| Archive for myfreeforum.org Before posting please check the "stickies" in the support forums. Please ask questions in real English and not "txt". You will get a better response. Please do not ask support questions via PMs. |
| CodyT07 |
Preview of PhpBB3For those wanting to know what PhpBB3 may look like, Here is a forum of it running it (by me)http://codyt07.com/forum3 This thing has a lot of features, some nice, for a forum system wouldn't be the best. Sign up and see how it is. \It basically has everything everyone wants in the "request" forums. Including The "Post Icons". It even list out all the known bots and it has an automatic "background checker". Meaning if that IP is backlisted it will block it until an admin verifies it (or however you set it). And guest can the "image verifaction" basically everything you want and then more. Some I won't use.... So take a preview as a member, some will be made a moderator and if really trusted an admin. |
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| CodyT07 |
Some image previews
User Control Panel. 
Click to see full size image View of the Admin Panel in General 
Click to see full size image Google Bots 
Click to see full size image As you can tell this will take a *long time* to write a how to do it on it. My thoughts on it. Bunch of nice features, but only for 'advance users'. If you want to see it for your self link at top. Mods on here and Mr. Admin can be an admin on there. Other members sorry, to many vital functions on there. |
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| Hardcoregamer |
The conformation code looks interesting, and too much eye candy to actually decode it for some! | ||||
| CodyT07 |
I actually thought so too, hopefully it will change before the final release. |
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| Danny M |
when is the release again | ||||
| CodyT07 |
Its not known, the next release they hope is the candidates. Then the final. |
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| Nick(NR) |
I honestly don't see why so many people are getting moist over this, so rather than fix/increase security risks/bugs, they create a whole new version riddled with bugs and security issues, I'll admit they've more than likely worked most of them out and for what a few extra little things like birthday, which we now have. For the time being this is a waste of peoples time. | ||||
| Hardcoregamer |
I have a question about this PHPBB 3....Is MFF going to automatically give us a tutorial to upgrade our already stable forums to this or upgrade all of the forums at once and a certain date? | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
Neither.
Whilst we recognize it is inevitable that most people will see this as the way to do and want to do it, we think that phpbb3 is much much harder for people to use for the sake of some pretty marginal extras 
The system we have is coded towards there being a button for people to test run their forum with phpbb3 and another to "upgrade" fully. The upgrade path may be available later than we make phpbb3 available. At no point will there be forced "upgrade" of any forum. Last time I looked at phpbb3 I could not get my head around how the forums permissions worked, people find phpbb2 hard enough on this, and it is one of the most common support questions and phpbb3 is much more difficult. |
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| CodyT07 |
I'm still lost on them too. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
 I'm actually a littler relieved to hear that
I did wonder if I was just being a little on the dense side? Can you imagine just how impossible most people are going to find it 
I was wondering if they would have changed it between the beta I saw and now? What I was involved was too many categories of users, guests, members, mods, admins was just the beginning of it, I think it the beta there was even "mods with a gammy leg on alternate Tuesdays" 
You then needed to create permissions "groups" which had to be assigned to groups of members and forums 
In a word processor it is always useful to have the group concept, as you may have 1000's of paragraphs and hence you want a paragraph to be in say the "margin notes" group so when you alter how the group looks all the relevant paragraphs change. A forum though only has perhaps 25 fora and applying things per forum is all you need. The extra complexity you have in a word processor just adds a layer of confusion. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Re: Preview of PhpBB3
I have just registered as myfreeforum, wouldn't mind a look to see how things have developed since the version we have checked out. |
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| CodyT07 |
Give me about an hour to figure this out.
Maybe 2 this is confusing/// |
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| CodyT07 |
Think I got it, see if you can access the admin panel. | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
I just noticed the welcome email does not even have a link to the forum! | ||||
| CodyT07 |
Also "Test" is me by the way, I want to see the e-mail.
You must be doing something right as you bring a Google Bot with you.
