Today’s chosen victim for this serial software killer is FudForum. As with mambo the other day the first impressions are none to good. The download includes only a handfull of files and one of them is a 1.4Mb php script. No wonder they need to have a section in the installation guide about coping with a low memory limit.
The installer wanted me to enter the database and administrator password in a textfield instead of a password field. This is exactly the way that mambo behaved. It’s amazing how developers spend so much time polishing the UI but don’t bother to use a password field. At least both systems had more sense than to save the password in plain text. I have seen a $1000 mail system that does that, even vpopmail saves the password in plain text by default.
The admin section has a lot of functionality you could control a lot of things with that but it’s not very pleasent on the eye. The template editing system certainly leaves a lot to be desired. In fact the whole template system is a bit off putting, particularly if you are someone who hates templating engines (with good reason).
This project goes into the back burner for the moment till I check out some of the other options including PHPBB2.
