BetterMeans)
BetterMeans is simply a fork of the Redmine issue tracker, integrated with a governance system and a rewards system. Except for those integrations, BetterMeans is NOT a new kind of project management tool that allows one to manage projects in a different way than Redmine.
Compared to Redmine, BetterMeans imposes a specific workflow (by contrast, Redmine is extremely customizable) and removes some of Redmine's advanced features, such as advanced searches. In exchange, it provides a different UI.

Not to discourage you or anything, but the development actually uses GitHub's issue tracker. The thread you linked is for the testing project.

You are right.Thanks for correcting me.
I suggest this plugin:
Github Hook (http://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_github_hook) Allow your Redmine installation to be notified when changes have been pushed to a Github repository.

I still don't really understand what Redmine has to do with a forum reimplementation. Do you mean to manage the development process?

Not only manage the development process. Yes that would be one of the possible functions, but allso to provide a real platform - A Hub for comunication, education and development around cryptocurrency. There are many project at the moment what use bitcointalk as there main info and comunication side, but they have only limited options since this is a smf based forum.


In fact bitcointalk, as i understand it, works basicaly as a information-, comunication-, education- and development-hub between all the various projects and efforts around cryptocurency. The forum is allready now structured and this structure is portable (http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Alternativecustom_authentication_HowTo). To see redmine as a pure replacement for a forum is the wrong viewpoint. It is more like an basic framework that allows to be extended with functions and tools theymos demanded on the inital post in this thread and would open up a whole new perspective of possibilities for this comunity (http://www.redmine.org/projects/redmine/wiki/Plugin_Tutorial).

I setup BitGit (http://luke.dashjr.org/programs/bitcoin/) to track all the various git repos relating to Bitcoin, originally planning to expand it to a bug tracker - but never really found one I liked (nor really have the time to manage it). Launchpad seems ideal (it would even let you express that a bug affects numerous projects), but it only supports Bazaar :(

PMed.

I updated the specification:
- Added "Overview of problems with SMF".
- Certain languages are only preferred, not required.
- Using a database abstraction layer is allowed, but not preferred.
- Link to final hashing scheme (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84992.0).
- Added tags as a required feature.
- Added drafts as a required feature.

I'll update my bid soon.

After looking more closely at the mess that is SMF 2, I'm leaning towards something like http://vanillaforums.org/ as a better option. Architecture is significantly better, for one, which is especially important given the amount of customisation this project would require.

If the bid process is still open, I would like to enter. Why you should choose my bid?

- I have 10 years of web development experience (been coding back in PHP 4.0 days). In this time I have sucessfully done many small and big projects, from complete solutions for translating software (uTorrent Translation System (http://translate.utorrent.com)), whole websites (Xilfee.eu (http://xilfee.eu) - a website for language tutors and students, with quite big student/host database and many user features) and Bitcoin related projects (BitMarket.eu (http://bitmarket.eu)). I'm a code purist, I care much not only if my code works, but also, if it's readable, reusable and simple to read (KISS and DRY);
- I'm very familiar with HTML/CSS for templating (doing CSS design even back then, when tables were kings), Javascript (used XMLHttpRequest way before Ajax term was coined by Garrett in 2005; now I'm very familiar with libraries like MooTools and jQuery), and PHP (writing PHP5 code, because it's OO model and functions give you much flexibility and actually enhance code readibility);
- I don't work alone. I think it's safe to assume that if you put the bid in the hands of one person, the project will most likely fail. Forums software is a big project, and one person alone is not enough to deliver quality product. I work with at least two more people - designer and HTML/CSS coder, which speeds up the work a lot.
- I'm a member of this community since the beginning. You can check my history to see if I'm trustworthy :).

Because I work in a team, 3000 BTC for this project seems reasonable. This would be done over the course of 2-3 months, plus few weeks for testing and bugfixing. Should you have any more questions, please ask here or send me a PM.

I would like to say that anyone  who is going to completely write a forum project out of thin air is most probably gonna finish bad. We could all do that. But why to reinvent the wheel? Just to meet with common problems that had already been solved over and over by people more experienced than us?

There are several forum projects that could be easly expanded to meet the admin requests for this forum. These are, in my mind and in order of preference:

#1 XenForo: light and with a minimal set of state of the art features. It would be my bet in case i would do this project.
#2 Vanilla Forum: even lighter. It's anyhow missing some of the features that are really useful on xenforo, such as user notifications FB-style.
#3 IPB: heavy but not for this slow. Well coded and solid like a rock. It has an amazing feature set, it's the only one who could compete with vBulletin on this level.

So this is my bid:
# 500-1000 bitcoins. I would like to have a fair reward for this, but i don't want it to be at a fixed rate. If the community will be happy with my work they will better compensate it. The other way around too. Also, i don't want to work for nothing. As far as i know it's possible that when i will receive that amount the exchange rate will be 1B=0.1€. That would be unfair for people putting such an effort on this.
# I would use XenForo and expand it on the missing features. That's all. You can look at XenForo to see what you are missing as of now on this old board.
# I will provide link to websites i coded privately
# I will work part time on this, sending the code i wrote weekly to the admin of the board. It could take 3 to 6 months at the speed i work. I'm not a full time developer, nor it's the thing i love more from life. I would do this project only to help the Bitcoin project, whom i have belief in.
# English is not my mother language. I'm italian, and i'm really poor on spoken english. Take that into account.

This is my first post as non-Newbie, so Hello Everyone!

Regards.

This thread is quite comic after all this time.

It should be clear to anyone that the admin is not willed to proceed in the next future, and i still keep losing time on checking this looking for a feedback.

+1. I agree that it's reasonable to expect feedback.

theymos is away this weekend, FYI.

I bid that I will take IP.board and change it according to your needs for 500 BTC, It's a great board with lots of possibilities and I have several years of knowledge and work with it. I suggest that's the best and cheapest approach for you. If the admin is interested I will provide more info.

No thanks.

am i talking with you ?

No one will use a forum created by a government agency. Sorry.

You right but everyone knows the reason behind the hacking how many forum were hacked in past

Bitcoin is gonna be biggest company so they should secure themselves by using secure things instead of using SMF >> MYBB >> VBULLETIN >> PHPBB >> VANILLA >> FUD FORUM >> USEBB OR XENFORO

every forum has its own vulnerability bitcoin team need security not h4xing

It's a forum.... :) not your online bank...

What are recent news about new backend for bitcointalk.org? Is anyone doing anything? 3600 BTC seem to be enough to have it done already.

I havent read the whole thread but 3600btc seems nutz.

SRSLY, why not use the vbulletin board, there are many very successful forums using this software, why isnt it enough for the bitcointalk forum?

I've just found this - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=179
Hey, guys who placed bets for DISAGREE, how much would u pay me to NOT develop new forum software?

Very funny.

vB, IPB, XenForo, they are all open source. You can't redistribute the code but you can look at it, edit it.

There is more chance of the Linux kernel being flawwed than these boards.

And btw our admin is waiting till December to release the new software so he will do LOADS of money betting on that website. And no one will pay you anything because you are not developing anything, Come From Beyond (what a nickname!).

You guys can do all the magic you want with this "Forum software"

But whoever @ Softlayer is maintaining the server that Bitcointalk.org runs on.... needs to be dragged outside and shot.

Why not invest in some real hardware, you're in the right DC at least.

Its all a moot point with the software, you guys hang like 5 times a day with what.... 500-1000 users at any given time...

3600 BTC?  Jesus, for 36BTC I'll blow your mind with performance.

What the hell is happening around here anyway?