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I have just counted and there are 29 different permissions each user group can have on a forum, even things like :
"Can print topics" What the hell is the point of that? This desire to address all conceivable needs and combinations is really pretty scary. I could me mistaken though, but I think they may have simplified the interface since last time I looked. |
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| Viper |
They said that after the BETA 4 release.
Doubt it will be any time soon. 140 bugs found in the B5, and that's just at this point! 
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I hate to be judgmental, but it was and is a sad fact on phpbb2 that the coding is shoddy and bug prone and my inspections of phpbb3 code don't indicate that very much has changed.
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Couple of interesting links:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=538301 may explain a few things! and: http://area51.phpbb.com/docs/features.html the phpbb3 feature list which I have been trying to find a "killer feature" in. All I can find are some mildly useful things like the ability to send PMs to multiple recipients and better subforums than we have. But those things are not exactly vital needs, and when you consider the horrible complexity of phpbb3 I really have doubts about the whole thing. If we take the "shackles" off our own development, we can have the useful feature here on our version of phpbb2 really quickly. |
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| CodyT07 |
I just assume combine the best features of the two and make PhpBB2+ or so.
I believe PhpBB is doing this version to stay with their competitors so they are going to put as many features as they possible can into it. I said it before it is geared to web site owners and not forum hosters, so combine the features of 2 and make the coding better. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I am getting that way inclined, the commercial considerations have to come first, but from a perspective of running a decent forums system, what is better?
1) Supporting both what we have and phpbb3 which will be a nightmare for users and support, and double our efforts in maintenance. 2) Making our phpbbMyff edition better than either phpbb2 or phpbb3. I'd ask again of people what features are we missing that might make you want to shift? From my point of view as someone who runs phpbb2 forums as an admin, there is nothing in phpbb3 massively compelling. |
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| Brandon |
I rather dislike phpBB3, it's probably too complex for 'normal' forum admins to comprehend quickly enough as to not have a huge speed-bump in their communities' success. I'd also like to say that phpBBMyFF edition is already better than phpBB2 and in my opinion, better than phpBB3 also. | ||||
| CodyT07 |
I like these features
The more detailed logs which could be used. The admin log list the last 5 events of the administrator and records Ip. User logs-This lists all actions carried out by users or on users. Error Logs- gives a detailed explanation of errors that happened, admin might like it. Easy mod adding extra profile fields- knocks out having to add code to it and can automatically add X- Profile fields to a profile by just using the administration panel 
Click to see full size image 
Click to see full size image Which could lessen the need for support on that. Warn a user- Warn a user of course Different Level of Authority Ranks- Maybe a Super Mod that can ban which is what some people want. Forced Avatar resize- Not sure if it has it, but it'll resize off site avatars that are to big to a reasonable size |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Well improved GUI interfaces to the portal components is on the cards, and we can edit the base templates to show xprofile fields by default.
logs can be extended. and forcing avatar size which has always been rejected on the ground of it not making sense to add constant server load for something mods/admins could enforce could of course be added if people really want it. Warnings is really not much more than a twist on the RATING/COMMENT component. Improving the authority levels is also something which can be done, but to a sensible degree, phpbb3 takes levels/permission to such an extreme that the simpler model of phpbb2 is in my view actually better. I speak from experience as a mambo/joomla admin, there are too many levels there and it means you have no idea at the end of the day just who can do what where and when
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| admin (no pm's please) |
His an interesting nugget:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=538609 the hold up on RC1 of phpbb3 is the captcha anti spam image code their logic being that captcha is a 3rd party library more mature than anything they have done. But it is not effective!
We on the other hand seem to have an effective anti spam image code already, I looked at captcha and thought, well it might be good but every spammer in the world will target captcha. It took be half a day to come up with a system that is unique to us and which does seem to work. Yet we hear that this issue is the hold up on phpbb3. |
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| Symon |
Sell your code to them then buy a mansion in Barbados's. | ||||
| CodyT07 |
Sell MYFF and you'll never have to work again (I am joking by the way please don't admin)
How so? I haven't got a spam bot on my PhpBB3 forum yet and my others I got a few and the link to it is everywhere on this forum. |
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Well it's their explanation for the hold up not mine, I assume the hold up with spambot code is not caused by the spambot code working! | ||||
| admin (no pm's please) |
Another of my observation is that even with phpbb2 with its more limited admin options, inexperienced admins do not always select what is actually right for their forums, with phpbb3 it will be worse.
