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Posted by Flannel   USA  (1,230 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #15 on Tue 07 Dec 2004 07:37 AM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 07 Dec 2004 07:40 AM (UTC) by Flannel

Message
there is a new posts flag (the little flag/icon things appear in orange instead of grey/white), you just have to be logged in to view them.

A problem I've had bad experiences with is that once youve viewed a page (a forum, not a thread), they all go away, which does get to be problematic, they get marked as 'read' whether or not you've actually read them, I wonder if that is an option.
~Flannel

Messiah of Rose
Eternity's Trials.

Clones are people two.
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Posted by Samson   USA  (683 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #16 on Tue 07 Dec 2004 11:27 AM (UTC)
Message
From a user perspective, phpBB2 is a nice bit of software that does the job and allows people to tweak things a bit to fit their style.

From an administrative perspective though, I don't care for phpBB2 at all. At least not in the non-beta releases. The permissions system for the forums is lousy and confusing to say the least.

I used Invisionboard for awhile on my forums because of all of the various options it had, even moreso than it's predecessor Ikonboard. However when they decided to regrerss and insist people pay for it, Invisionboard met a quick death and we switched back to Ikonboard.

Ikon has come a long way since we originally used it and I'm quite happy with it now. Has most of the same options Invision had, and also allows all of the same kinds of tweaks. Blows phpBB2 away in pretty much all areas unless you happen to despise Perl for some reason.

Bottom line though, I'd say go with whatever makes you most comfortable as an administrator. Clearly we as users will do just fine with whatever you choose.
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #17 on Tue 07 Dec 2004 05:13 PM (UTC)

Amended on Tue 07 Dec 2004 05:14 PM (UTC) by Nick Gammon

Message
Thanks, Samson, for the supportive comments.

Having sung the praises of the good features of phpBB, I'll now talk about what I see as the disadvantages, to put things into perspective a bit.


  • The first thing is, as an administrator of the forum, it isn't obvious how to do simple customization like putting links to my downloads and order page at the top of every page. No doubt there is a way, the phpBB home page has it, but it seems strange that straight away I have to delve into the code or FAQs to do something obvious like that.

  • Similarly, I would like to be able to put a "message of the day" at the head of each page, like I have currently done (about looking at the new forum).

  • Although it has the same structure, believe me because I have just been doing a conversion program, they seem to not use it fully. For example, we both have four levels, eg.


    MUSHclient -> General -> Multiline trigger
    -> (individual posts).


    For one thing, their main index page shows two levels (ie. all the subtopics for MUSHclient, Area Editor etc.) which is a bit cluttered, whereas this forum (the Gammon forum) only shows the top level.

    For another thing, if I work down to the thread about MultiLine Trigger, namely:

    http://www.gammon.com.au/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4943

    ... then the heading at the top of the post shows:


    Gammon Software Solutions Forum Index -> General


    ... where I would expect it to show:


    Gammon Software Solutions Forum Index -> MUSHclient -> General


    It seems to have thrown away what general section you are in (MUSHclient). So, although it is possible to view the MUSHclient-only page, it takes a bit of work to get to it.

  • There doesn't seem to be a feature that does what I now use all the time - to list all recent posts, with a bar showing which ones you have read and which ones you haven't. By using this I can see at a glance what new posts have been made, without needing email notification. I know phpBB has a "view posts since last visit" link, but if you view out of sequence, then basically that is lost.

  • As I mentioned earlier, the page size of each page seems to have almost doubled, thus increasing bandwidth usage, and therefore slowing down the time it takes to load each page.

  • There seems to be a strange requirement, which I have noticed a bit in the past with similar boards, that after making a new post (eg. a reply), you don't immediately see your post, but are taken to an intermediate page "thanks for making that post, click here to view it". I don't know why they need that. On this board you always see your post immediately, there is no need for that intermediate page.

  • The "bio" field is not there, so it is no longer possible for authors to put in a free-form personal biography, which a few frequent posters have used.

  • I can't see a feature for a "message of the day" per *section* (eg the MUSHclient section). I use that quite extensively in some sections for putting up links to frequently-required information (eg. how to use gdb). I know they have "sticky" posts and "announcement" posts, but if you use too many of those you have to scroll past them every day to find the first "real" post for that section.

  • No audit trail. Since various events a while back, where people deleted posts and caused confusion, I added an audit trail to this forum (the Gammon forum). The audit trail basically records every posting, change, deletion, new user, user-name change etc. The idea is that I can go back through that and reconstruct what has happened if (say) a user makes some posts and then deletes them. Without that, if someone puts up an insulting post (for example) and waits few hours and then deletes it, they can always deny they ever did it.

