Forums

I'm thinking of spending some effort to upgrade our forums to phpBB3. It ought to be somewhat more secure and easier to customise in the future, and it's been out for a while now and seems not to be a security disaster. It will be quite a lot of work for us because of the number of mods we'll need to transfer to the new system. Attachments are included in the upgrade scripts but all our other tweaks aren't. I'm of the opinion that getting onto the 3.x codebase will have to be done sooner or later and doing it before the other forum customisations I want to make, makes sense.

So basically, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions and/or experience in this area, and suggestions regarding it. I'm not looking for ideas about how to improve the boards, but if you've gone through the upgrade on another board, as a user or admin, and can say what was good/bad about it, I'd like to know.

I will be spending time to remove features from the default phpBB3, such as avatars and smilies. We have made an executive decision never to have such shameful monstrosities disfiguring our fair forums. (Consider what it used to look like, we want to keep it nearly that simple.)

Although I've since progressed to vBulletin instead I did originally go through the upgrade from phpbb2 -> phpbb3 on my own board.

As with anything there's never a pefect solution to it. You will probably find that the core of the board will move over just fine, and at the end of the day thats the important bit. Depending on exactly what mods and customisations you have done to this board you can likely expect a few very minor things to break but its a matter of fixing them up as you encounter them.

I started out by making a complete snapshot of my board (that is to say a complete backup of the database & files as they were at the time). Then running a copy of the backup locally on my computer that I put through the upgrade process to get an idea of what would be involved. Once I knew what worked/didn't work I was able to patch a few things beforehand to make the live upgrade a much smoother transition.

Either way if you need a hand with anything I'm only too happy to help.

Well, I did some more work on this. phpBB3 is around on lots of sites now, but none that I use particularly frequently. Does anyone have any comments on newer phpBB3 features that we ought to have here? Otherwise I'll be removing them. Off the top of my head:

- Birthdays
- Favourite topics
- Friend/foe lists
- "Online" flash on messages when the poster's around
- A little sparkly thing on the icon for topics you've participated in
- A little JavaScript button to make the font size change
- Subforums
- Private message folders
- "Report" link on posts
- Quote multiple people in one reply without doing it by hand
- Save a post as a draft
- Some thing that warns you if someone else replied while you were writing

Only two out of those seem at all useful to me...

I suppose that anything that is not actively intrusive can be kept. Not knowing much about them I suppose those could be considered:

- Favourite topics
- A little JavaScript button to make the font size change
- Save a post as a draft
- Quote multiple people in one reply without doing it by hand
- Some thing that warns you if someone else replied while you were writing

What were you thinking about?

The move to phpBB3 would be very cool, although if you don't take it slowly it can be a real pain in the bum to port over, as DJ said, getting the DB over isn't too painless but you have to make sure you export it with suitable encoding and such. The addons and tweaks are a little harder, I think the simpler the boards the better. I like this board cause it doesn't have a shitload of stuff hanging off its edges.

Would things like the member map still be able to be used? Also, themes should be pretty easy to set up, I have done a phpBB 2 to 3 conversion before, and I didn't have fun. Took me about 6 trys just to get the DB across :S

Also, can we have smillies on the new board? or you think they are ugly?? They could always be SMS themed :P

Bock wrote

What were you thinking about?

Like:
- Quote multiple people in one reply without doing it by hand
- Some thing that warns you if someone else replied while you were writing
Dislike:
- Everything else

Jacko wrote

you have to make sure you export it with suitable encoding and such.

No problem there, somehow our frankenstein UTF-8 stuff survived and seems to work.

Jacko wrote

I think the simpler the boards the better. I like this board cause it doesn't have a shitload of stuff hanging off its edges... Also, can we have smillies on the new board? or you think they are ugly??

There's your contradiction right there. We disabled smilies on here on purpose. Making them SMS-themed doesn't help. It just makes the place look a mess, and encourages random use of the [img] tag to import crappy animated gifs. We all understand :) anyway.

Jacko wrote

Would things like the member map still be able to be used?

Well, that's pretty much a custom thing I wrote, so there's no drop-in replacement but I don't think it'd be too hard to add it in.

Jacko wrote

Also, themes should be pretty easy to set up

I'm finding the opposite. It'll probably end up like the default phpBB3 style but with SMS Power! colours and less structural images.

