Where do you live?
Bethalto, IL USA
Where in the world is Bethalto, IL, USA
What is your real-life job?
IT Manager/Supervisor for a Credit Union
Tell me about your PostNuke "career".
PostNuke was what I started with and I liked it, I have tried others but PN is what I'm most comfortable with and frankly I do not want to learn another unless its REALLY great, and I do not see that happening ;-)
When did you start working on your own module?
Jan, 2003
Please describe to the community what your development is like?
It’s really only I and Batpuppy (Patrick Peay). I do most of the coding and Patrick does the debugging and HTML.
We never intended it to be as big a success as it is, we just wanted a good forum module for our own PN sites. And well the rest is history ;-)
I use HTML-Kit, along with tools like Power Desk Tools, with file find, and Xampp for local web testing. For release development we use TortoiseCVS, and UNIX command line tools for file compares.
What is the biggest difficulty in your development?
The difficulty only rests in your own abilities and desire to learn as much as you can about the PN core, along with keeping with the changes. Knowledge of PHP, HTML, and cross browser coding is a must as well. You have to develop skills in every area, then of course you develop your own personal abilities to bring your own ideas to the code as well, remember there is usually 100 different ways to accomplish the same thing, but only a few ways to do it right ;-)
What features should the PostNuke .8 core have to simplify your work?
Module aliasing. Lower overhead for modules (usually the module's fault) however the PN core has a good amount that is has in memory then if you have a significant module like PNphpBB then you start scraping the top of the RAM ceiling.
Which route will PostNuke/your module in your opinion go in the future?
As PNphpBB matures it will become more and more integrated into PN, we will streamline the code and do away with all unused code from the core of phpBB. Possibly fork the entire code, because currently we have kept the same basic code of the current phpBB release so we can apply phpBB specific patches and admins can easily add mods designed for phpBB. This will eventually not be an issue as more and more people are writing mods for PNphpBB directly.
What is the weakest/strongest point in your module?
PNphpBB is a module version of the popular phpBB forum it does its best to stay true to all the features and functionality of its stand alone counterpart as well as offering those who use phpBB the ability to migrate to a CMS environment. Its weak points are since it is a port of a stand alone module, it has a lot of redundant code, its own DB functions, template/HTML output code and functions that are not necessary due to the fact it is contained within PostNuke as a module (login/registration is not used).
Thank you very much for you time.
Visit Carl and the pnPHPBB forum project at
http://www.pnphpbb.com