  • Possibly more secure from hacks in the current system. There may be security flaws in my current system, however they have never been exploited. This is possibly because so few boards use it, that it is a small target. However if someone finds a bug in phpBB then every board that uses it is vulnerable.


So there you are, the pros and cons. Maybe what is needed is small improvements to the current system (if indeed anything is needed).

Any further comments are welcome. :)



- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #18 on Tue 07 Dec 2004 07:30 PM (UTC)
Message
Well, at least I got some new ideas from phpBB. Check out the main forum page on *this* forum. I have added a few new lines:


  • Days forum active: 1,663
  • New users per day: 1.37
  • Posts per day: 15.46
  • Threads per day: 2.90
  • Views per day: 906


These figures will change, of course.

The "views per day" is a bit low for today, as that is an average over about 5 years. As the forum gets more popular it is more like 2,500 per day these days.
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by Flannel   USA  (1,230 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #19 on Tue 07 Dec 2004 08:49 PM (UTC)
Message
Not that this is really important, but maybe you should make it two columns instead of one, seems like a waste of horizontal space as it is right now.
Not only to reduce the height, but also line up views with views per day and so on.
~Flannel

Messiah of Rose
Eternity's Trials.

Clones are people two.
Top
Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #20 on Tue 07 Dec 2004 10:04 PM (UTC)
Message
Quote:
you don't immediately see your post, but are taken to an intermediate page "thanks for making that post, click here to view it". I don't know why they need that. On this board you always see your post immediately, there is no need for that intermediate page.
This is to prevent double-posting, when people refresh on a post page and ignore the warning about "this contains post data etc." By bringing them to a temporary page, then moving to another one, if they press refresh there is no longer risk for double-posting. And yes, I get a fair amount of double-posting just like that on the Darkstone forums. :)

It's true that PHPBB doesn't provide the recent posts list, but on the other hand it lets you know up-front which sections have posts you haven't read yet. On the same note, it keeps track of that on a per-forum basis, so if I want to ignore posts in, say, the Triggers section, but pay attention to the SMAUG section, then I can mark everything read in Triggers and not have my 'green line' skip over SMAUG.

Quote:
Possibly more secure from hacks in the current system.
On the other hand, these same hacks are likely to be discovered and fixed more rapidly, for precisely the same reasons that the boards are more vulnerable. Has anybody ever heard of a security hole in PHPBB?

Quote:
I can't see a feature for a "message of the day" per *section* (eg the MUSHclient section).
I don't like the MotD per section idea, personally. I find it unintuitive - doesn't seem to have its place on a forum, but rather a knowledge base. Your 'message of the day' e.g. 'how to use GDB' could be readily reproduced with sticky posts, which I believe can be configured to be only across a specific set of boards.

I also prefer PHPBB's structure, where I don't have to go searching through sections to see it. Maybe that's because I have a high resolution screen, but it doesn't bother me to have vertical content.

And finally, I think phpbb simply looks nicer. :-) You can turn off frills like avatar images and all the fancy emoticons (which might not be such a bad idea) and come out with a very professional look.

For your views per day, you could probably make it views in the last year, although I don't believe you track that kind of information (which views happened when.) At least it would make for a better average. :)
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Samson   USA  (683 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #21 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 01:25 AM (UTC)
Message
With regard to the double post issue - this may be true on some boards, but apparently the version of Ikonboard I use now doesn't have this problem when one refreshes the page. I just made a test post to see what would happen if I refreshed immediately after posting, and nothing happened. Ikonboard doesn't impose the "thanks for your post" page in the middle of displaying the thread with your new reply. So in that sense, it's probably better all around.

As far as the personal bio section, I'm inclined to think the "interests" section can also be used for the purpose of writing up a short freeform bio instead. The size limit of this can be decided by the board admins.

You are right that such things as phpBB, Invisionboard, and Ikonboard are all difficult to add per-page headers to, but it is possible and I think I've even seen a forum or two that have done this. I have no idea how to accomplish such things though since web coding isn't my thing.

As far as the audit trail problem, phpBB, Invision, and Ikon will all let you set options to stop people from deleting their own posts, or even editing their own posts if need be. The upside to using phpBB is that if you really want an audit trail mod for it, chances are much better that someone will be able to write one for you.

Anyway, as I said before, I think this should boil down to what you are most comfortable with Nick. Nothing wrong with picking up ideas and incorporating them into your own code here.
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #22 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 05:19 AM (UTC)
Message
Quote:

This is to prevent double-posting, when people refresh on a post page and ignore the warning about "this contains post data etc." By bringing them to a temporary page, then moving to another one, if they press refresh there is no longer risk for double-posting.


