SFBB — Symfony Bulletin Board

A modern re-implementation of phpBB built with Symfony.

Full-featured discussion forum modeled after phpBB: a Category → Forum → Topic → Post hierarchy, real-time chat, direct messages, moderation and an admin panel — all inside a ready-to-use Docker stack.

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Table of contents

• Features
• Tech stack
• Design
• Prerequisites
• Installation
• Quick start
• Configuration
• Database
• Demo accounts
• Emails and notifications
• Frontend and assets
• Tests
• Code quality
• Project structure
• Roles and permissions
• License

Features

• Hierarchical forum: categories, forums, topics and posts (same hierarchy as phpBB).
• Pagination of topics and posts (Pagerfanta).
• Rich text editor: CKEditor embedded for writing posts.
• Moderation: category/forum ordering, per-forum moderator management, member profiles.
• Admin panel: site configuration (name, description), full management of categories, forums, moderators and users.
• Members: registration, login by username, public profile, filterable member list.
• Messaging: chat with participants and direct messages.
• "Who is online": user activity over the last 5 minutes.
• Dynamic breadcrumbs depending on the page being viewed.
• Email notifications: sent asynchronously via Messenger (Doctrine).
• 100 % French interface with fr as the default locale.

Tech stack

Technology	Version
PHP	8.5
Symfony	8.1
Doctrine ORM	3.x
PostgreSQL	16
Nginx	1.23
Twig	3.x
AssetMapper	8.x
Sass (scssphp)	0.10
CKEditor (FOS)	2.8
Stimulus	3.x
Pagerfanta	4.6
PHPUnit	12
PHPStan	2.x

Design

SFBB re-imagines the classic bulletin board with a modern dark glassmorphism look: frosted-glass surfaces floating over a subtle aurora background, accented in indigo and violet. It ships as two distinct themes — a public theme and an admin theme.

Public theme — "dark glassmorphism"

• Isolated by design: every public rule is scoped under .public-body (_base.scss, _layout.scss, _glass.scss) so it never leaks into the admin panel.
• Design tokens — defined in assets/styles/_tokens.scss:
  • Deep navy background #0b0f1e, translucent "glass" surfaces (rgba(255,255,255,.055)) and crisp 1px borders.
  • Primary indigo #818cf8, violet accent #c084fc, emerald success, amber warning and soft red danger colors.
  • Corner radius of 18px (12px for smaller cards), 24px backdrop blur and layered drop shadows.
• Aurora backdrop — _base.scss: four radial gradients (violet, blue, pink, cyan) blended over a navy linear gradient, fixed to the viewport.
• Frosted glass shell — _layout.scss: the page container uses backdrop-filter: blur(24px) saturate(150%) over a translucent navy panel, with a solid fallback when backdrop-filter is not supported.
• Components — components/_glass.scss: glass cards with gradient headers, hover-highlighted rows, pill badges, uppercase micro-labels on statistics, pill-shaped pagination, tinted alerts, post cards with a side author panel and avatars with an online indicator.
• Buttons — components/_buttons.scss: indigo-to-violet gradient primary buttons with a soft glow and a subtle hover lift.
• Forms — components/_forms.scss: translucent inputs with an indigo focus ring.
• Profile page — components/_profile.scss: dotted-pattern banner, centered identity block and a 3-column statistics grid.
• Icons: Font Awesome (Free); nav links collapse to icons on small screens.
• Typography: system font stack (-apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, …).
• Responsive: post cards and list rows stack below 992px, the profile grid collapses below 768px.
• Admin theme: a separate light, clean dashboard (admin.scss).

Screenshots

Captured from the dev environment (screenshots/). The Symfony dev toolbar visible at the bottom is not present in production.

Homepage: category → forum list, stats and "Who is online".	Topic list of a forum.
A topic with its posts and author panel.	The login / authentication page.

Admin dashboard.

Prerequisites

• Docker (20.10 or later)
• Docker Compose v2
• No local PHP installation required: all tooling runs inside the containers.

Installation

git clone git@github.com:lsoulier42/sfbb.git
cd sfbb
cp .env .env.local   # optional: customize variables (see Configuration)
make install

make install runs, in order:

1. the build of the Docker images (PHP 8.5, Nginx, PostgreSQL, Mailcatcher);
2. the installation of Composer dependencies;
3. the database migrations;
4. the fixtures;
5. the assets installation (importmap, Sass, CKEditor);
6. the startup of the stack.

Quick start

Command	Description
make start	Starts all containers
make stop	Stops all containers
make connect	Opens a shell in the PHP container
make install	Build + composer install + migrations + fixtures + assets
make composer-install	Installs Composer dependencies
make composer-update	Updates Composer dependencies (-W)
make db-migrate	Applies migrations
make db-fixtures	Reloads fixtures (purge + truncate)
make db-migrations-diff	Generates a migration from the entities
make db-reset	⚠️ Destructive: removes migrations, recreates the database
make clear	Clears the cache (run outside the container)
make assets-install	Installs assets (importmap)
make assets-compile	Compiles assets for production

⚠️ make db-reset is destructive: it deletes all files in migrations/, recreates the database and regenerates a full diff. Only run it when that is clearly your intent.

