Please allow me to start off and say that I am very happy
to run PHP software on my computer. Specifically, the bulletin
boards developed by PHPBB2 [an open source program] works
head and shoulders above the EZBoard system I gave up on
several months earlier. Still, it has its own special challenges
that only a regular user or administrator can appreciate.
If you are considering starting your own message board community
please read on for some homespun advice on how to make PHPBB2
work best for you.
On Memorial Day 2005 I had a rude awakening. Although a
national holiday here in the U.S. I was taking advantage
of that day to catch up on some much needed behind the scenes
work. You see, when you work for yourself a holiday just
isn’t the same thing. It ends up being a day where
your phone isn’t likely to ring all that much, thereby
making it a better opportunity to catch up on all the little
niggling details of operating a business, like paying bills
and bookkeeping. Okay, I digress.
What happened on that special day was the total overthrow
of the EZBoard message board system. Hackers, so EZBoard
claimed, infiltrated their entire system and brought down
the house. Literally overnight thousands of boards were affected
and compromised. Now for the rub: forum managers,
myself included, had no power to back up their sites. Thus,
what was lost was likely lost for good or would take many
weeks to restore from pasted together backups. We depended
on EZBoard for our back ups and when their system failed
we all suffered.
So then the decision was made for me. I downloaded PHPBB2
software a few days later and immediately went to work.
As open source programs go the PHPBB2 software was free
and the instructions were quite good. Fortunately for me
the two sites that I planned to set up, the Aviation Employment
Board and the Corporate Flight Attendant Community, already
had separate web pages hosted with a company that could support
a database. This particular MySQL database would essentially
power the site and house important stuff including all the
member information.
Fortunately those who have been working on building, maintaining,
and promoting PHPBB have a copious amount of detailed information
accessible right online and available for viewing and/or
downloading. Personally, the biggest help to me were the
excellently made Flash videos that helped walk me through
the installation process. Without them in place, I doubt
I would have figured it all out. Truly, in this case, a picture
is worth a thousand words each!
In addition to the software itself, PHPBB2 also offers a
separate file to help speed the process conversion process
from EZBoard to PHPBB2. This EZBoard converter takes messages
from the old board and transfers them to the new board. Unfortunately,
it was only partially successful which could have been due
to the hacked nature of the EZBoard site. Still, what I was
able to move over was helpful, but it did not include member
files as that bit of necessary information was under EZBoard’s
lock and key.
By the time I downloaded everything, followed all the instructions,
converted what I could from EZBoard, laid out the new site,
and made some additional design changes, approximately eight
hours had flown past. At the end of that time a useful and
functioning board was in place. The next day I contacted
all my current EZBoard members and told them about the switch
and put notices on the old site about the change. Most of
my members were very understanding as they realized that
the switch had to be made.
Without exception PHPBB2 has been a big improvement. Still,
it could use some refining and, happily, many of those refinements
are routinely accomplished within regular updates of the
software or via preselected “mods” that a forum
manager can select.
Without belaboring the point here are some things that I
have observed about PHPBB2 that are helpful to know about before going
with the software:
Limited Support There is a lot of information right
online to read and there are forums moderated by volunteers.
At the same time the moderators are stretched very thin and
sometimes their responses border on the irritated. Of course, that could
have something to do with all the N00B questions, many of
which are answered somewhere on the site. My recommendation
is that you spend plenty of time reading before posting a
question. Study the forum for similar questions asked and
answers given.
Difficult Updates Get on the forum managers mailing
list to ensure that you receive notification of each update
as they are made. Some updates are simple while others are
more difficult. If you make any modifications to your site
then only a “patch” update is necessary while
everyone else will select “changed files only.” If
you select “changed files only” and you have
some mods installed, you risk losing all of your mods. Let’s
just say that already has happened to me once!
AOL Quirks Some members have difficulty signing up,
especially AOL account holders. It seems to be that the confirmation
code doesn’t always show up when members register [you
don’t need to have it enabled, but it does put a halt
to rogue registrants] and sometimes AOL users get booted
when logged on. A little thing called “sessions” monitors
everyone’s visits by examining their I.P. address for
a match. Of course, AOL scrambles I.P. addresses mid-session,
a reason for much of the booting. The fix involved from a
PHPBB2 standpoint is not recommended as it puts you
at risk for security breaches. Quite frankly, I have urged
some members to leave AOL especially if they can’t
work around it on their end.
Back Ups The administration panel is simple to use,
but back ups don’t always work. Errors messages prevail;
therefore backing up through your web host is another option.
Speaking of the administration panel, you can select whether
members can email each other [not a good thing to have enabled],
how long their signature can be, enable automatic pruning
of posts, and lots more. Indeed, the features offered by
PHPBB2 far exceed the limitations that are inherent with
EZBoard.
There are alternative forums to PHPBB2 and one popular one
is another PHP program called vBulletin. vBulletin utilizes
excellent forum software that takes off where PHPBB2 leaves
off. Many of the modifications that are not part of PHPBB2
are standard with vBulletin, therefore removing some of the
behind the scenes tasks that a webmaster must do with PHPBB2
in order to customize his site.
So, why not go with vBulletin? For many it is simply the
cost. With vBulletin, you can lease a license for
$85 for one year or buy a license for $160. Access
to updates after the first year costs another $30 per year
while custom support can run from $30 for one month up to
$300 for one year. Thus, if you have a small forum that makes
little or no money, and you need extra special assistance,
than vBulletin can be a big expense to carry. Other paid
forums have similar expenses, but there are some free ones
out there. For the record, EZBoard isn’t free, although
the start up cost is very low. However, your renewal fee
is calculated on the amount of bandwidth used in the most
recent thirty day period and for some forum managers that
amount could easily be several hundreds to well over one
thousand dollars!
So then, why go with PHPBB2? Well, language packs to name
a big reason. Besides English forums, an additional 59 languages
are supported by this open source code! From Afrikaans to
Vietnamese, Arabic to Russian, and from French to German,
PHPBB2 is available in many native languages. For people
of very limited means this has become an excellent way to
communicate for no capital outlay. One gets the sense that
PHPBB2 is very proud of this fact and I must admit that I
am too!
As I write this I am in the midst of updating my two sites
to the latest release. Because it is near the Christmas season
I am also looking at several themed templates for my flight
attendant site and have selected a “Merry Christmas” board
replete with drifting down snowflakes. This template, which
looks so professionally done, is free as well.
I plan on sticking with PHPBB2, quirks and all, by continuing
to support our growing community of forum managers worldwide.
Each of us, in our own way, has helped to shape this all
important piece of open source software. It certainly isn’t
perfect, but it definitely has been a lot of fun and has
helped me to increase my knowledge as well as to appreciate
the whole open source movement.
Copyright 2005 -- Matt Keegan invites you to visit his two
open source message boards, the Aviation
Employment Board and the Corporate
Flight Attendant Community for first hand examples of
forums built utilizing PHPBB2.
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