Java Forum Software

[R Diaz]

Hi Everyone,

Hope that all is well.

I was told to investigate Forum software that will enable us to obviously setup a Forum for our company and a
few of it's clients.

So far I've been looking at JForum http://www.jforum.net and a few others.

The main requirement is that it should have some sort of "Forum Hierarchy" in which users can see a certain list
of forums available based on their roles or who they belong to. Clients can only see certain forums, certain executives
from the main company can see all the forums, and so on.

Another requirement is that is a J2EE complient enterprise solution. Additionally, it should have security and roles
functionality.

Could anyone here share their experience and suggest a good software to setup a forum that meets the requirements
above?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best regards,

Rudi

[Dan Evans]

The Jt Portal software (portal application based on the pattern oriented framework) will include forums in the coming release. It already implements roles.

You may want to check the following links:

http://freedom.lunarpages.com/JtPortal
http://freedom.lunarpages.com/Jt

I hope it helps.

[R Diaz]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the links. I appreciate it.

Jt Portal seems good for developing applications from scratch. We already have an application done.

Now we're just trying to add "Forum" functionality to an existing site.

So we're trying to find a "Forum software" that we can set in the project and that will allow us to have
a forum for clients (users) of this application.

The most important feature that we're looking for is to create a Forum Hierarchy and rights.

Kind of the way the forums are listed here at Java Ranch.

However, we want to divide the forum into "categories". The "corporate" users will see all categories.
The rest will see only "categories" applicable to the area in which they belong and their role.

We don't want to show all the categories for everyone except the highest level of users "corporate".
Also, we want this "Forum" software to be something that we can use in any other application, and then
just set whatever "categories" the users should be able to use. So we can maintain sort of a company
wide list of categories in a Forum system that can be used by the whole company.

Sounds ambitious? Maybe.

Thanks,

Rudi

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

You realize that the Ranch forums are running on JForum right now, right (a heavily customized version, anyway.)

[R Diaz]

Hi Ernest,

Thanks. Yes.

I was wondering if JForum allows for using a subset of categories (or forums, like a hierarchy).
Hidding some forums or categories from users depending on their roles.

I'll download it and give it a try.

Thanks,

Rudi