Django Bi4forum

Bi4forum is a simple forum application, which I was developing while learning django.

It implements basic forum functions, such as search, custom markdown, user profile, listing subforums, threads, posts etc. It is hosted at https://Bi4.pythonanywhere.com/forum, so there you can check almost every feature of it.

It was built under python 3.5 and Django 1.9.

Required modules

• Pillow is required for resizing and cropping avatars uploaded by users, as well as for django ImageField to work.
• Haystack and any search engine supported by haystack (I'm using Whoosh on pythonanywhere) are required by search view, as it uses haystack search queries. Bi4forum contains a file with index classes required by haystack, but you would need to specify settings appropriate for a preferred search engine.
• Django default apps - every app that is included by default in INSTALLED_APPS setting when creating a new project is used by some part of the forum. Probably you can omit the admin app, although it is quite convenient.

Installation

1. Download this repo.

2. In a shell execute:

   $ pip install path-to-repo/dist/bi4forum-0.1.tar.gz
   

3. In your project's settings.py file add 'forum.apps.ForumConfig' into INSTALLED_APPS.

4. In your project's urls.py file include urls from the forum into urlpatterns list, for example:

   from django.conf.urls import url, include
   from django.contrib import admin
   urlpatterns = [
       url(r'^admin/', admin.site.urls),
       url(r'^forum/', include('forum.urls')),
   ]
   

5. In order to be sure that all forum features would work correctly and not crash, check that the following settings are set properly:

   • Email settings (EMAIL_HOST, EMAIL_HOST_USER, EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD, EMAIL_PORT, EMAIL_USE_TLS, EMAIL_USE_SSL)

   • MEDIA_URL

   • MEDIA_ROOT

   • Haystack settings

6. If you're using Django 1.10, add to AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS any backend that allows inactive users to log in. For example: AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = ['django.contrib.auth.backends.AllowAllUsersModelBackend']

7. Execute: $ python project-directory/manage.py migrate

Settings

The following are forum-specific settings and their defaults:

FORUM_NAME - name of the forum, used in a couple of places
Default: 'Bi4forum'

FILE_MAX_SIZE - max size for an avatar uploaded by user specified in bytes
Default: 1024 * 1024 (1 Mb)

POSTS_ON_PAGE - number of posts listed on a page
Default: 20

THREADS_ON_PAGE - number of threads listed on a page
Default: 20

AVATAR_SIZE - width and height that would be used to resize and crop an avatar before storing; specified in pixels
Default: (200, 200)