The downtime lately is not normal... just wait a week or two and thins''ll improve.

I agree with the one that suggest to buy your own hardware and to colocate.
Than put a webcam in the top of rack front/back and check for whoever opens your rack - I remember someone to have already done this, but only once that the FBI got their server, and they recorded via that webcam the FBI trying to reinstall the server on the same rack supposing that nothing happend... LOL!

Thats awesome

http://redtape.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/11/11647813-the-fbi-took-and-mysteriously-returned-their-server-heres-their-story

Anyway @admin, can we have any serious answer?
Have you strongly invested in this - http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=179 (http://betsofbitco.in/item?id=179) and thus you are gonna tell us to go on only after december?

So is this thread dead?

I read over the requirements on the first post from the admin...

Creating Forum Software will be a big mistake. And do NOT leave MySQL.  There's a reason why its the MOST SECURE DB in the *Nix world.

Install and Pay for VBulletin 4.  Its BULLETPROOF.  Get a bunch of us together for SEO and attractiveness.

The ONLY vulnerabilities you will have is on the Nix side. 

And assuming this is at LEAST a VPS over at Softlayer, we can tighten it more than a Southern Baptist Raised Teenager on her Prom night.

You will regret hand writing a forum when a proven one exists for years. 
I did it once, than the particular programmer who did it, got very upset with me.

I was expected to spend SEVEN FIGURES (and I was preparing to) on obtaining my source code after a disupute.  Its not worth it.
You will not come close to the security and professionalism of VBulletin.

You have my word.

Time to play!

Yes, but is it such a mistake to build on top of an existing one? No...

Need proof else GTFO. I hate this attitude with a passion. It sounds stupid. Why do you think lots of vB users jumped ship after Internet Brands ttook the software over from Jelsoft? Just because a software costs a pretty penny does not mean it is better. I've already lost count of the numerous times me and my online buddies tell people this.

If paid software is "perfect", why do free alternatives even exist?

Even though it is a great learning experience, it usually is a total waste of time. And vastly overwhelming. I've tried it. Twice. And both times, I felt overwhelmed. Buried in a sea of code. Leads to burnout. Horrible feeling.

Seems like it. theymos hasn't provided any feedback in months, as far as I can tell.


I don't think anyone (who is experienced) has seriously suggested doing this. It's not feasible to write a complete product from scratch within the current budget, and it wouldn't make sense to do so for this project even if the budget was higher.

Sorry for the delay. Many people have submitted very good bids (some privately). I've been procrastinating because I'm not sure how to choose among the candidates. It requires a lot of thought.

I fixed some of the most serious problems in SMF, so I'm not in as big of a hurry as when I started this topic.


LOL

Why not run a poll where each candidate has a bitcoin address and the most coins sent to one of them is the winner :D

doh, cmon guys, give it a birth already  ;D. or your perfect programmer doesn't exist yet?

Maybe im just to far away on programming to understand what you are looking for but hey, there are huge forums as sayd running vbulletin very successfully indeed, same for mybb.

BTW, this was one of my first thoughts when i visited this forum, "omg the board software sucks but the forum is interesting, ill stay for a while", well after some hours of browsing its ok but first it was really like $&%W%&§$"§$2"§§(/%%%

I run several large forum communities and can tell you hands down that there is no need to re-invent the wheel.

I would highly recommend vBulletin 4.x as the forum software, almost all forums that are of any worth run this software.
vBulletin has an easy import function (Impex) which will convert the existing forum into vBulletin. ( I have down this several times and its straight forward. )

99% of what you have mentioned you would like the forum software to do vBulletin can already do and the other things you have mentioned that are not out of the box functionality are easily coded in simple plugins which I can also do.

I would gladly help you with this transition free of charge.

I would also recommend Servint.net as a hosting provider, I have hosted with multiple companies over the years and even own my own rack & since switching to servint have never looked back there support is second to none.

Servint.net self managed dedi seems quite expensive, isnt it? I currently host with webtropia on an economy server but the hdd`s seems to be slow, the professional line should be good but still seem cheaper for an unmanaged solution.

How would vBulletin with modifications to add certain functions be with you?

I'm not sure that vB 4 is the right way... Have you heard of core developers leaving and creating their own platform (Xenforo)?
vBulletin was great specially up to 3.x it was miles ahead competition. But nowadays - Xenforo is most popular choice of hardcore vB modders... Read this: http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95608

I'm guessing the forum is waiting for vb5 to be officially released, and then we'll all see the greatness of connect....

BOSS,

Please upgrade the board. XF, ipb, vb, whatever. But please upgrade it.

I think that we are all getting tired of the limits of SMF.

I think SMF works pretty well now. I fixed the most pressing issues. (This is one of the reasons I haven't been too motivated to get this job done.)

I agree with you that it *works* well, however it's really a 2005 software.
No ayax, no mobile style, it dosen't detect properly readed and udreaded posts (at least for me it dosen't send me to the first unreaded post), it dosen't has any kind of notification system, etc.

For me they are all shortcomings, it would be really great if you yourself upgraded for (my personal preference) xenforo. You should be able to integrate the features that this board has and will be missing there in a week of work or so.

But unfortunatelly i understand if you follow the old "if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it" motto, i'm a lazy person and i follow that too on my work online.

You should try pressing the blue image with the text "new"(https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/BlackBox/images/english/new.gif) instead of the post title...

I still find the  [3600+ BTC] such awesome, on freelancer boards them coderz would code the nasa spaceshuttle os for this amount, well at least the kernel  :D.

Thanks for that.

I don't want to push you admin, but it still is my idea (and I think that you will find an expert freelancer that for 100-200btc would be capable of doing all the mess...)

Just pick the board you like, go there and ask for that!

After all, it's tax free :)

This is enough to hire a team to do it for you already, provided the timeframe is not too immense. You get what you paid for.

How about paying a team to do it open source?

And distributed! :)


There is such tech possible with current browsers with html5.

We been waiting too long using a substandard board. WE DEMAND PROGRESS!

Well, I didn't pay anything to the funds, so I don't really have much of a right to say something.

Lol.

^^ programs in PHP 4.3.

Why you code in a horror of a language?

I don''t. I code in PHP/5.3.10+.

You just listed as a requirements a release that only has one bugfix in it, no new features.
This proves me that you don't know php enought to blame it.

That being said, it's certainly not the best language of the world, as none is, but it does fit some requirements pretty well.

You are trying to make me confess about which languages I code with. PHP. And I can recognise some C based variants enough to tweak/hunt and fix bugs.

But it's certainly NOT blameless. Not by a long shot. The worst one that comes to mind is security and data sanitation. You gotta do it all yourself.

That is what frameworks are for :)

If you're going to have open-id, just go full open-id. Optionally, have a bitcointalk open-id server maybe?

I respectfully suggest you should suspend and lock this thread. It's kinda unfair to waste professional developers (of which I am not one*) time and effort dangling 3000+ bitcoins out there when you're not serious about it.





(*Or rather I am not currently seeking contracts)

And remove it from the top banner rotation.

Me / Bid: I am a very experienced web application developer based in the US. I can complete this project for the equivalent of $7000 in bitcoin (~583 today) and the project will take approximately 3-4 months to complete. All debugging will be completed and a bug report feature will be included in the event that anything is missed.

Features: I can mirror all the current SMF features as well as the new features/ways of doing things that you outlined.

