Twiglet's fork of kjk's original forum software made the Python version of fofou compatible with recent changes to Google App Engine. _This_ fork of Twiglet's fork includes my style modifications and tweaks. Below is the original README, followed by some comments I added as an addendum. Overview ======== For more info: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/fofou/ Fofou (Forums For You) is a simple forum software inspired by Joel On Software forum software (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?joel). It's mostly a port of FruitShow PHP forum (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fruitshow). There are two versions: * one in Python for Google App Engine (directory appengine). I used this versions for a few years but no longer use it and no longer work on it * second written in Go (directory go), which I currently use at http://forums.fofou.org Where can I see it in action? ============================= Forums for my Sumatra PDF reader are powered by Fofou: http://forums.fofou.org/sumatrapdf/ Installation. ============= For Google App Engine version you need to get App Engine account and upload fofou (see http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/gettingstarted/uploading.html for details). Once installed, you can create one or more forums through web interface. Go version needs to be compiled and run on a server. I use Linux (Ubuntu). It is, however, not easy to deploy and I'm too lazy to document deployment process. Design philosophy. ================== You'll quickly see that Fofou differs in many ways from most common forum software. There are good reasons for the differences and Joel Spolsky describes those reason in great detail: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html License. ======== The python/Go code is written completely by me and is in Public Domain. Html/css/js files are mostly lifted from FruitShow, so they fall under FruitShow's BSD license. =========================================================== Addendum ======== As of April 2013, the default CAPTCHA employed by fofou had been defeated by forum spammers. Unless you want to manually delete a lot of spam, I recommend using some alternative CAPTCHA system.