Simple Java Boards

Simple forum engine written in Java.

Features

Conversation

• Top-level categories;
• Boards (forums) inside categories with unlimited nesting support;
• Topics inside boards and posts inside topics;
• Pagination support for topics and posts;
• Attachments support;
• Simple image attachments gallery for post;

Users & roles system

• Users list with pagination;
• User groups support;
• Different customizable permissions for groups;
• User profile with avatar support;
• User registration with email activation;
• Password reset with optional secret question check;

UI

• Mobile support (320x480 and up);
• Firefox, Chrome, IE10+ capable;

Administration

• Full conversation in-place editing support;
• Categories, Boards (Forums), Topics, Posts CRUD;
• Profile editing support, include secured password changing and secret answer/question changing;

Technology stack

Backend

• Spring MVC;
• JPA (Hibernate);
• Postgresql;
• Spring Security;

Frontend

Frontend uses server-side rendering.

• Freemarker;
• Bootstrap;
• Jquery;
• Font-awesome;

Build & Devops

• Maven;
• Liquibase;
• maven-cargo-plugin for fast deployment and run;

Installation

Database setup

• Prepare Postgresql database server, ensure it is up and running;
• Create Postgresql database and user with full permissions on this database;

By default, sjb is used in configuration as a user name, password and database name. You can change this values in resources/properties/database.properties on your own. Test environment has its own database.properties.

Mail setup

You have to setup mail host, port, user and password in resources/properties/mail.properties to user registration work.

File uploads

files.upload.storage.path parameter in application.properties sets absolute path for uploads. It have to be set to existing directory with rwx access to user who runs app.

Logging

log.full.path parameter inside logback.xml and logback-test.xml sets up path where app writes logs. These parameters have to be set to existing directory with rwx access to user who runs app.

Build & Run

Java 11 required for this operations.

$ git clone https://github.com/beljaeff/simple-java-boards.git
$ cd simple-java-boards
$ mvn clean install cargo:run

After that you can open http://localhost:9090/ in your browser and work with forum. Default administrator account have login Admin and password password.

To avoid running tests use -Dmaven.test.skip=true parameter when call mvn.

If you want disable automatic liquibase execution during build you can add parameter -Dliquibase.should.run=false when call mvn.

Screenshots

TODO

• Different moderating levels (global moderators, board moderators, topic moderators);
• Private messages;
• Search;
• Social integration;
• Karma support;
• Private boards;
• Themes support;
• Permission management;
• ... and many more :)

License

GPL.