Security / Maintainability / Code: Your new site/forum solution will be built using a very secure PHP development framework which I am very familiar and experienced with. The project will be developed using MVC programming methodology, a common and proven structured programming technique. Function names and parameters will be consistent throughout the program. It will be easily modifiable and maintainable to anyone with knowledge of PHP and MVC. I can also implement AJAX functionality for quick edit, etc.

License: I will retain ownership of the code to sell, reuse, or repackage. You will receive a license to use it indefinitely on any Bitcoin Talk domain (1 production installation and as many development/test installations as you need). You will be allowed to modify it in any way but not to share or sell it.

Database: I use MySQL, my queries and database structure are VERY FAST! I promise!

UI / UX: I'm all about minimalism and user experience. No problem making it look like this and making it skinnable. I've done all of that before and I am a master with CSS.

Groups: Groups will be customizable, but I'll create the predefined groups you asked for.

Stats: No problem, I'm an expert when it comes to reporting.

Limits: All routine things you're asking for, no problem!

Registration / OpenID: Everything looks good here.

Everything you've outlined here is possible and won't be an issue. Please get back to me soon if you intend on hiring me for this project. I will provide you with my resume and examples of my work.

A mean to downvote posts and have post with say "-5" show as hidden/collapsed by everyone with a hide trigger of >-5

These sorts of things would benefit us all and promote a sane Bitcoin development.

I might just be dreaming here but what would be the requirement to implement a way to convert and move entire threads to entirely different discussion system like disqus or reddit ?

Threaded topics would much more effectively manage inputs from users like Atlas, Goats, smoothie, ect... who tend to post, poorly though of, one line response to  specific details from a larger post and sometime doing so while quoting 2 page long posts.

Ummm is this going to happen this century?  ???

Nope.

I will design and build a complete CRM system from the ground up for 3btc and a Hershey bar. It will have walnut veneer inlay and gold filigree. This response is about as serious as this thread.

+1

OMG you have got to be shitting me.  

Fixed most of the pressing issues?  What issues have been fixed?  There's no mobile support.  There's no moderator support. There's no subscription support.  There's no advanced editor support.  There's no useful search feature. There's no reputation support.  There's no auction support. There's no classified support.  There's no spam protection.  There's no image gallery.  There's no attachment management.  There's no streaming/AJAX thread updates. There's no advanced profiles.  There's no anything, except a forum built in the 1990's.

I can't seriously believe you just said you fixed most of the pressing issues.  Use modern forum software.  All of the above is included in modern forum software either out of the box or with simple plugins.  Stop this silly nonsense about reinventing the forum wheel and creating software from scratch.  Pick a modern package and go with it.  

Heh... "SMF works pretty well now."   It's like saying "My horse and carriage work pretty well no, we don't need those new fangled 'automobiles'".

Inaba pretty much brought it all together, this discussion here is nonsense, i just wonder that in meantime nobody else pulled up a forum, the board is full of geeks and people deeply in the dev sector.

We could do that in half an hour but we can't move the user base ourselves.

Setting up a new forum or new forum software is fairly trivial.

Migrating the data from a previous forum is a pain.
Getting users to go elsewhere is easier said than done.

Even THAT can be done easily and without a hitch.

Impex FTW

And not only that.

Anyway theymos, will you ban me if I start up an alternative community and spam it in this topic only and in my signature?

Can you elaborate on your ideas of a useful search?

"Search this forum"  "Search this thread"  Binary search.  Complex searches. etc...

Guess it pretty much depends on who does it, who would be aware, word of mouth, bitcoin irc, first page google result.
My idea people would pretty fast recognize if there is an better organized and technical advanced option.
It most probably, in my opinion, would not be the same as if the owner of this forum decides to do a software upgrade.
Whatever, im just bored trolling the forumz.

EDIT:
A useful search would for example not print a 404 when i enter a search, click on a result and use the go back buton on firefox.
A useful search would also know google operators, intitle, intext, filetype etc...
A useful search could print results in ajax or something similar, letting you stay on top off buzzwords.

https://bitcointalk.org/?wap2


Huh? I've improved the moderator tools a lot. And this doesn't impact you much, since you're not a moderator.


Watchlist.


I probably wouldn't introduce one of those fancy WYSIWYG editors even if I could do so for free. I hate using them on other sites because they interfere with the features my browser gives me for textboxes, and they would encourage people to use more annoying markup. I do not want to see people making all of their posts in some unusual color and font in order to stand out or be unique. That's just annoying.

Some improvements could be made, especially for more complex features like tables.


It isn't too bad. I use it pretty frequently, though Google is better for some searches.


This feature exists... Use the search box while you're in a thread and it'll search that thread. Use it when you're in a section and it'll search that section.


There won't be a global reputation system. This forum is for discussion, which global reputation systems interfere with.

A web of trust reputation system would be good.


These would be nice, but they're not priorities. I worry about supporting discussion first and trading second.


Have you ever even seen automated spam outside of the newbies section?


What's wrong with posting links? Then you can handle the links however you want in your browser. Use a browser-based image gallery userscript if you want.


There won't be, since the forum won't support attachments.


That'd be a good feature, but it's not a priority.


Advanced in what way?

I'm not saying that we're staying with SMF forever. There are many improvements to make, and I'm uneasy about SMF's security. But SMF works pretty well.

The first two are already included. Go within a sub-forum and use the search box at the top right to search only that forum. Same with thread.

Try using that with a tablet or phone touchscreen and then tell me about it ;D

Would you be willing to insert a mobile browser detection script and serve a custom css file to mobile browsers?

WAP lol... seriously?  You want us to use a feature designed for phones that do text only and through a protocol that was dead before it was even born?  Come on.  Forum Runner and Tapatalk should be supported at a bare minimum.


Yes, it does affect me because the moderators can't do their job properly.


Is not a subscription.  The watchlist function is barely adequate and is basically a hack on top of a hack to make a feature that should be in the base forum software.  It is, in a word, craptacular.  I have to go to two separate places to find threads I want to pay attention to.  Then, once I post in that thread I can't @#%#@$ remove it from my list of watched threads if I lose interest in it, without deleting ALL MY POSTS in that thread.  Pure, utter stupidity.


I'm not sure what sites you are using or what browser you are using, but you're using the wrong ones in either case.  Try some on modern forum software on a modern browser.  They work fine and don't interfere at all.


Again, much like the watchlist, it's barely adequate.  If you want to strive for mediocrity, then it's a win.


Sorry, but normal people don't use junk like that.  Look at the current WoT.  It's barely used compared to the community here.  It's a failure because it's too difficult to use.  It needs to be built in to the forum and simple, otherwise people won't use it, no matter how superior it is.  


Great!  Switching to modern forum software will accomplish this goal perfectly.  Sticking with the bug ridden, feature bare, security holed SMF is not furthering that goal.  It's putting a forum on life support and hoping for the best.


Yes... and when I tried to report the multiple threads, I got the stupid "You must wait 20 seconds between posts" so I didn't bother reporting the three other threads that were posted after the first one.


Because it's a pain in the ass.  Again, you don't seem to understand that people want convenience, not a complicated ritual to post a !@#%#@$ image.  It's called making your forum rich in content, not making it user hostile.  With an image gallery/attachment manager, you can have the best of both worlds - people can still post links if they want, or they can use the built in tools that allow them to communicate instead of trying to decipher how to post an image.


Then what is a priority?  You don't seem to be advancing anything as a priority.  Everything that makes a good forum is "not a priority" so far.


Take a look at the profiles of a modern forums software package for an idea.  Yes, SMF works pretty well for something from 1999.  It works like a piece of crap for something from 2010... and here it is almost 2013.

