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View Poll Results: Should we move away from PHP stack?
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[Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback


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RumbleFrog
Great Tester of Whatever
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Fish Tank
Old 10-17-2019 , 12:11   [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #1

Next Release

Our current direction for SourceBans++ is the release of 1.7.0, which is long due since the last version was well over a year ago.

Since the previous release, there have been hundreds of commits to the repository. Thanks to the numerous contributors to the repository.


The primary objective of 1.7.0 release is to rewrite, stabilize, and fix various backend bugs that crippled the full-extent of usage.

It also means that the frontend template rewrite is pushed back to potentially the next minor semver.

Rewrite

Of course, being there's only so much you can do building on the existing old codebase, a rewrite is almost imminent.

This is where we need your feedback and ideas.

Moving away from PHP

We are looking to move away from the PHP stack to potentially Rust/Golang/Nodejs. However, due to a good majority of the population base using shared hosting, which is limited to PHP, we are not confident that this is a feasible transition for many.

Core Features

One of the many entropies of the original codebase is the utterly bloated core codebase. Hence, it includes features that weren't necessary for the average user but built-into the core.

Our goal for the rewrite is to minimize the amount of code and features within the code. Provide only the essentials but expose a powerful interface for building upon the core.

Related issue: https://github.com/sbpp/sourcebans-p...s-faq/issues/6

Translation and Templating

One of the most significant issues that still reside within v1 is the templating system.

The unnecessary abstraction created by xajax made it quite difficult and tedious to create custom templates/themes; this also hinders the ability to translate the system into another language.

This is on top of the awkward chaining of templates, which made styling difficult.

Plugin-Side of Things

Similar things could be said about the plugin side of things.

While efforts were made during the syntax transition, there are still broken features and entropies.

With that said, we are prepared to rewrite the plugin along with the web panel for SP 1.10+
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Exp93
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2019
Old 10-17-2019 , 14:51   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #2

The contributions have been from many and I think it goes to show how substantial the developer base is for PHP. I am really not convinced it's a good idea and I wholly object to even considering a move to another language. Statistically speaking PHP is the go to language, just take a look at W3 Techs:
https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all & https://w3techs.com/technologies/ove...g_language/all

For the reasons you're highlighting also, with regards to host restrictions, it just further reinforces that this is the wrong thing to do.

The core features I think have become far too stretched, the only 2 important things to me about SB++ is:
- Synchronising Bans
- Managing Admin Access

At a push I'd say it's also important to:
- Report Users
- Appeal Bans

I don't really think SB++ best serves as a public-facing panel (with regards to like server stats or public banlists) and this could easily be re-implemented as plugin/extension functionality, with this being said however, are you now possibly considering taking away what has become core to the project, for a long time by a lot of users?

Translation and Templating I don't really have any comments, but either way anything to make it easier to do either of the above activities is surely a good thing... what I'd say would be nice is some sort of embeddable functionality, so you can implement it into existing templates or webpages.

Plugins, I've covered that above already in some respects, otherwise the ability to build on SB++ is surely also a good thing.
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RumbleFrog
Great Tester of Whatever
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Fish Tank
Old 10-17-2019 , 15:03   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #3

We are also considering a potential rename of the project after the rewrite.

The name "SourceBans" sounds inclusive to only the core ban features, yet we consider admin management and reports as essentials as well.

So a rename is also another thing to consider. But, I'm not certain how the SEO would work out.

.
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Last edited by RumbleFrog; 10-17-2019 at 15:05.
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Exp93
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2019
Old 10-17-2019 , 15:16   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #4

Quote:
Originally Posted by RumbleFrog View Post
We are also considering a potential rename of the project after the rewrite.

