1. Jen-Cheng Huang Vinit Shah Mike Wilt CS8803—Advanced Internet Application Development Prof. Ling Liu Spring 2008 A new architecture for online forums

2. Objectives Design an online forum that is fast, responsive and scalable Enable users to create and customize their own forums Host forums for free Develop a sustainable revenue model to support the service

3. Motivation—Part 1 Improve communication within GT community For prospective students (especially international students) Interdepartmental collaboration

4. Motivation—Part 2 Improve usability of traditional online forums Lightweight but functional “Fast and fluid like a chat room but stable like a traditional message board.”

5. Traditional Message Board

6. Traditional Chat Room

7. Chat Applications

8. Chat Application vs. Message Board AttributeChatMsg Board ParticipantsTwo, typicallyMany FeedbackInstant Static, requires page reload Relationship People you know in real life People with similar interest(s) After you leave… Conversation disappears Thread remains Examples AIM, Google Chat, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, etc. phpBB, vBulletin, EZ Board, etc.

9. Popular Forum Software

10. Features so far… Instant form validation, log in and new user registration CAPTCHA test Create thread without reload Board updates automatically when others post User name: jimbo this user name exists!

11. Features so far… (con’t) User profiles Moderation/rating system Simple emoticons and markup Cross-platform compatibility “Traditional polling” Architecture

12. Clients Check the Cached Value Every 1000ms One client inserts a new message into the database. A new result is cached. Clients Detect the Change in Cached Value. The clients query the database and the new content is returned to the client. Back to Checking for Updates.

13. Demo! Part 1 –New user registration/verification –User Profiles –Text formatting –Moderation system Part 2 –Class participation :) –Go to http://www.buzzpost.nethttp://www.buzzpost.net

14. Things to do… Integrate features from two versions Add private messaging feature Use Comet instead of traditional polling More scalability testing Launch test communities Alternate layouts/“skins”

15. Clients Subscribe too the Server.Client updates the contents.Server Published the Updates.

16. CPU Usage Traditional Polling vs. Comet (Orbited) 75 users 10-15 users (performance decrease) 5-15 users Comet (Orbited) Polling Shared server running Ubuntu with 325MB RAM

17. Questions Contact info: –Mike Wilt (mikewilt@gmail.com)mikewilt@gmail.com –Vinit Shah (vinitshah1@gmail.com)vinitshah1@gmail.com –Jen-Cheng Huang (tommy24@gatech.edu)tommy24@gatech.edu