This thread will be a year old in another few days and there has been exactly zero advancement of this forum as far as security and features go.  It's the same forum from a year ago.  You are never going to get custom software written in a reasonable timeframe.  Just pick one of the modern forum packages and go with it.  I suggest vBulletin, but I honestly don't care what package you go with, so long as it has modern features and abilities.

You are not only a paid troll, you are a troll, that's all.

Lets say that this time I appreciate your goals.

Somehow, I don't think you understand what a troll is.  Nice try, though. *golf clap*

Before you come back with some mind bendingly stupid response as to how I really am a troll, please provide citations where my posts are made purely to disrupt the forum and/or take the thread off topic.  What you will find is that my posts are typically on topic (or if they stray off topic it's in response to someone else who has posted an off topic reply, such as this one.) and relevant to the discussion at hand.  You can try to redefine troll in whatever manner you see fit, but you will be wrong. Ergo, labeling me a troll is incorrect, no matter how much you want it to be.  I know it's easier to label me a troll than to actually address the questions or comments I make with logic, forethought and rational discussion, since that is usually in short supply in most people, you being a good example.

Let's say that you are simply the rudest one right around here.

And this time i appreciate this.

Rude?  Yes, absolutely. I  have very little tolerance for people who are too stupid to formulate an intelligent reply.  Again, if you go back through my posts, if you approach me with civility and intelligence, you usually get the same in response.  You approach me with rudeness and/or stupidity, you get rudeness in response.  It's pretty simple actually.

Again, you and your post is a good example.  You approach me with name calling (and it's not even accurate) and you (apparently?) expect me to be civil to you?  Seriously?

Thank you for making me a laught off you.

That's not how the watchlist works.


Some big features that were added:
- Secure hashing of passwords.
- Watchlist
- Automatic whitelisting by any staff member
- "Nuke" feature usable by staff members
- All Tor IPs are automatically banned from registering
- Ignore user (with hidden threads and highlighted ignore link)
- Ignore boards


OK, I did that for the default theme (using CSS3 media queries). I removed a lot of wasted space and made it so horizontal scrolling isn't required. It looks OK in a small Firefox window. I don't have a smartphone with which to test it, though.

I like this forum a lot and seen improvement in the short time I've been here.  Frankly I'm surprised no one has taken you up on your offer for a new system yet...

There are people here that would work almost for free, the problem is the admin that likes it as it is and dosent want to change it.

I know!  That's the problem!


Come on man, those are all "features" that are standard on bone stock software built after 2009.  They aren't even features, they should be considered basic functionality.  The fact that you had to hack them into the forums should be telling. 

There is virtually nobody in this thread that agrees that SMF is adequate, while the majority of the people agree that we should switch to a modern software suite.  Why is it that you are so reluctant to switch to something else?  Why is "Good enough" ok?  Shouldn't you be striving for "AWESOME!" ?  Why settle for mediocrity?  Especially when it's so trivial in the grand scheme of things to switch.


Browsing a forum via the browser on a phone is an exercise in frustration.  There needs to be a Forum Runner or Tapatalk like application to view/navigate the forum on a smartphone.  Conveniently, this ability is built in to modern forum software strangely enough.

When I said custom css I was thinking mostly along the lines of having buttons for pagination and new replies that could be pressed with a finger.
Having no scrolling is a good start, but pagination and the new replies button are the biggest problems.

So you want bigger text for page links and "new reply", etc.?

I've never used a smartphone, so I'm not sure what's needed...

Having a limited Photo album for each user would be cool.... 

Not the post new reply link, if that was what you were thinking, as you said "bigger text". I meant the https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/BlackBox/images/english/new.gif image that opens unread replies on a thread.
Pagination and clicking that image are the biggest difficulties, at least for me, and I use a tablet. I can only imagine how much pinching to zoom people will have to do on a smartphone lol

You guys having problems pressing buttons use android, correct?

Yes, I use Android.
The iPads and iPhones have a kind of a magnifying glass, isn't it?

No, they simply autocorrect you. It's some kind of magic feature, but i have no problems at all at pressing the 5-pixel-height "new" button, nor the reply to this thread link.
And i have big fingers, it's just that somehow something fix it for me.

What about the pagination numbers at the bottom or top of the threads?
I can't even press the forward arrow (») as somehow it always presses the last page number or the All link lol

It works for me. In the worst case you do a double tap = auto zoom, than go with precision on the page you want.

Did anyone take this job yet?

Just to make it clear, since that this is a recurring question almost on every page,

The admin thinks the forum to be good as it is and won't give anyone the job for this. On the other side, he refuses to close this topic.

I think that he is looking for a 7+years expert working for free

Cool, I didn't go to all the pages to see if its taken or left. 3600 bitcoins at the top is $40k

No. SMF is OK, so I'm not in a big hurry to replace it. I'll give this job to someone when I'm satisfied that they will do it perfectly.

jQuery Mobile would be a very good addition as a mobile skni. Also, I have worked with it before, extending it to work with SMF (yes, I sent in a bid privately, and I am known within the SMF community to know SMF's code and how that forum platform works. Anyone may feel free to ask me questions.)

Which means nobody will!

You can satisfy yourself that bidder x will do the job perfectly by choosing an appropriate legal agreement and payment structure. It's impossible to have complete confidence at the RFP stage: that's what lawyers are for.

Projects with big budgets should have a contract signed as a good legal safety net.

There are freelancer sites with escrow, milestone payments and coder forums where members offering services and also got reputation.
When i need a coder it takes like 7 days to get one for standard stuff.
If its a really serious job i maybe would contract a local webagency but never needed to do that.

Oh look, we missed the threads one year birthday :/

Someone should just create the software and sell the finished product to Theymos, otherwise it will never get done.

Too risky, he felt in love with SMF.

Could we at least get an unsubscribe button. I'm no longer interested in the "I'm a newbie, get me out of here" thread.

Off topic, but it's under Profile/Notifications and Email

Delete all your replies on that thread and you'll no longer see it on the list.

rix: Didn't find it there :( and psy: Thanks. That's a little backwards to be honest but it is what it is.

It's the only way that works apparently. Rix's solution has only to do with email subscriptions.

I think we must be versions behind because another forum I use which is similar treats it as subscriptions and you can subscribe and unsubscribe anytime.

Oh, I thought he meant that. Otherwise just use the watchlist.

This forum is using 9 year old software.

Oddly enough this has been suggested in the first few pages(not your fault, i don't blame you for wasting your time)
It's in my opinion based on theymos' response patterns he/she wants an Open-Source project that will fulfill the bounty and at the same time release a suitable Bitcoin secure software forum package for everyone to use. This is just my opinions based off what theymos said to some of my proposals last year.

Sharing is caring, they say.

So what if its that old do they not update the forum software anymore?

Oh, they have updates, alright. 2.0 a year ago, and 2.1 is in alpha.

well it says Powered by SMF 1.1.16 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines so it must be old then.

I've read through this forum, theymos you have a lot of good offers to consider. I look forward to an enhanced BTCtalk. You mentioned you have a budget of 920 BTC. I'm just curious where this comes from-not trying to be nosy btw. I'm just saying because the reason I love this site so much is its user-user with no intermediary (BitMit) taking a percentage of transactions. Is all of that 920 BTC donated? If so thats incredible. Give me an address and I'll donate if thats the case!

Please see the Donate link at the top of the page.

