I need to vent here a bit, and maybe I might get some suggestions from some of you creative people out there. About a year ago myself and two other web developer friends came up with an idea for site based around the online gaming industry. Our code background knowledge from work is ASP.Net 2.0 & VB.Net, and that is what we have built the site with. So we have built this huge site with tons of tools for our members, then not so much as an after thought but something we figured would not be a problem or an issue was the final touch of adding our community forums and of course since we are focused around the gaming community setting up private forum hosting. Well has anyone here actually tried to look for a half decent forum engine written in and for ASP.Net 2.0 and at least classes that we can access using vb.net?....IT DOES NOT EXIST!!!... There are a couple if we want to spend $400.00+ for them, and as for open source about the only one that is close to what we need is YAF, unfortunately it uses it's own custom membership provider that does not lend itself very well to the rest of our site. Our wonderful creation is at a complete stand still until we figure out a solution to our forum issue.
A forum isnt the most complicated thing to write if you know exactly what functionality you want. As with all off the shelf (open source or not) the code is typically massively larger than a bespoke piece because it is dealing with all the "what ifs" and a greater range of functionality/ plugins that different site owners may want to use. .Net is light on the ground for free open source scripts but is well supported, in my opinion, on sample code for specific elements. Guess it is the consequence of being considered a more commercial framework than the "two a penny" that PHP is
Very much agree with you AstarothSolutions. Unfortunately it does cost more to use ASP.Net and I think that is the one large reason it does not see as much play outside the commercial world as php does. Hosting packages can cost up to 50% more when going with windows, and everywhere I go everyone wants paid for their ASP work, whereas there are so many freebees in the PhP world. We have toiled with our own forum software, but it just seems so daughnting(sp?) and a little over whelming. But it may just have to do.
I have to disagree with the webhosting costs when you consider "proper" webhosts the cost difference is normally minimal (esp if the host uses mysql rather than ms sql). With the company we use it is actually cheaper to use their windows rather than *nix hosting after factoring in the space and bandwidth (it is technically $3 a year cheaper but significantly less of space or bandwidth) Daunting (sp? too) it may be but when you sit down and think about it it really isnt that difficult to do esp if you just use all the basic controls like gridviews, forms membership etc
I think your version of Daunting looks better then mine. I have been talking with the other guys in the project about what you brought to the table in regards to not having to build a monster forum engine to cover all of the what ifs. Since we know exactly what we want, and exactly how things will work it does give us the ability to create a very scaled down forum engine. It looks like this is what we will do, thanks for helping me vent AstarothSolutions.