website/forum

Forum and comments (Flarum)

The forum is a separate PHP application (Flarum 2, PHP 8.3+, MariaDB or MySQL). It is not part of the static build: the site only links to it and shows its threads in a frame.

Path	Role
extension/	Flarum extension oc/flarum-museum: the oc:import and oc:pages commands, original author names, the look of embedded threads
docker/, docker-compose.yml	local test forum; docker/bundle.sh packages the server bundle
import/	not versioned: machines.json (export from the extraction repo), forum.json (thread map), forum.tar.gz (server bundle)

How comments work

• ../oc/scripts/06_forum.py writes import/machines.json: one entry per machine with its archived comments, oldest first.
• php flarum oc:import creates one discussion per machine: an opening post by the user Archive linking to the museum page, then one post per archived comment, dated as the original. Each comment is posted by an account standing for its original author, shown under the name used on the old site ("darius (croatia)"); the same name on several machines is one account. These accounts are in the group "Original site" (a badge on their posts), have a random password and an undeliverable address, so nobody can log in as them. Discussions go under three tags (Computers, Consoles, Pongs) that are hidden from "All discussions".
• Original names are stored as nicknames (Nicknames extension, which must be enabled) and shown by the display-name driver museum of this extension, which the import selects: the stock nickname driver would remove the brackets.
• The command records what it imported (table oc_threads) and skips it on later runs, so it can be run again when new machines arrive. --replace deletes and re-imports the imported threads that have no reply from a real member (their thread numbers change). It writes the map machine → discussion to forum.json.
• Copied to ../data/forum.json, that map makes make content link every machine to its thread (forum_thread in the page front matter); the old comments are then no longer written into the pages.
• With params.forum.url set, the bottom of the machine's pages shows <forum>/embed/<id> (Flarum's Embed extension) in a frame that follows the height of the thread.

News posts

php flarum oc:pages creates one discussion per news post under the tag News (listed with the other forum topics, unlike the machine threads), opened by the system account News with a link to the post. make forum-sync in the website repository drives it: tools/forum_sync.py sends the list of published posts to the forum host (FORUM_RUN, FORUM_DIR, FORUM_PHP in the Makefile) and stores the answer in data/forum_pages.json. make deploy runs it first, so a new post gets its discussion when it is published. A post that is renamed gets a new discussion; a retitled one keeps its discussion and its old title there.

Local test

make forum-up        # http://localhost:8081, admin / adminadmin (first start takes a minute)
make forum-import    # export + import; safe to repeat

To see it in the site, copy forum/import/forum.json to data/forum.json, run make content, and build with HUGO_PARAMS_FORUM_URL=http://localhost:8081 hugo server. Do not commit a data/forum.json made from the test forum: its thread numbers are not those of the real one.

Server install

The forum must live outside the folder make deploy writes to (that folder is synchronised with deletion). On the test server: web/oldcomputers-forum/, next to web/oldcomputers/, served at https://barbel.synology.me/oldcomputers-forum.

Checked on the test server (2026-10-11): PHP 8.4 (FPM) with every extension Flarum needs, Apache 2.4 behind nginx, .htaccess rewriting active. Files copied over the network share are not writable by the web server user http, and the share does not let permissions be changed.

Installed there on 2026-10-11. Things specific to this server:

• command-line PHP is /usr/local/bin/php84, and needs -d memory_limit=512M for Flarum's console (cache:clear runs out of memory with the default 128M);
• MariaDB 10 listens on port 3307: database host 127.0.0.1:3307;
• SSH is on port 27 and has no scp/sftp: send a file with ssh -p 27 user@host 'cat > /volume2/web/oldcomputers-forum/storage/machines.json' < forum/import/machines.json;
• the forum folder is /volume2/web/oldcomputers-forum.

No Composer is needed on the server: make forum-bundle builds forum/import/forum.tar.gz, a complete Flarum 2 tree (PHP 8.4) with the Embed, anti-spam and museum extensions and a top-level .htaccess that routes every request into public/, so config.php, storage/ and vendor/ are never served. This layout is tested in the local image.

1. Create an empty MariaDB database and a user for it.

2. Unpack the bundle into web/oldcomputers-forum/.

3. Give the user http write access to that folder and everything in it (File Station → Properties → Permissions, or chown -R http:http over SSH). Flarum writes config.php, storage/ and public/assets/. While the forum is copied but not installed, keep it closed: put the bundle's .htaccess aside as .htaccess.forum and use a one-line .htaccess containing Require all denied. Swap them back just before installing.

4. Install. Either open the forum address and fill the installer (database, administrator), or over SSH, as http, in the forum folder: php flarum install --file=install.yml (format in docker/entrypoint.sh). Do not leave the folder online uninstalled: whoever opens the installer first becomes its administrator.

5. Enable the extensions Nicknames, Embed and "Old-Computers museum" (admin panel, or php flarum extension:enable with flarum-nicknames, flarum-embed, oc-museum). Tags is enabled by default.

6. In the admin panel: e-mail settings (registration confirms addresses by e-mail). Enable the spam filter (fof-anti-spam). Schedule a database dump.

7. Import, from a shell on the server (SSH, or a one-off Task Scheduler script run as http), in the forum folder (copy import/machines.json there first):

   php flarum oc:import machines.json --site-url=https://barbel.synology.me/oldcomputers --map=forum.json
   

   then bring forum.json back as data/forum.json, set params.forum.url, make content, make deploy.

To update the forum or the extension later: dump the database, rebuild the bundle, unpack it over the existing folder (it contains no config.php), then php flarum migrate and php flarum cache:clear:

ssh -p 27 user@host 'cd /volume2/web/oldcomputers-forum && tar xzf - --no-overwrite-dir \
    --no-same-owner --no-same-permissions --exclude=./storage --exclude=./public/assets' \
    < forum/import/forum.tar.gz

Unpacking resets the folders it touches to plain Unix permissions on the Synology (even with --no-overwrite-dir), which drops the ACL entry that lets http write: the forum then answers 500. Repair, as the folder's owner (the forum folder, public, public/assets, vendor, packages):

/usr/syno/bin/synoacltool -add <folder> "user:http:allow:rwxpdDaARWc--:fd--"

and add the same entry for your own account and group:administrators right after, or the folder is closed to you. Do not use -enforce-inherit or -copy on a plain-permission file: they leave it with an empty ACL (no access at all; chmod 644/755 brings it back). The simpler alternative, used for the WordPress folder: plain permissions with the group http (chgrp -R http . && chmod -R g+rwX .).

The bundle includes the spam filter fof/anti-spam (StopForumSpam check at registration, tools to remove a spammer); enable it with php flarum extension:enable fof-anti-spam (it needs flarum-flags and flarum-approval).

The forum and the site should share one domain: logging in from the embedded thread relies on the forum's cookie, which browsers restrict across domains.