Take subforums, most boards should not be using subforums, unless the board is large or there is a good rational behind the reason, a flat structure is better, but subforums do none the less have a place on a significant % of boards. But phpbb3 allows any level of nesting of subforums, e.g. sub-subforums and onward downwards. Like most new phpbb3 features, you can if you try (quite hard) imagine a scenario where it might be useful, but in dealing with the real need of 0.1% of forums you just add to the complexity that will confuse 99.9% and lead to people making wrong choices in the belief that if a feature is there is must be good. |
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| Roy |
Yup phpbb3 is very compicated and to be honest i can't see it been as popular as phpbb2 is as i expect many people will create one and then say they like phpbb2 better just feel sorry for those who upgrade there forums to phpbb3 as they will perhaps regret it and i doubt there will be an option to down grade to phpbb2.
I have a forum i will upgrade once MFF releases phpbb3 but its not a forum that has been used for a while so it doesn't matter if i regret it , as for how much has changed well if what i'm lead to believ then its a case of more things been added than is needed and as much as i would like to see what phpbb3 looks like now in what is it beta 5 i think i ould only end up thinking bad things about the software.
Also good luck on trying to figure out all those permissions, i got bored of trying to do this a long time ago and in the end i never even bothered loging into the forum which ended up been nuked along with its host. 
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| admin (no pm's please) |
Well we are now using the phpbb3 template code, we have better subforums, we will have multiple pm recipients soon....
e..g. we are aiming at having anything anyone really might want from phpbb3 available on our forums  I'd rather we never offered phpbb3 at all.
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| Roy |
I think your doing the right thing Admin.  , after all i can only see mass amount of problems with phpbb3, this is not including bugs but more of people asking how to do things like create a new forum/category and set permissions etc etc.
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| admin (no pm's please) |
I just wish that the RIGHT thing in terms of giving people the best possible forums system is the same as the RIGHT thing in business terms, and on that point I am far from sure
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| Roy |
From a commercial point of view many might say no your not doing the right thing but then if they compared the modified phpbb2 too the phpbb3 they would surly say that your doing the right thing.
Yes phpbb3 is the newest forum software but its going to take a long time for people to master it and as we all know most people would want to create one of these new forums, its like saying to a child don't push that big red button marked "danger, don't touch" of course people will want to create one and thats the scary thing as i must admite i was adicted to the idea of having a phpbb3 forum, but now i look at it and think there are way to many problems going to come from running one. The only thing i can say to those who wish to have an idea as to what phpbb3 admin panals look like is look at the invision admin panal and you will get a very good idea as to how many options are available to mess with, but even that might not be the best way to discribe the admin panal. I think you are doing the right thing admin and i'm sure when people start to see what phpbb3 is really like they will also say the same thing, after all phpbb2 is far more better than phpbb3 and this is due to many reasons such as not as many bugs and easier to explain how to do things that phpbb3 makes so complicated. |
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| Viper |
phpBB3 RC1 released.
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=543015 Let's hope no bugs are found and this is the final version. |
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| CodyT07 |
Currently uploading to my site, should be up soon | ||||
| CodyT07 |
Its going to be missing some features
Which I don't have, could I add it via php.ini? |
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| CodyT07 |
All right here it is
http://codyt07.com/phpbb3rc1 |
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| CodyT07 |
Anyone have any comments? I did notice it can be a bit slow at times and the what I am guessing built in IP checker doesn't work or its probably me... | ||||
| sinky911 |
Yes, phpBB3 is pretty sweet, I prefer phpBB2 though because it is currently more reliable.......
And smaller size... |
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| CodyT07 |
I have added phpbb3rc2
http://codyt07.com/phpbb3rc2 http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=557849 Though I did find it annoying during installation as my FTP client kept crashing. |
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