The name "SourceBans" sounds inclusive to only the core ban features, yet we consider admin management and reports as essentials as well.
I feel that the ++ can have a lot of different meanings, and the extensive - but still core - feature set could be represented in this.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RumbleFrog View Post
So a rename is also another thing to consider. But, I'm not certain how the SEO would work out.
I can definitely say from experience that organic traffic is king, if we can get the word out there, and make people aware, then that will fix itself. To be honest though, I feel like the name won't matter to most, so long as they know how/where to find us. Of course in all of this, you can redirect the domain name(s)?
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RumbleFrog
Great Tester of Whatever
Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: Fish Tank
Old 10-27-2019 , 20:59   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #5

Those who voted Yes for moving away, if possible, leave your reasoning as a reply.
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anonym93
Junior Member
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Romania
Old 11-05-2019 , 06:06   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #6

Maybe i'm exaggerating now but I think on Laravel will be more easy to develop and customization and anyway, I hope here is a lot of people who know to work on Laravel
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DigidyDOG
Junior Member
Join Date: Sep 2015
Location: I live in the USA
Old 11-10-2019 , 05:02   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #7

All I can think of is moving away from php and something that a lot of shared hosts don't offer will be very detrimental to the project.

Also some feedback, larger communities need the ability to assign the same admin different roles in different servers. So for instance an admin can have mod in one server and admin in another. This was a feature in the original sourcebans and I would like to see it come back.

Anyways I am liking the direction SourceBans is going (however slow) I can't see what this team can bring. Keep up the great work.
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Zayon
New Member
Join Date: Oct 2019
Old 12-26-2019 , 00:05   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #8

I have some suggestions.

First suggestions are for the improvement of the WEB:
- Add a ban appeal panel, how the host providers have their ticket system, like if someone wants to do a ban appeal than it shows up in the admin panel, and the admins could reply their thoughts about the cheater (or not cheater in rare cases), and the Founder of the server or who will decide if there's gonna be unban or not, can respond with a text, can check and lock the "ticket", and the guy who asked for unban, to receive an email with the response.
- Add the ability to make more complex web admin groups in a way that if you have 5 servers, all the servers are in your community, but 3 of those servers are managed by other peoples, that we can set from the web panel their web permissions to a specific server, that means if I set to my friend to be able to edit/add/remove/manage everything related to a specific server but he could not remove bans what were made on my server, cannot manage admin groups from my server... and any of these.
- Add a little Admin Panel part for the command !report (More details at the Plugin sided below)

Plugin sided:
- So for the sbpp_comms I have the next idea, how you added to the !ban command that if you do not write the reason, that opens up the menu with the reasons to select it, it would be great to do this with the `Comms, !gag !mute !silence`, so in this way, we can have reasons for everything, and the sbpp_discord not gonna return HTTP Error and don't show the message on discord, because there is no reason... Also, add the ability to force the reason for every Command inside the config, `!ban !gag !mute !silence`, like if an admin wants to put their custom reasons, to doesn't let them, even if they try to put a custom reason, the menu with the reasons pops up and they are forced to choose a reason from the menu of reasons that I've set inside the config.
- It would be nice if, for the !report, you could add a database, and that report to store somewhere on the WEB and the admins could see that report, I know it was easier to do it with the discord, but not every admin gonna use the discord... so there is a way that I can tell my admins that they need to use and check the panel, also if there is a new report, to be a notification about the new report, through email or any other way.

If I will have any suggestions over time, I will post them here by editing this post.
Kind Regards - Zayon
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paulo_crash
AlliedModders Donor
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Brazil
Old 09-15-2020 , 13:47   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #9

Quote:
Originally Posted by RumbleFrog View Post
Moving away from PHP

We are looking to move away from the PHP stack to potentially Rust/Golang/Nodejs. However, due to a good majority of the population base using shared hosting, which is limited to PHP, we are not confident that this is a feasible transition for many.
Even voting No. Continue using the PHP stack. I found this idea interesting and even surprised to see that many shared hosts still let you use SourceBans++, better not to use it.

I myself had many problems with shared hosting, connection limits, limits of everything that is kind of thing, whenever I contacted the host I was informed that the solution would be to migrate to a VPS / Dedicated to have exclusive resources and change my like, since these changes in shared hosting would be a security risk for all users of that same hosting.

I believe that for those who have their own VPS and such removing this PHP would be more than welcome.
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Cats869
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2020
Old 06-04-2021 , 19:00   Re: [Meta 2019] Current Direction, Future Goals, and Feedback
Reply With Quote #10

Any idea when a newer version of SourceBans will be released?
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