Ezra Hub - a forum for Cornell University students.
Ezra Hub is a clean, modern, Ajax-enabled and feature-rich forum that builds upon the mistakes of past forum software and does things the right way. Ezra hub is built from the ground up on top of the Laravel 3 framework and is maintained by a small group of Cornell University students/alums.
Ezra Hub's main implementation is on ezrahub.com and is catered towards Cornell University students.
- Fully Ajax-enabled and near-real-time thread updating as well as thread/post submission
- Configurable variables in an easy-to-edit configuration file
- Allows both anonymous posting w/ restrictions as well as user accounts w/ extra features and functionality
- Option for logged-in users to post anonymously
- "Nope" feature to avoid bumping a thread
- Robust reputation system similar to that seen on the bodybuilding.com forums
- User-to-user private messaging
- User avatars, biographies and reputation history
- Tracking of thread views and updates so logged-in users can easliy see when new posts are made in a thread
- Very robust spam-protection features for anonymous posters
- Ezra-Hub-flavored BBCode post markup w/ click-to-insert
- YouTube video embedding
- Post/user quoting function
- Moderator and administrator account with elevated privileges and duties
- Moderators can sticky threads so they remain at the top
- Moderators can lock threads so users cannot post in them
- Moderators can bumplock threads so they are no longer bumped, even if a user posts
- Pagination and easy page navigation on homepage
- Banning users and IP addresses
- User profile pages
- Easy-to-use thread and post search bar
- Real-time post and thread statistics while writing + SMOG index rating
Ezra Hub's requirements mirror the requirements of Laravel. If you cannot successfully run Laravel, you will not be able to run Ezra Hub. To use Laravel you will need:
- Apache, nginx, or another suitable web browser (please note that most of the documentation for Laravel focuses on Apache and others are mostly unsupported)
- MySQL server
- PHP 5.3 or greater
- PHP FileInfo library (usually included with PHP 5.3 or greater)
- PHP MCrypt library (usually included with PHP 5.3 or greater)
- The ability to change your server's
DocumentRoot - Apache
mod_rewrite
Please check to see that your environment meets the requirements before attempting to install Laravel/Ezra Hub.
The current version of Ezra Hub is 0.9.2b. Ezra Hub is currently a BETA release and is intended for technical application developers, not non-technical end users. We acknowledge that some of the non-core functionality doesn't fully work because we aren't done with it yet, there may be bugs, and that setup is not a simple "one-click" process. This release is intended for developers to improve the code base and add new functionality as we move towards completion of the project.
Installing Ezra Hub is not recommended for non-technical users and is geared towards technical application developers who wish to contribute to the code base. If you are not familiar with server functions, Apache2 and at least willing to edit a few lines of code, you will likely have trouble. Most of the difficulty comes in installing and configuring the Laravel framework and not in setting up Ezra Hub. If you become stuck at any point during installation of Laravel, the Laravel 3 documentation and the Laravel 3 forums are both helpful resources.
Yes, it is possible run Ezra Hub on shared hosting (GoDaddy, etc.) and the maintainers of this project have confirmed it does work. You may have to jump through extra hurdles to overcome the shortcomings of your hosting environment. One common issue is the inability to edit the DocumentRoot. If you do not have the ability to do so, there is a helpful resource here. This all being said, we highly recommend using a Linux VPS or local server on which you have full access to eliminate problems. Please refer to the Laravel documentation for any further questions or clarification.
- Create a new table on your MySQL server and import the
ezrahub.sqlSQL dump (located in the root of this repo) into a MySQL database of your choosing. - Clone the Laravel 3 branch from the Laravel repository on GitHub onto your server and carefully follow the documentation found at http://three.laravel.com/docs to install/configure Laravel. Follow the optional documentation to configure your installation to use
mod_rewriteand don't forget to make the appropriate changes inapplication/config/application.php. - Verify that your Laravel installation is working by navigating to your install in a web browser.
- Set up Laravel to connect to the database you created in step 1 in
application/config/database.php. - Clone this repository to a separate folder and then copy all of the files over your Laravel 3 install directory 1:1, overwriting the files already there.
- Navigate to your Ezra Hub install in a web browser and sign up as a new user. The first user you create will become the admin user.
Simple, easy-to-edit configuration variables for Ezra Hub are located in application/config/ezrahub.php. If you want to configure anything else, you'll be editing code.
Ezra Hub is licensed under the GPLv2. Laravel 3 is licensed under the Apache license. See the included LICENSE file.