Third party PHP scripts

Third party PHP scripts

Hello to all.

The good thing about working in a group/team is that you get a lot of feedback and that helps to create projects where everyone feels involved. The downside is that sometimes it takes too long.

So, after several months of work, do’s and don’ts, adjustments here and there, I can present the website I have made with Sparkle for a project of culture, art, education and prevention.

You can visit it here:
www.almaterraforum.org

The part that has taken the most work is the internal part, the part that is not accessible to the public and is for internal communication. For this it was decided to use a forum with a PHP script.

I have bought and used two of them and here is my experience in case it can be of help. The price in both cases is the same, 19 $:

1.- https://www.phpjabbers.com/
The aesthetics is a bit old-fashioned, even allowing you to choose between 6 or 8 colour combinations, but the design is 100% responsive. It allows you to export users and the rest of the files from the control panel, although the complete download failed for me, I was able to download the users in CVS file. It had the buttons to share on social networks, something we were not interested in. The technical service provided me with the necessary information to make the changes. It was a bit complicated, but I managed it. Then one of the users informed me that her comments were not being published on the forum. Here the technical service took a long time to reply. I was in a hurry to make the presentation, so I tried another script.

2.- https://gzscripts.com/
It has a more modern look, it allows sending messages between users, but there is no possibility to make backups from the control panel. And well, it also gave me problems. I guess some adjustments are always necessary when working with third party scripts.
The biggest problem is that it is not updated to have a good responsive behaviour, so in the mobile version some elements were placed on top of others and in the desktop version it is designed for wider sites than those created with Sparkle.
I wrote to them commenting all these errors and they have been really fast and efficient, answering in less than 24 hours and solving all the design problems. Now it works very well as responsive. As it doesn’t have social sharing buttons, I haven’t had to do anything about it.
They acknowledged that the design is a bit outdated and have informed me that they will be releasing an update in a month’s time.

In conclusion. I think both scripts work well. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. In both cases you can test them on your platform, although you have to be aware that you will probably have to make adjustments to them.
In my particular case, the GZ Scripts technical service has been more agile in solving the problems.

I am not a programmer, so I have no opinion on the structure and effectiveness of each script at a technical level. If anyone wants to contribute something else, you are welcome to do so.

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