I'm not sure if you have looked at this path, but a previous forums site I am on had been running SMF as well and was taken down by an exploit in its coding (can't remember what version they were running) but they upgraded there forums software to IP Board, and so far have not had an issue with it. Mind you what they use it for is probably not as high maintenance as required by BCT. but this could be an alt solution

bitcointalk is also targeted at a group of people who are more likely than average to be interested in coding & hacking.

eg. even with exact same forum software, and same number of members, grandmasknittingtalk.org would probably be less likely to get hacked.

I:
- Replaced https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/BlackBox/images/english/new.gif with larger "[new]" text.
- Increased the size of page links.
- Removed the top page numbers from section pages because they took up a lot of space.

Better?

Does anyone know what it is that's forcing pages like "recent unread topics" to be a certain minimum width?

One feature request for the new forum that is critical for me: The ability to post/reply via email.
E.g. is the Google Groups interface.

I hate logging into the forum constantly to do these stuff.

(Dunno if this has been discussed or not)

Some 2013 technologies first, then, maybe, some NNTP-like stuff.


Don't know, i can resize it without any problem.

3600 BTC is still  the offer? I want...

Hi theymos, two quick questions about your huge, exciting project.

1)
Would you allow a Super-admin (one single person) with "full privileges", combined with "No user group (including any other admins) should be able to run arbitrary code" ?

2) If you accept a detailed bid that includes an impressive, partially finished demo site, then is a BTC down payment of ~25 to 33% possible, to provide income while the project is finished?

Thank you.

I'd definitely prefer that it be impossible to run arbitrary code from the Web interface.


If the code is available, I could pay by milestone. 25% seems like too much.

By arbitrary code, you mean eval(), right?

Yes. With SMF, administrators can run arbitrary code by modifying the themes, which are executed via eval().

Can the Super-admin (the site owner who logged in securely over ssl) have web-based access to (for example) ./inc/plugins/example_mod.php to change code that is *not* executed via eval()  ?

That would imply the file being world writable (0666) which is insecure.

2theymos:

Look at this stuff https://www.pgpru.com/razrabotki/dvizhok/files?get=openspace-0.8.25a.tar.bz2

There are little Russian language,
https://www.pgpru.com/razrabotki/dvizhok

I can provide you with translate.
It is php, pretty secure, etc.

You may donate some amount of bitcoins to author and to me 1CJukXJVbsCpwm9i7Ez1gXtsjh6QmBjFGB too.

No.

so where are we then?  ???

Did not read all 15 pages, but I'd say IP.board (used to be Invisionboard) is the way to go, it's by far the best forum script I've seen and I use a lot of different forums.

You can put away your 3000BTC, IMHO, that is silly money and the only people you are going to get quoting you in that kind of range are scammers.

http://www.invisionpower.com/apps/board/  <--- $175

Just use it out of the box, and pay someone to export/import your existing data (members, posts, boards etc...)  The whole thing shouldn't set you back more than a grand.

P.S. Looks like they even have a free tool to migrate your existing data from SMF to IP.board: http://www.invisionpower.com/convert/
So that basically cuts your total budget to 9BTC, but you can send the other 3000 or so coins over to me if you'd like ;)

Are you trolling or simply ignorant?

Neither.  You however are fairly rude.

For example: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/ uses IP.Board and the number of users on bitcointalk pales in comparison to the 32,000 users they've had online at one time.

You are ignorant, and yes, I'm rude. Sorry for that.

I think that my ignorance of the child-rate ticket price for the blue line city bus is fairly irrelevant to this topic.

You are ignorant on the field you are offering suggestions.

As stated in my original post, I did not read all 15 pages so am ignorant of the contents thereon in.  I hope that you are not ignorant of the topic of my ignorance?

I'm not.
Anyway, reading the requirements of the first post should have been enought.

I stopped when I reached the line "SMF is very good when viewed from the outside...", and I assume the rest of the post was of a similar note.

I'm not here to offer a bid, quote, or custom solution.  All I'm doing is throwing an idea into the ring for the OP to take a look at.

And for future reference maybe you should check your condensation at the door and simply add a comment of "I don't think IP.Board would be an appropriate solution for reasons XYZ".  Or if "XYZ" is too much trouble for you then leave that part out.

P.S. If I come back here in 6 months and this site is running on IP.board or something similar I officially reserve the right to teabag your face.

Deal.
(If and only the software is IPB+Mods and it is worth < 1000$).

This Forum use a good software:

http://www.allmystery.de (http://www.allmystery.de)

They have Apps for WindowsPhone and Iphone

If bitcointalk switches to a forum that looks like that forum, I'm leaving to find another community. That forum looks absolutely atrocious.

As it has now been several months since this was posted and nobody had made a successful bid, I believe now is as good a time as any to take a new approach.

I feel this project would be better suited to an open source collaborative model of development instead of a winner takes all bidding war.

I have registered bitcointalk as an organization on github and will build a basic framework for a forum.

From there features that theymos and users want can be added.

The first step of this process is of course coming up with a core framework, but to do this will require some organization of the features people want that would be well... core.

Toward this end I have started to organize information necessary to build the core.

I would appreciate feedback from both developers and users. (Please post feedback here).

http://178.33.22.45/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page (http://178.33.22.45/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page)
http://178.33.22.45/mediawiki/index.php/Database (http://178.33.22.45/mediawiki/index.php/Database)

(note that the wiki is not editable at this time)

Why not just use a heavily modified version of vbulletin? It has a solid foundation and is easily modifiable and can be greatly expanded upon by someone who knows what they're doing. Hasn't like $70,000 been donated or something? You could use a fraction of that and have a fantastic piece of forum software produced...Hell even this software could function if someone worked to optimize it. Your requirements don't really even correlate to what you need done.

I have a lot of experience with forums/vbulletin/other software and modifying it for specific purposes. I have even more experience and connections for creating small groups of developers to accomplish goals like this. Give me a vbulletin license and funds to assemble a team and pay them as the project hits benchmarks and I would take this on. It wouldn't cost you nearly the amount you're bidding in the thread title by the end and you'd not only get what you want but insure completion by offering benchmark based payments for incentive/allowing you/us to modify the expected work/payment at any given time based on needs/desires.

Anyway if you're interested shoot me a PM and we can discuss some details and I will contact my men to start work on a feature list and production/payment schedule.

I assure you there is no reason or need for you to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on creating a ground up forum software for a community of this size and with the needs you list. Much much larger and demanding communities are run off of heavily modified vbulletin software.

It doesn't look like anyone has made a solid commitment to delivering what you want and I am 100% confident that I can, along with assistance from my team, fulfill any desires you have regarding functionality, ease of modifying, and features.

There are private bids, too...

Not going to suggest another forum board software (some people can't get the hint it seems), but i would like to recommend a company. I've freelanced with these guys and worked with them in other capacities (they did the website for both the hospital i worked at and one of the charities i volunteer for). Very technical and creative, easy to talk to, huge on anything involving online commerce, and extremely hard working. they handle enterprise level projects all the time. Give them a shout.

http://bigeyecreative.com/

16 months and no progress.  I wonder why this forum is still trying to do things this way when it clearly doesn't work.

For 35 btc Ill add a chatbox/shoutbox, And a box saying the current btc price and statistics.  Also I will change the forum engine to a more secure engine.

 :o

At this point they could buy an IPB license, with more features than you could ever program, for 5btc.  And then spend maybe 100btc more to customize it.  They just don't want to do anything.

Yes they could

Discourse! http://www.discourse.org/

I was wondering when someone will offer this one.
A huge +1 from me, Jeff Atwood is great and while I haven't tested Discourse myself I'm sure it rocks.
I wonder if it can work with a site in this scale ... worth getting in touch with them and finding out.

