HnD

HnD is a Customer Support system, integrating helpdesk features and forums, and was built as an example of what you can do with LLBLGen Pro.

HnD stands for Help and Discuss and starting with v3, it is running on .Net core 3.1+ and uses LLBLGen Pro for its data-access and also model management. It offers site owners a flexible and fast customer support system with, among other features: email notification, attachments, secure forums so only the topicstarter and people with a given action right can see / access the thread, search etc. etc. It's open source and you can download it for free.

To see HnD in action, go to the LLBLGen Pro support system: https://www.llblgen.com/tinyforum

Requirements

• Asp.net core MVC 3.1+
• SQL Server 2008 or higher
• .Net core 3.1+

Development

Development requires any IDE/Editor capable of editing C#/Asp.net core MVC files. To generate the data-access code, you need LLBLGen Pro v5.7 or later. The Docs folder contains the generated model documentation in markdown format (and generated html output) which is generated using LLBLGen Pro's documentation generation feature. It gives insight in how the entity model and derived models relate to each other, detailed per field information and e.g. which mappings are present. For development a valuable resource.

Features

• Strong Markdown support using an extended MarkdownDeep parser.
• Unlimited forums can be organised into as many sections as you like.
• Both public and private forums and those only for specified user groups.
• Queueing facility for support teams, enabling claiming questions and moving threads between queues.
• Attachment approval system for moderators.
• Editing all messages, editing thread properties and closing and moving threads for moderators.
• Powerful search facility.
• Message quoting, code display/formatting, attachments and automatic URL linking.
• Email notification of replies to your topics.
• Secure forum, user and group permission management.
• Allow limited access to viewing, posting, replying, marking threads as 'done', thread memos and many other options.
• Unlimited members.
• Personal profile creation and management.
• Administration centre with forum and section setup, complete group and member management, extensive ban management, support queue management, role management, mass emailing of groups and users by the administrator and many other options.
• Complete control of fonts and colours with cascading style sheets (CSS).
• Responsive design

Installation

The installation of HnD v3 contains several steps, these are described below

Database

To install the database, load the FullInstall_HnD.sql file from the SQLScripts folder in this repository into SMSS or other query app that can execute sql queries on SQL Server. It'll create the tables, indexes and install stored procedure. The only configuration you have to do is to name the catalog at the code around line 221. If HnD is fine, you can leave it, if not, you have to rename it there and also the using statement below it. After that, execute the script. It should create a new catalog.

ASP.NET Core app

To install the asp.net core app side, first compile it. Load the HnD.sln in your favorite IDE and build it. The GUI is the GuiCore project, which is the asp.net core app you'll run. Before doing that you need to configure the appsettings.json file. During development you likely want to use user secrets for the settings which have REMOVE_ME_AFTER_SETTING_UP_STRING_IN_PROD in their name. See dotnet user-secrets for details in the .net core documentation.

The appsettings.json file has two parts which are important, the HnD part and the LLBLGenPro part. The settings of both parts are described below.

HnD section

• VirtualRoot. This is the path fragment between the domain name and the root of the HnD site. If you host the HnD site on its own (sub)domain, this should be /. If you host HnD on a subapplication within a website, e.g. forums (example.com/forums), set VirtualRoot to /forums. Important: url's are case sensitive. To avoid problems, use a lower case value, as the jquery ajax calls in the admin section might otherwise not work as it won't send the authentication cookie.
• DefaultFromEmailAddress. The default email address which is used as 'from' address in all emails HnD sends.
• DefaultToEmailAddress. The default email address which is used as 'to' address in all emails HnD sends, if multiple recipients are receiving the email (e.g. new message notifications), as these recipients are specified as Bcc recipients.
• SiteName. This is the name of the system which is used on the start page and in emails
• EmailPasswordSubject. The subject to use for emails with the initial generated password
• EmailThreadNotificationSubject. The subject to use for emails which are send as notifications for when a new post is posted in a thread a user is subscribed to
• PasswordResetRequestSubject. The subject to use for emails which are send to a user if they want to reset their password.
• EmojiFilesPath. The path to the emoji image files, relative to wwwroot.
• MaxAmountMessagesPerPage. The maximum amount of messages on a page in a thread page. If a thread has more messages, paging is used.
• DataFilesPath. The path to the folder, relative from the app root folder, which contains some data files for the system, like the email templates and the noise words text file which is used for filtering out noise words in search queries.
• MaxNumberOfMinutesToCacheSearchResults. Search results are cached, and for how long is configurable with this setting.
• SmileyMappings. Here you can map shortcuts to emoji names to make typing typical smileys easier.
• ResultsetCacheConfiguration. The resultset cache configuration for resultsets retrieved from the database.
• SmtpConfiguration. The configuration of the SMTP server which is used to send emails.

LLBLGen Pro section

• CatalogNameOverwrites. If you have installed the tables etc. into a catalog called HnD, you should remove the CatalogNameOverwrites section completely. If you have installed the tables etc. in a catalog named other than HnD, specify that name at the spot that says YourCatalogName. At runtime LLBLGen Pro will then use that name for the catalog instead of HnD.
• SqlServerDQECompatibilityLevel. The SQL Server compatibility level to use. Unless you're running the forum on SQL Server 2005 or earlier, leave this at the default: 6.

Connectionstrings.

To specify the connection string, specify the right server and catalog as well as credentials in the string in the section ConnectionStrings.

Building and running

To build the system, simply build the solution. To run it, use dotnet run or dotnet watch run on the command line inside the GuiCore project. To host the forum in IIS, you should follow the asp.net core documentation how to host an asp.net core app inside IIS.

HnD was development on Windows, but should work fine on Linux as well.

Configuration

When you start HnD for the first time, on an empty database you're greeted with a form which asks you to specify the new password for the Admin user and the email address for this user. It will behind the scenes call the pr_Install stored procedure which will initialize the database tables, generate two users, set rights and generate an initial forum. After this process has been completed you can log in as Admin and the password you've specified and you can access the forum that's been generated. In the top menu you have the administration features which allow you to configure the system further.

The initial forum isn't visible to anonymous users.

License

HnD is (c) Solutions Design bv and is released under the GPL v2 license