I had that problem initially here, but now I simply store a hash of the last post you made, and if you attempt to make that identical post again (eg. by hitting Refresh) it silently discards it. Thus, no double posts.
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by Aokromes   (1 post)  Bio
Date Reply #23 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 11:46 AM (UTC)
Message
Hi Ksilyan PHPBB has A LOT of security holes and some of them HUGES, for example all the phpbb <2.0.11 have a very hugue security hole.

From phpbb.com:
Quote:

This is a reminder to all users to upgrade as soon as possible to 2.0.11. Remember, the issue leading to this release was extremely serious. It gave rise to the possibility for persons to "install" scripts, delete files and otherwise access your system. If you have upgraded, be sure to check your account/system for suspicious files, etc. If you have any concerns please raise them in the support forum here at phpbb.com.
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Posted by Poromenos   Greece  (1,037 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #24 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 12:29 PM (UTC)
Message
phpBB definitely has some great characteristics. I particularly like that you can have user ranks, categories, sticky posts, looks nicer, etc.
If you're expecting less bandwidth, don't. In fact, I don't think the current forum could use any less bandwidth (except if you removed the MUSHclient logo from the starting page and used CSS). phpBB has pictures all over the place, and it WILL take at least double the time the current one takes to load. If you care a lot about bandwidth, you could just customize the current forum to use CSS (and remove the sandy background to solid light gray perhaps :P), but if you don't, I'd go with phpBB too.
Vidi, Vici, Veni.
http://porocrom.poromenos.org/ Read it!
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Posted by Zhamel   USA  (67 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #25 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 05:10 PM (UTC)
Message
If you want something small and light weight, take a look at punBB (punbb.org). It's a very fast forum, no images to suck up bandwidth. The developers have a new version that's in beta which is XHTML 1.0 Strict and semantically correct markup and CSS. Or is you wish, you can use the current release 1.1.5.

I'm waiting for the new 1.2 (XHTML) version to be released and I'm going to move my muds forums from IPB to it. But it's your forums and your decision, thought I would throw in another option for you.
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #26 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 08:24 PM (UTC)
Message
Yeah, thanks for the options.

I tried to do ths CSS thing, which is what made me look at another option in the first place.

I (rather foolishly I suppose) hard-coded the style in heaps of places, even though some is done with subroutines. So, converting all to CSS is a nightmare.

And as I pointed out before, the space you might save with less "color=red" tags gets swallowed up to a large extent with "dev=style4" tags, so the saving isn't all that great. Plus, you have to put the stylesheet at the start as well.
- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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Posted by David Haley   USA  (3,881 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #27 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 09:38 PM (UTC)
Message
Quote:
Plus, you have to put the stylesheet at the start as well.
Why can't you just include it as a link? The Darkstone stylesheet isn't included at the top of every page, rather, I simply put in:
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../../darkstone.css" type="text/css">
and that brings the whole thing in. CSS is awfully convenient and lets you change huge amounts of design layout with only a few rather straightforward changes.
David Haley aka Ksilyan
Head Programmer,
Legends of the Darkstone

http://david.the-haleys.org
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Posted by Poromenos   Greece  (1,037 posts)  Bio
Date Reply #28 on Wed 08 Dec 2004 09:57 PM (UTC)
Message
Yes, the CSS savings are that all the pages use the same template file, and it's ONE declaration for every box or whatever in the page. For example, you need to do <font color="#ff0000" size="+2"><center> etc once instead of every time for every box.
Vidi, Vici, Veni.
http://porocrom.poromenos.org/ Read it!
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Posted by Nick Gammon   Australia  (23,158 posts)  Bio   Forum Administrator
Date Reply #29 on Thu 09 Dec 2004 02:53 AM (UTC)
Message
Well, if that is the case, how come phpBB don't do that? They must have their reasons. And, looking at the generated page from them I see stuff like this:


<td class="row2" align="center" valign="middle" height="50"><span class="gensmall">50</span></td>
<td class="row2" align="center" valign="middle" height="50"><span class="gensmall">314</span></td>
<td class="row2" align="center" valign="middle" height="50" nowrap="nowrap"> <span class="gensmall">29 Nov 2004 09:04 pm<br />


Maybe they don't have "<font color="#ff0000" size="+2"><center>" but they have an awful lot of other stuff instead.

- Nick Gammon

www.gammon.com.au, www.mushclient.com
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