+1
Just tried their demo and it looks really awesome. Would love to see the bitcointalk community on a discourse forum.

Their are looking for beta communities, they will worry about everything for 2 years... This board might be a perfect candidate...

While bitcoin may be in beta, this community is not.   Too much real world business goes through here to be any kind of a testing ground for new forum software.

Good point, but its anyway hard to do worse than a 10 years old script :)

And business people hate us for that. Most of them stay as far away from here as they can and only post when they have to. I think that it'd be an improvement to switch to Discourse, especially if we're asked. Hell, we have enough money that we could hire their whole freaking team full-time for at least a few months.

That would probably be of great benefit to both projects.

Now you just need to convince theymos to spend it on something which doesn't have the features he wants and we'll be all set :P

How about I just make one, and if you like it, I sell it too you?

Seems about the easiest way to do this.

Wow, I'm really digging this one.  I didn't like it at first because there were no categories (not like the ones we have here), but it's actually a lot more streamlined and simplified.

Not to mention, I spend most of my time here staring at the bottom of the site to see who's posting what anyway :P

Big +1 for this one!

You could try mybb, its opensource, themeable, customizeable, has alot of the features your looking for.
http://www.mybb.com/features
https://github.com/mybb/mybb

Greetings!

I have a great Idea!



Let imagine one great platform with couple of webmasters.
They prepare their websites for a some period, let's say 3-6 month to get everyone together.

Each sites linked to subdomains of bitcointalk.org.

webmaster1.bitcointalk.org
webmaster2.bitcointalk.org
webmaster3.bitcointalk.org
...
webmasterN.bitcointalk.org


Some day would denote as a start of voting.

Each member of forum may give their voice, with little of payment in BTC.

Let's say, for a 1 month we get great amount of money for each webmaster, for their job, and one of them winner, we migrate to new forum!

Plus, each work carefully checking by administration of bitcointalk.org and each member of forum because it would opensource!

It would be great to see hundreds of opensource forum engines (:

There are nothing to do else, cause there exist GitHub (https://github.com/) for hosting, administration of bitcointalk.org can place chart of candidates on the first page.

After 1 month of voting should appear group of real leaders.  

We can move forward, and make the second month of voting for this group!

I don't think we even need an auction there is over 90k up for grabs this job could and should have been completed ages ago, if I knew more than a basic bit of php and simple html css I would give it a shot no question, there are about a trillion job seeking sites available and people more than happy to do this task for a fraction of the price...

In all honesty about a quarter of the money should be put into redesigning the forum and the rest into advertising to help get the word out about bitcoin..

A mobile version/app would be appreciated. VBulletin is my favorite forum software.

If the forum switches to mybb, one theme takes care of mobile http://www.mybbgm.com/index.php

Offer still stands to create your software from a modified vbulletin.

It's been 5 months - why is nobody assigned to the task ?

Its not 2012 anymore :P so 1y 5m

 1y 5m wow.

3600 BTC yet? Really?

Well, I make vBulletin mods but you would want the plugin system disabled so it would be redundant :P

I'm still really interested in getting this done. Sadly my full time job does not give me any time for a project of this scale.

However, my coding partner has far more time to work on this than I do and he is once again interested.

I know I've said this before, but we will have a bid written up and posted shortly.

with the kitty so large, I think that it would be a good service to make it required that the code is released, with an open-source friendly licence.  :D

Why not "donate" a paid developer to one of the existing open-source projects?
I'm sure phpbb or smf would love a full-time dev working there, adding interesting features, or addons, to their platform.

I'm confused. Original post was over 2 years ago and nothing was ever done? Looks like someone likes to hold onto bitcoin!

In two years you could have had a complete custom software written to exact specifications with anything and everything that was needed. Instead we get maybe a couple of add-ons, which are free to install and not even the latest version of the free forum software SMF.

Come on, lets get this place updated and make it look nice with the half million dollars the forum has. Whoo hoo.

Can we just please move to discourse.org?

Yes, it's experimental software, but it's backed by Jeff Atwood and Co ... really good people.
They're still looking for 2 projects willing to try it out, and will give full support.

Ok the value of this amount can actually buy up a small startup now. You could also buy a contract with a major web development company.

It is unfathomable that nothing has happened yet.

This topic is hilariously silly. For 3600 BTC I would gladly drop everything in my life for a year to learn how to do this, and have the site up and running, no problem. You shouldn't leave this sticky just hanging here if you guys aren't gonna do anything with it..

https://github.com/discourse/discourse - open source Ruby forum
Like the idea, theymos?

Perhaps this thread should be closed ? Obviously there's a lot of competent programmers around, and for 3600 BTC, you could hire an Indian Town of programmers for a couple of years! :o

We need to do it.
By popular decision, we are gonna write a 10 million lines of code platform.

So your god declared. Let's rent that town.

I'm shocked this thread is still open... are you still accepting bids? I'm a very experienced web developer (13+ years) particularly in creating online communities/blogs/forums. Do you want openly posted bids or would you prefer PMs?

I am. PM me.

The BTC amount is even larger now.

I still think Osiris (http://www.osiris-sps.org/) is a good idea. Maybe reaching an agreement with it's creators to open source it would be more beneficial than creating a new, centralized, software. Don't know, just thinking out loud here.

Nobody will use convoluted solutions.

5500+ BTC

I think theymos is trolling us.  :D

Nope. You can verify the forum's balance:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155000.0

All of it is available for this project. However, I now want to be more closely involved in the software creation process than I did when I started this topic. I'm probably not going to pay people large amounts in advance (and certainly nowhere near 5500 BTC).

I didn't doubt the availability of funds but rather the effort to actually hire somebody to implement it.
How about it, reserve a ad slot to announce this thread, contact vbulletin to do it, etc...

Awesome. PM sent. :D

I don't believe this opportunity is still open, esp with such big reward promised.

I'll go over the requirements with my team and will post questions.  We're 20+dev team doing high load sites in python/django/twisted/flask/TG/whatever

Was this sup post to be unpinned?

Yes. I thought it was kind of ridiculous that it's been pinned this long.

This project is still open, and the forum does have 5500+ BTC dedicated to it. The OP of this topic is not quite up-to-date on my expectations, though. I will update it at some point.

If I were u I would start to do something. In a couple of months this 5500 BTC could worth 1000 times less...

Ok, so what are up-to-date requirements?

Please hire a professional development company, and don't use any of these wannabe dreamweaver coders acting as freelance. Seriously, just do this right so it gets done right.

That's the point - we are professional development company http://42coffeecups.com with our clients being UCSC and Sourceforge, among others.  And yes, we're acceping BTC as payment vehicle, esp after being screwed by Bank of Cyprus.

So what are up-to-date requirements?  Who I have to talk to ?

The forum had 1.3 million dollars worth USD of bitcoin this week. This is unimaginable to even comprehend and people continue to give funds. I'm sorry, with that amount I would take the money and run. Everyone has their price, and that would be mine. :) Guys, if you decide to take the money and run, cause I'm almost sure maybe some of you will do that, please save some funds for a decent programmer!! You can actually quit your job/career and retire with the bitcoin you are "holding" for a public/free forum that is running a very old version of free forum software. This is really one for books and should be in the news paper or something. Gotta love it.

Your site, it's logo, and your portfolio are about as far from professional as it gets. This is the problem with the web dev world, everyone thinks they're an expert, very few are.

Yup, sure and we were down today.  What a loss.

So the only up-to-date requirements are of Nov 2, 2011?

