Currently there are two fully integrated forum solutions available for Mambo Open Source. Simpleboard was a small php forum, which was integrated into Mambo from Jan de Graaff. During this integration many new features have been added and Jan also build up a small development team.

Loudmouth, which was converted from Miro's Loudmouth Discussion Server to Mambo, was updated by several developers since Mambo's early 4.0 versions. Since december 2003 Alexander Labunets has taken care of Loudmouth' development. Since then the once small forum has grown up.

Mamboportal.com has tested these two forums to the bare bones and revealed 2 major security holes. Read on to hear the full truth about the two forum components.

Installation & Uninstallation

Simpleboards installation procedure ran without any problems and presented us a small introductive text at the end. Although the text looks a little bit unclearly, it contains all important informations on updates and even contains the possibility to load a sample configuration for an easy start. A little bt unlucky is the missing Mosbot, which comes in a separate file and has to be installed manually. Other components with bots already have shown ways to install it within the component. A deeper look at the installation procedures revealed nothing unusual. Simpleboard would be nearly perfect, if the instructions would be a little more cleaned up.

Loudmouth keeps it a lot simpler. After the installation the user only gets a small 'installation successfull' hint without even showing the version number. Loudmouth missed the opportunity to inform the user on how to continue. And after a deeper look, it get's even worse. Loudmouth changes the very important core table (mos_users) and adds some profile fields to it. This could have an effect on the system, if core table changes or other applications access this modified table and are unable to handle the new fields. Also Loudmouth add's menu entries to the main and user menu and publishes them without further notice. Liek Simpleboard Loudmouth does not install the Mosbot within it's main installation. It is recommended that Loudmouth moves the profile fields into a separate table and leave core tables untouched. Some more informations, for example about the added menu entries, would be helpfull too.

Sadly both forums could not perform a clean uninstallation. Loudmouth left all entries in Mambo's core categories table and also missed to remove the entries added to the main and user menus, which are producing errors after the uninstallation. Simpleboard even left all of it's own tables in the database. Althought this might be helpfull if a user only want's to update, the Simpleboard author's should think about a solution if a user really wants to uninstall the software.

Simpleboard 8/10
Loudmouth 5/10

Administration Backend

Simpleboard comes with a very detailed administration backend. It gives you dozens of options, only the configuration comes with about 60 switches, which are luckily well documented in the backend itself. Otherwise a user had no chance to find it's way throught this jungle. Simpleboard handles all categories and forums in one table, like the most common boards do. This makes it easy to get an overview even on larger installations. But sadly that's it for making things easy in Simpleboard. To add a moderator to a forum, you have to edit the forum, turn on moderation for this board, save, edit the forum again and add the moderator. The user handling is done in a second table. But if you think you will find links to the users post's, the posts stats or an option to make the user mod/supermod, you are wrong. You only can edit the profile (signature, flat/threaded view) in this table.

The rest of the administration backend is a little bit confusing too. An 'Instructions' link only leads to a small page with a link to Simpleboards webpage. The 'Prune Users' only check's if a user has been removed from Mambo's core table. So if you wish to delete all profiles from users, which have never posted, you have no chance to do so. The 'Load Sample Data' option leads only to an SQL error if you have already added data. Some things are completely missing, like censorship for example, others could be more flexible, like the 6 hardcoded userranks. Although Simpleboard's admin backend is well documented, the author's have to work on the usability.

Compared to Simpleboard Loudmouth' admin backend looks very cleaned up. The configuration of Loudmouth comes with only about 40 switches, which makes things a little easier to overview. Sadly the author missed to document the options, which left us only guessing, what some switches could do. Loudmouth uses Mambo's core category system to handle forum categories. Because of this, categories and forums are splitted up in two separate screens. Although this might be Mambo's standard, it makes it pretty hard to get an overview over larger forum installations. For each forum Loudmouth has a separate moderator dropdown, where you can select one moderator for the forum. A simple solution, if you only need one moderator and have only a few users. Searching the moderator in a dropdown menu of Mamboportal.com 's 20,000 registered users can be really a pain.

Some Loudmouth features we really liked, are the possibility to archive a forum with a single mouseclick or to add unlimited user ranks with pictures. Also nice, althought it was not working in RC1, is the option to manage threads inside the backend. The only things missing are some maintenance options like thread or user pruning. Like Simpleboard also Loudmouth only gives you a simple user profile table in the backend, which is at least sortable by posts. Totally missing are documentations everywhere.