Author	Message
Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14744 Location: London	phpBB3 Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2008 11:39 am
	I'm thinking of spending some effort to upgrade our forums to phpBB3. It ought to be somewhat more secure and easier to customise in the future, and it's been out for a while now and seems not to be a security disaster. It will be quite a lot of work for us because of the number of mods we'll need to transfer to the new system. Attachments are included in the upgrade scripts but all our other tweaks aren't. I'm of the opinion that getting onto the 3.x codebase will have to be done sooner or later and doing it before the other forum customisations I want to make, makes sense. So basically, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions and/or experience in this area, and suggestions regarding it. I'm not looking for ideas about how to improve the boards, but if you've gone through the upgrade on another board, as a user or admin, and can say what was good/bad about it, I'd like to know. I will be spending time to remove features from the default phpBB3, such as avatars and smilies. We have made an executive decision never to have such shameful monstrosities disfiguring our fair forums. (Consider what it used to look like, we want to keep it nearly that simple.)

thatawesomeguy Joined: 25 Jul 2007 Posts: 731 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Sat Apr 19, 2008 12:41 am
	Although I've since progressed to vBulletin instead I did originally go through the upgrade from phpbb2 -> phpbb3 on my own board. As with anything there's never a pefect solution to it. You will probably find that the core of the board will move over just fine, and at the end of the day thats the important bit. Depending on exactly what mods and customisations you have done to this board you can likely expect a few very minor things to break but its a matter of fixing them up as you encounter them. I started out by making a complete snapshot of my board (that is to say a complete backup of the database & files as they were at the time). Then running a copy of the backup locally on my computer that I put through the upgrade process to get an idea of what would be involved. Once I knew what worked/didn't work I was able to patch a few things beforehand to make the live upgrade a much smoother transition. Either way if you need a hand with anything I'm only too happy to help.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14744 Location: London	Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:01 pm
	Well, I did some more work on this. phpBB3 is around on lots of sites now, but none that I use particularly frequently. Does anyone have any comments on newer phpBB3 features that we ought to have here? Otherwise I'll be removing them. Off the top of my head: - Birthdays - Favourite topics - Friend/foe lists - "Online" flash on messages when the poster's around - A little sparkly thing on the icon for topics you've participated in - A little JavaScript button to make the font size change - Subforums - Private message folders - "Report" link on posts - Quote multiple people in one reply without doing it by hand - Save a post as a draft - Some thing that warns you if someone else replied while you were writing Only two out of those seem at all useful to me...

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8651 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 12:14 am
	I suppose that anything that is not actively intrusive can be kept. Not knowing much about them I suppose those could be considered: - Favourite topics - A little JavaScript button to make the font size change - Save a post as a draft - Quote multiple people in one reply without doing it by hand - Some thing that warns you if someone else replied while you were writing What were you thinking about?

Jacko Joined: 01 Feb 2004 Posts: 1464 Location: Sunny ol Tamworth, New England NSW AU	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 6:55 am
	The move to phpBB3 would be very cool, although if you don't take it slowly it can be a real pain in the bum to port over, as DJ said, getting the DB over isn't too painless but you have to make sure you export it with suitable encoding and such. The addons and tweaks are a little harder, I think the simpler the boards the better. I like this board cause it doesn't have a shitload of stuff hanging off its edges. Would things like the member map still be able to be used? Also, themes should be pretty easy to set up, I have done a phpBB 2 to 3 conversion before, and I didn't have fun. Took me about 6 trys just to get the DB across :S Also, can we have smillies on the new board? or you think they are ugly?? They could always be SMS themed :P

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14744 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2009 9:08 am
	Bock wrote What were you thinking about? Like: - Quote multiple people in one reply without doing it by hand - Some thing that warns you if someone else replied while you were writing Dislike: - Everything else Jacko wrote you have to make sure you export it with suitable encoding and such. No problem there, somehow our frankenstein UTF-8 stuff survived and seems to work. Jacko wrote I think the simpler the boards the better. I like this board cause it doesn't have a shitload of stuff hanging off its edges... Also, can we have smillies on the new board? or you think they are ugly?? There's your contradiction right there. We disabled smilies on here on purpose. Making them SMS-themed doesn't help. It just makes the place look a mess, and encourages random use of the [img] tag to import crappy animated gifs. We all understand :) anyway. Jacko wrote Would things like the member map still be able to be used? Well, that's pretty much a custom thing I wrote, so there's no drop-in replacement but I don't think it'd be too hard to add it in. Jacko wrote Also, themes should be pretty easy to set up I'm finding the opposite. It'll probably end up like the default phpBB3 style but with SMS Power! colours and less structural images.

Forums

View topic - phpBB3