Theymos, can you explain here why discourse.org is not a good solution?

You can hire someone to custom tailor discourse to your liking, or give it to Jeff Atwood so they'd hire more programmers to add whatever features you feel are missing to the core product.

Discourse is going to be the future of forum software, no need to invent something new here.

Maybe hiring some mods that don't suck too, that might be a good use for that btc!

Theymos in all seriousness what you're looking for is not THAT difficult to implement. There are some catches here and there, but really, what you are looking for is NOT difficult to do. In fact looking over what you are asking for it seems a lot like some of the systems I came up with for one of my games. Why are you having such a problem getting this done?

For the amount of BTC on the table I'm considering taking a stab at it myself. Cuz I just don't get it. The absolute worst you could do is write a new back end for SMF. People write this kind of stuff all the time.

Edit: There's really only one way all you asked in the OP can be done, BTW, and it is guaranteed to be more resource hungry than SMF, because SMF isn't designed to do all those things, and the way you need to structure the code to do it will be a bit slower. But not by much. I really can't believe this has been open for over a year now.

It makes me thing that taking a stab at it is a waste of time. Surely others have tried, and been rejected for some unknown reason. Maybe your requirements are a bit strict? Simple question, if you had a system exactly as you described except that it was 30% slower than SMF, but say, could be run on multiple servers to scale very well, would you take something like that?

One thing that I don't see listed in the first post, is this new software, also supposed to support the importing of existing users and posts? Or will the existing forum be made legacy and a transition made to the new one?

there's smf converters to virtually every single possible packaged forum software and db type known to man.

Including the new one that has yet to be developed? That however, is not part of the specification. If someone is doing something from scratch, that should be included. No?

This is definitely not true. SMF is written in PHP, and it has a lot of unnecessary inefficiencies (which I've been fixing to keep the forum running). The additional features that I require aren't very resource-intensive, and I don't require some of SMF's resource-intensive features. The most expensive required feature is the web of trust, but that isn't too slow to begin with and it can be made faster with caching.

Maybe it's impossible if you write it in a week using bloated frameworks...


The slowness doesn't bother me much if more hardware can fix it and if the slowness doesn't increase exponentially with more users. However, if you know in advance that your design will be 30% slower, then I probably won't like your design for other reasons. I don't like doing too much at runtime for the sake of coding convenience, and I do like SQL.

Theymos,

Why no reply to the simple


I understand that some things are harder than they seem. Can you please elaborate on what difficulties you're facing right now?

You are certainly the type Theymos would choose I think--no sarcasm.

And I will get you coffee while working on the HTML and CSS part of the forum. What I don't know, I will ask, e.g., what's the HTML hex code for the color orange?

Working together, we could have a groovy looking site, and to speed it up all we'll have to do is put it on Mt. Gox's server.

Seriously, with the exception of the other day, she's been runnin' pretty smoothly, and I haven't had any errors for a good long time now.

Can you imagine the forum we would have had using the $5M lost due to exchange rate decrease, and still have $5M in the coffer? BitcoinTalk would be the forum all other forums would look up to. Maybe some day.

~Bruno K~

I thought FF0000 is red, but had to Google it to make sure--it is.

Speaking of crazy, for future revenue, set up a page like this one: http://anselme.homestead.com/AFPHAITI.html

wat da fuck did I just see?
gonna give me nightmares for sure

The web of trust thing will just turn this place into high school all over again. Little groupies all over the place that have their little control over their piece of the pie. If they have the ability to withhold posts/information for other users to see then this would actually be going away from a community. Assuming this is what "web of trust" is all about. Someone doesn't like your avatar, sorry, can't post/contribute on this board and can't see the latest posts.

Letting go of such a lot of bitcoin if quite difficult. My precious.

Still waiting to get a response back from my bid, or to get a new list of requirements so that I can update it.

FWIW I submitted a bid that involved monthly payments and regular feedback, you shouldn't be making a single large BTC transfer.

Has it been considered to open source a SMF fork specifically for Bitcointalk on, say, Github, and let the community improve it one feature at a time via pull requests? Perhaps this is more effective at getting something moving forward?

If it's available i am going to work on mybb and will get all the functions you have posted in this thread.
Most of them are inbuilt in mybb and rest can be added via some plugins which i'll make.

I vote for an open source software on github, but with node.js...really fast...I'm willing to contribute for free

ok! php is fine!  ;D

I don't know about node.js, but javascript in general is a really fast JIT language. Far faster than PHP, for certain.

hi dree12,
indeed node.js is much faster than php. not because js is faster, but because of the new VM google created, v8, which is really fast. node uses v8 under the hood, plus it uses async native capabilities of javascript. What it does, is event driven programming, there's only 1 thread.

I just didn't want to answer to gweedo, cause in the end of the day, i think php is a best fit, not only because theymos  is confortable with the language, but also because it's a language (programming style, not async) that is more well known, so more people can contribute.

I say "javascript in general" because just about every modern tool that runs JS has a lightning-fast JIT. TraceMonkey, Chakra, and Carakan are all as fast as V8.

I do most of my programming in JS nowadays not because I like prototyping or asynchronous event models, but because it's so fast.

This code:
executed in 4.9 s (TraceMonkey) on my ages-old computer. The equivalent Python code takes 6.6 seconds (using int instead of float, so it should actually be slower), and the equivalent Java code 7.3 seconds (using double instead of int).

anyway, I would still stick with PHP. php-fpm + nginx should do the  job, perhaps Varnish in front of...

From what I've seen, people who say "I would stick with PHP" after proven wrong (about speed) tend to not know any other languages.  :D

Correct me if I'm wrong.

How is the most pathetic thread of the whole forum going?

well, you are wrong. I also know javascript very well, a bit of ruby and python. the point is, make something that everyone can contribute. Not to mention, that theymos want to modify the software also, himself, and he is confortable with php, java, etc, so PHP would be a good fit. Besides, this won't be a complex app dude, is just a forum! no need for admin clicky clicky interface.

My proposal for the app, is to make something cool, that will help the community, not to start comp languages flame wars. Are you willing to contribute?

Hey! Hello troll! Welcome! ;D

Did you read the whole thread before calling me troll? Because I did.
There is no will at all to improve the current platform, the admin showed that refusing any serious offer.

hi,

apologize for calling you a troll. Honestly, i had read the first pages, than i jumped to the last, since the thread was open and the job wasn't done, i assumed that it was some financial problem going on there, so i decided to throw the open source idea in the pot, since this forum is used by all of us, and it is not a subscription forum, anyone can use it.

I have to agree now, the thread must be closed, I could read that the admin doesn't want any more changes, for now.

I'm 100% with you. Through my years of learning... I've come up with one thing that's proven pretty steady: most languages are going to have similar results if you know how to use them properly. People often put down one language as being "worse" because they don't understand the proper usage of it and so for them it is worse.

I hate the JS vs PHP vs (insert whatever you want here) debates. Use what you know and you're going to do a much better job.

Thats true, theymos is paranoid about security,he doesn't even wants to test forum software that are available now nor he wants to reply pm's about this job.

Looks like Theymos picked himself up quite a bit of pocket change here.

That's obvious as this post was made more than 18 months ago and the original is from 2011 and we have seen no major changes to the forum in these two years.  Rather than wait another two years, if anyone here is serious about building a new forum please come join us here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=244678.0

One of our teams is working right now to try and fulfill this bounty, assuming it's still up for grabs.

The project can be seen here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=276512.0), where any suggestions or feedback are more than welcome.

