Again, what do you want to do with it? Then main page? Or the forum?
Implementing the forum with Pascal SW is a nice idea but let's not mix it with the main page layout design. They are 2 very different things.
Reimplementing the whole forum requires lots of work. If you have enough time, energy, motivation and skill to do it, great, go ahead building a prototype including a forum history import feature.
It is a good idea to build the website based on fp. But is it able to bring smf posts in the homepage? (SMF = php, FP <> php) Is it able to template the whole website based on html files? It is so necessary to base shtml (which is nearly not used anymore) for the homepage which much difficult to maintain anyway. If not, I think php is perfect for current scenario. Smf posts can be fetched with two lines of code - one for include-ing a php file and two, running the php function for fetching. (
As far I assume, FP will not be able to do that.)
It is better to have something than nothing. The current homepage has two dead links on the main body "About Lazarus", "Mail list information". Is this a brilliant place for the introduction of the IDE that we love? If we love something we tell others about it. That's what a homepage should do. Not using some 10 years old shtml.
If FP can meet our needs for friendlier website then I am cool with making an FP based site. But sacrificing functionality for FP is not a good idea.What are the "security reasons"?
The page sources must be public. Security must be obtained by other means.
The php backend should not be public. Only the admins or webmasters should have access to it. But the theme files which make the layout (and may be the page content files) can be opened to public.
You can, of course, provide the php backend in public. But I have read many security articles, and I think it is not good for security. Some articles also suggest hiding the script extension (.php, .asp, .jsp) through htaccess so that users do not know what language has been used to build the website. I am just suggesting. You can make the whole code, including php backend, open to public. But who keeps open the whole website code? I am curious.
I didn't quite understand the compiled HTML thing. HTML does not need to be compiled.
But HTML templates can. Through php of course. Template engines create meaning out of HTML templates. For example, the template code for creating the recent posts is:
<div class="recent_posts">
<h2>Recent Posts</h2>
<ul>
{ foreach value=post from=$recent_posts_array }
<li><a href="{ $post.href }" title="{ $post.subject }">{if $post.new eq "True"} <img src="{ $theme_path }images/new.gif" /> {/if}{ $post.short_subject }</a><br />by { $post.poster.name }
</li>
{ /foreach }
</ul>
<a href="http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php?action=forum" class="btlink">See all posts...</a>
</div>
How would that supposed to work? With php those variables with curly brackets would be replaced by values. And the foreach loop would also be utilized, just like a programing language, but will less complications. (The compilation would be automatically done when the user accesses the webpage. Webmasters need not to do anything to compile it)
Recent