Simpleboard 6/10
Loudmouth 7/10

Frontend Features

Both forums do come with all common frontend features. This includes clickable bbcode, post preview, avatars, smiley's, posticons, userranks, thread subscription, XML and Mosbot integration. Simpleboard comes with some interesting unique features like the possibility to attach a file and an image to your post. The implementation is similar to the Mosbot principle and you can place the attachements anywhere inside your post. Sadly Simpleboard stores the files under the original filename. So if you want to upload an updated version under the same name, the file will be denied.

Like in the backend of Simpleboard, the author's seem to have never heard the word usability. The 'Post new topic' link is presented at the left side in the forum's view and on the right side in the thread's view. This is similar to the bbcode editor, which appear on top of your forum post, but below the textfield when editing your signature. And although the '!', which is used a new post indicator, can be changed to any char in the backend, it is very hard to notice. A real pain is the bad search function in Simpleboard. Only a simple inputfield in the boards header without any options, does not serve the searching user at all.

Loudmouth comes with an own search page, which includes multiple options for your search. And besides a quick search function Loudmouth comes with a unique filter, which let's you easily reduce a forum only to posts containing your filter. A build in forum jump menu makes navigating  as fast as the replying with the quick reply function. But the time you save while using this features, will be wasted again in learning to get used to them, because again nothing is documented. Not a single help screen!

A problem both forums have is the missing personal message function. Both do trust in myPMS here, which is of course is a nice component. Sadly you never know if myPMS is really installed and while Simpleboard at least has a function to turn it off, Loudmouth completely lacks this option. As all main functions for such a message system are already included into a forum, it should be a question of a few days, to code an own solution and let the user decide.

Simpleboard 7/10
Loudmouth 8/10

Development State

During our tests with both boards, we sadly discovered bugs and errors all over. We even found a large security hole in Simpleboard's upload function, which could be used to upload a PHP file to your server. Luckily this is fixed with the actual version 1.0.1. But Simpleboard still has holes and we managed to integrate Javascript code into a post. Another problem, which is still inside 1.0.1, are broken html tables and busted designs in some screens. A result of Simpleboard's untidy code structure, where PHP and HTML are all mixed up.

Sadly Loudmouth 3.0 RC1 is not any better. While checking the PHP code, we found out that userinputs are passed to the database without any further approval. This makes SQL injections possible and an attacker could easily wipe your whole database with a single post. Also Loudmouth seems to have problems with it's SQL accesses, as we have found many errors, both in the backend and in the frontend. Luckily Loudmouth at least has a very clean codebase, where it only is a question of time untill it runs smooth.

Simpleboard 7/10
Loudmouth 5/10

Conclusion and Future

Both major forums for Mambo are still far away from being perfect, but I guess this is normal for Open Source projects, which are driven by only a few people in their spare time. Sadly both systems are still not stable and secure enough to be used inside professional or commercial Mambo projects.

Simpleboard still is the better solution, as it gains from the experience of more than 5,000 installations. Things like the good category/forum system and the documentation all over are Simpleboards big advantage. And althought Simpleboard is pretty stable, it has grown too fast during the lasts months and you can see this all over. The usability is bad and the codebase is untidy. The development team around author Jan de Graaff still has some work to do. We asked Jan for the future of Simpleboard:

"Simpleboard has a tightly interwoven structure of PHP code and HTML. This will be separated in the coming releases. We've already been testing with the yapter template enigine which is very leightweigth and very fast. It will separate the logic from the rendering; making Simpleboard more flexible for appearance changes and addaptation to templates and personal likings. More requested features will be implemented on a step by step basis. Also the addaptation of SB to MOS 4.6 has been started by the DevTeam, so that's another major milestone."

Simpleboard 28/40

Loudmouth is the rising star. We were suprised how powerfull and well thought the forum already is. It easily handles all standard tasks and comes with features not even big forums like IPB or vBulletin do have. Sadly Loudmouth is still very buggy and could not really be used on live sites. Another problem ist the missing documentation everywhere. We also asked Loudmouth author Alexander Labunets for a short statement about the future development:

"First of all, I think that at present my primary goal is to make the stable and reliable version of the LoudMouth Discussion Board. The component only has taken the first step on the way to the final after a long and deep process of development. In the current version is not planned any more any significant changes.

Now I can inform that the following features and innovations are already planned: subforums, private forums, attached files, alternative front page mode, expand RSS news feed support and certainly debugging and elimination of new errors and problems."

Loudmouth 26/40

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 2.0!