Thank you,
Syphor Software

I'm not here for the 5500 BTC, but I would like you to see http://dbtng.com/faq and our try for building the better forum for Bitcoin talk.

Key points:
1) Users gain trust by using the forum and behaving - helps in administration
2) One-page infinite scrolling
3) Quick and efficient
4) Modern, very much a work in progress (see http://github.com/discourse/discourse)
5) Safe and secure (see http://github.com/discourse/discourse)
6) Great UX, simple UI

Register and try for yourselves. All development ideas are welcome in General category.

Cheers

1. open source
2. bounty system
3. votes for features among trusted bitcointalk's users
4. votes for winners for one or another features

votes - bad.


Scenario:

One feature discussed, and voted like a TOP, most wanted, developers gathered around, source of forum is open, every who interesting, open their demo.

Period of time for votes.

Sold! Hammer's bump.

Feature is appear. One of developers get bounty.

All of features may stay in some queue and voting in parallel at the same time.
Thereafter this will become in to great building yard. And source of "bitcointalk's forum framework" risky to become a greatest one in the Internet history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet).


votes - bad.
 

Anyway, this thread become in to swamp. Seems like we never see new forum. (:

Maybe now is a good time to make this a priority...

You guys been talking about this on your site for quite some time now and it finally happened. Using old, out dated software and that's "free" should be  a NO to begin with with, All the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars this place to update the software and never did only shows your procrastination and your youth and some greed in there. When BTC was rising over into thw 200+ ranges I bet a software change would never have been though of then. Now that some information has been compromised, it really is in your best interest to get this updated. When I see this place is still running SMF 1.1 and the chauffeurs are full of money just make me think of greed.

Amd if you don't come out with something custom and secure, then another group will just do it better and make it more secure. This was bound to happen and talking about it  for a few months just wasn't the best approach . I use to read those posts months and months back on how you should make the forum better and all I heard was who can hold onto the funds securely since BTC is rising. Immature mistake kids would make.

Good luck, but I'll never post private info on here and personal information and pretty much take most content at a grain of salt.

10000% agree, it is retarded that the forum has such old software and has so much bitcoins to make a new one.
We are just not safe here, and that is what we need, a safe environment.

Safe enough for you?
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120410230340/creepypasta/images/d/dc/Padded-cell.jpg

Do you still need anything ?

Maybe, you could hurt yourself by falling at the floor!
You'll never know, I accidentaly hurt myself with a pocket knife, I am so stupid...

Is this offer still in any shape active? I am a web developer specialising in PHP, and am willing to work on this full time. I can work on a fixed price (probably well under the bounty) paid bi-weekly in small instalments (so this will work in a salaried job type arrangement) and in return theymos or whoever gets access to the GitHub repository so they can monitor the progress themselves. Interested?

No, don't lose your time.

Ah well, worth a shot. Thanks

in 2011 the forum software was insufficient for their needs and here it is 2013 using the same stuff. Why in the world the thousands of dollars worth of donations they have haven't done any custom software is just baffling.

They have a million dollars worth of bitcoin for upgrading the site ?
Must.Learn.Coding.

5500 BTC @ $340 => $1,870,000

Surely you can convert $1m into mutual funds or even government bonds and use the proceeds to hire someone full time :D

I think most people here believe that BTC is a better investment than mutual funds or government bonds.

Yah right.  Where are you going to find someone to code a forum for a million bucks.   ::)

Nah you don't get this, whoever is supposed to do this is expected to receive payment in Bitcoins. As of today no software development company specializing in forums software is willing to do that.
So the scenarios here is: Wait till somebody does, wait till somebody competent enough joins the Bitcoin community, wait till Bitcoins are obsolete
or if all else fails... close down the forum and claim to have been 'hacked' <- works every time ;D

They don't need to find a company that specializes in forum software. They just need to hire someone that can program. Apparently this has been going on for years now and no one smart enough really expects it to get done. One day, eventually, that coffer will be empty and people will have disappeared.

At this point it's time for people to start demanding the upgrade...

Where is the money?

Where did all the donations go?

Why have none of the hundreds of inquiries been answered and or addressed?

There are hundreds of competent people on this forum ready to work.

WHY ARE WE STILL USING SMF?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=141503.0


And yet there is still no serious bid to get the job done, it seems.

Mine was fairly serious :P, if only theymos would reply.

Why don't we make this into a community effort?
I'm willing to help on this project for free.

Here you go
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/better-web-forums

This site is missing some of the best plugins and addons around, and of course can't use them since it is such an old version of SMF. Shouldn't be using SMF to begin with, and could have very professional custom software written easily with all the funds they have from donations. Pretty pathetic the site goes down every week. Site operators, seriously, what's the hold up? Don't tell me you can't find a programmer to do the work.

the forum ned to be upgades to smf 2.x
it is really old

no i like it like this
it is perfect

The OP was in 2011. So if someone wanted to take this old site out of the 1980's they could, but apparently greed and here we are today. STILL nothing done.

If you were serious about helping you could follow the link in my signature to help build the new forums... (It's the first link, in red).

Why is this thread still open?

To remember me that after having offered paid and free help for converting Bitcointalk.org i ended up creating my own alternative.

It's in my signature.

:)
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #krIl0doVInQBT5Rz

And why is it better?

If you take the time to try it you will find it out yourself.
However, i created a thread to discuss it: (Bitcointalk.org) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=515932.0) - (Bitcointa.lk) (https://bitcointa.lk/threads/bitcointa-lk-my-alternative-to-bitcointalk-org.281718/)
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #bw2sje1g1pYMYmpL

Why is it better? Dude, they are using SMF 1 here and have had hundreds of opportunities to really turn this place into a real community rather then the same old message board. It is outdated by years, has many security holes, and certainly needs a huge makeover. Just a quick look at the sample forum in the next message looks 10000 times better then this place. The site operator(s) got a little to stuck on holding all that bitcoin. They just can't let it go. By now we could of had the best personal community experience around with a custom software written only for here. Apparently it doesn't look like that will happen and I would LOVE to know the reasoning behind it.

Well I could do al lthe requested that is needed however why not just get it running more secure and wouldent need to change everything on it using old out dated software is nly causing more problems here. I could do a site like bitcointalk and I am already putting a lot of stuff together for altcoins and to be a lot more active. If theymos you are still looking for options for this to be updated to new software and setup and maintained for security bugs and making secure so that noe of the problems are to happen feel free to drop me a message and we can talk

Why would Theymos want to hire you?

Spelling errors. Grammar mistakes. And you wrote that whole paragraph in two sentences.

There was no point of necroing this thread as Theymos already found a dev, and the newly developed forum should be released somewhere around this month.

In case you haven't been paying attention, the new forum is almost done, close to a million dollars has been paid to a developer (slickage) and there is an entire child board in meta devoted to features requested for the new forum.

tl;dr, you are not going to be hired for this job

/thread

rapeghost knew, and cedivad never 'officially' got his face teabagged...

who wouldve thunk it.

15 million & counting

It gets better and better.

+1


I'd be asking for my money back...

Theymos what happened to our new forum?

What happened to the 5500 BTC?

I am so confused... Was this project halted?

One would think that with 5500 ($49 million dollars) BTC in hand one could build a Facebook rival...

It's funny how a decentralized currency's forum software project was awarded to a random centralized software company of honolulu.
Ps: As quickseller said those 5500 BTC worth a million dollars only at the time of transaction.

5500 Bitcoins paid and we are still posting on this archaic forum software lol. Bitcointalk must have had the most expensive R&D deal ever for forum development  ;D