Default URLs

Service	URL / port
Application (dev)	http://localhost:8776
PostgreSQL (host)	localhost:5664
Mailcatcher (UI)	http://localhost:1168
Mailcatcher (SMTP)	localhost:1167

Configuration

All environment variables are defined in .env. To customize them without committing your changes, create a .env.local file (it is ignored by git).

Variable	Description	Default
APP_ENV	Environment (dev, prod, test)	dev
APP_VERSION	Version displayed in the application	0.1.0
APP_PORT	HTTP port exposed on the host	8776
APP_SECRET	Application secret	(change in prod)
DATABASE_USER	PostgreSQL user	root
DATABASE_PASSWORD	PostgreSQL password	password
DATABASE_NAME	Database name	sfbb
DATABASE_HOST	PostgreSQL host (Docker service name)	database
DATABASE_PORT	PostgreSQL internal port	5432
MESSENGER_TRANSPORT_DSN	Async Messenger transport (Doctrine)	doctrine://default
MAILER_DSN	Mailer transport	smtp://mailer:1025

Database

• Migrations live in migrations/.

• Generate a migration from the entities:

  make db-migrations-diff

• Apply the migrations:

  make db-migrate

• Fixtures (one class per entity in src/DataFixtures/) create a realistic dataset: users, categories, forums, topics, posts, chats, etc.

Tests

A separate database is used in the test environment (_test suffix appended by the when@test Doctrine configuration). No collision with your development data.

Demo accounts

The fixtures create the following accounts (common password: 1234test):

Username	Role
admin	Administrator
super-modo	Super-moderator
modo	Moderator
(10 generated)	User

⚠️ These accounts are for development only. Always change the default passwords in production.

Emails and notifications

• Emails are sent asynchronously via the Messenger async transport (Doctrine) and processed by the Supervisor workers (mailer-messenger and failed-messenger) inside the PHP container.
• In development, all emails go through Mailcatcher (http://localhost:1168): no real email is sent.
• On failure, messages are redirected to the failed transport (3 attempts with backoff).

Frontend and assets

• AssetMapper (importmap.php) manages the JavaScript dependencies (native importmap, no bundler).

• Styles are compiled from assets/styles/app.scss via symfonycasts/sass-bundle.

• The JavaScript entry point is assets/app.js.

• CKEditor is integrated through FOSCKEditorBundle; its plugins live in public/ckeditor-plugins/.

• After any change to styles/JS:

  make assets-install

• For production, assets are compiled into public/assets/:

  make assets-compile

Tests

The test infrastructure is in place (PHPUnit 12, tests/bootstrap.php) but no tests have been written yet. To run the suite:

docker compose run --rm php bin/phpunit

Adding tests (unit and functional) is welcome.

Code quality

Static analysis tools run inside the Docker container:

# PHPStan — level 8 on src/ (requires a warm dev cache)
docker compose run --rm php bash -ci 'php -d memory_limit=4G bin/console cache:clear'
docker compose run --rm php bash -ci 'php -d memory_limit=4G vendor/bin/phpstan analyse -c phpstan.neon --no-progress'

# PHPCS — PSR12 on src/ and tests/
docker compose run --rm php bash -ci 'vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=phpcs.xml.dist src/ tests/'

Project structure

.
├── assets/                  # JS (app.js) and SCSS (app.scss)
├── config/                  # Symfony configuration
│   ├── packages/            #   Framework, Doctrine, Security, Twig, ...
│   └── routes/              #   Framework/profiler routes
├── docker/                  # PHP Dockerfile, nginx and supervisord configs
├── migrations/              # Doctrine migrations
├── public/                  # Web entry point + public assets (ckeditor-plugins)
├── screenshots/             # Screenshots used in this README
├── src/
│   ├── Command/             # CLI commands
│   ├── Contract/            # Service interfaces
│   ├── Controller/          # Controllers (front + admin)
│   ├── DataFixtures/        # Fixtures
│   ├── Dto/                 # DTOs (forms, pagination, views)
│   ├── Entity/              # Doctrine entities
│   ├── Enum/                # Enums (roles, ordering)
│   ├── EventListener/       # Listeners (activity, login, password)
│   ├── Form/                # Form types
│   ├── Helper/              # Helpers
│   ├── Message/             # Async messages (Messenger)
│   ├── MessageHandler/      # Message handlers
│   ├── Repository/          # Repositories
│   ├── Security/            # UserChecker (login by username)
│   ├── Service/             # Business logic layer
│   ├── Traits/              # Cross-cutting traits (timestampable)
│   └── Twig/                # Twig extension
├── templates/               # Twig views
├── tests/                   # Tests (PHPUnit)
├── translations/            # Translations (fr)
├── docker-compose.yaml      # Docker stack (php, nginx, database, mailer)
└── Makefile                 # Main workflow (make install, start, ...)

Roles and permissions

Role	Permissions
ROLE_USER	Browse, post and edit own messages
ROLE_MODERATOR	Basic moderation
ROLE_SUPER_MODERATOR	Extended moderation
ROLE_ADMIN	Full access to the /admin panel

The role hierarchy (role_hierarchy) is defined in config/packages/security.yaml. Login is done by username (see App\Security\UserChecker).

License

Distributed under the MIT license.