Memberlist Mod for phpBB3

No matter what I do, I still get spam on my phpbb3 forums.  It seems like there should be better spam prevention by now, but apparently the spammers are presistant.  Generally, I go through and delete & ban the users one by one.  I’m fairly sure banning is a waste of my time, but I still do it about half of the time.

When the spam accounts actually post in the forum, it’s easy to identify and delete them.  However, there are a lot of spam accounts that create an account, add links to their signature, but then never post.  I don’t want these accounts, either, even if they’re not currently hurting anything.

I recently came across a quick way to delete multiple spam accounts quickly, and at the same time from the Memberlist page.  It’s a fairly easy mod that only requires modifying three files.  (mod found here)

Many spam accounts will add a URL to the website field, and you can easily see this from the memberlist.  It’s also often handy to remove members who registered but never logged on to the site.  When I have time, I’ll even go through and look at the profiles for any members with zero posts.  About half of these accounts have spam links in their signatures, and I remove them as well.

Spam is a pain, but at least with this mod you can delete multiple forum accounts fairly quickly!

Original Mod Post.

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PhpBB3 to Coppermine Bridge

A great way to make the phpBB forum even better is to link it with Coppermine. Coppermine is an open-source photo gallery you can use on your website. It may not be the prettiest or most feature rich option, but it’s really stable, and does most anything I’ve ever needed it to do.

One cool thing you can do with Coppermine is create a bridge that will create a single log in for your forum members. It’s a really easy mod, and well worth doing if you’re running both of these programs.

I’ve been using this on my Cornhole, Washers, and Outdoor Games forums for a while now.  It works great, and the single log-in is really nice.  There isn’t a ton of support for this, so hopefully you get it to work on your first try!

Steps involved

• Execute an SQL statement
• Replace a phpBB3 file
• Delete forum cache file
• Change some phpBB3 ACP permission options.
• Replace a few Coppermine files.
• Run the Bridge Manager

Link to Mod – Bridge Coppermine <-> phpBB3, v0.9.0

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I recently had a mod move a topic and leave a shadow topic in it’s place.  The intent was to move the topic to our area for deleted topics, but the shadow caused it to remain visible.

I wanted to delete the shadow topic without deleting the original topic.  A little bit of digging around helped me find the answer…

The Moderator Control Panel

I honestly had no idea that the MCP even existed, much less what I would need it for, but this case is a perfect example.

To delete a shadow topic, navigate to the forum containing the shadow topic, and use the Moderator Control Panel to select and delete the topic.

That’s it!  Easy enough to do, it’s just a matter of knowing to use the MCP to get it done.

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When you update to the current version of the phpBB3 forum software (3.o6), the section for Active Topics is turned off by default.  I did a little looking, and found out it’s just something you need to turn back on.

There was a bug in the previous versions whereby the option for active topics was on regardless of the admin panel option. This has now been fixed and so the default ‘no’ option is actually working correctly.

Turn on Active Topics in phpBB3 Forum

• Go to the Admin panel
• Choose “Manage Forums” under the Quick Access section
• Click the green cog next to the forum you want to include.
• Change “Display active topics” to Yes.
• Submit.
• You can turn it on for all forums by using this query on your database. NB you may need to change the table prefix to your own.

A member of the phpBB forum mentioned that you can turn it on for all forums by using this query on your database.  (I’m no DB expert, though, so run this at your own risk…)

UPDATE phpbb_forums SET forum_flags = forum_flags | 16 WHERE forum_type < 2;

Found all this info on the phpBB forum

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I’ve recently updated the forum software for the Cornhole, Washers, and Outdoor Games forums from 3.0.4 to 3.0.6.

There are some pretty neat minor improvements (like the Q&A mod now included), but there’s one major improvement that we thought was worth sharing.

Now each forum has its own RSS feed!  If you’ve ever used an RSS reader (like Google Reader), you probably already know that RSS feeds are handy ways to stay up to date with your favorite websites.  Now you can subscribe to each forum, and you’ll always be up to date with everything new that is posted!

PhpBB3 Forum RSS Feeds

First, the feeds need to be turned on in the Admin Panel to start working.  You can set the feed to include certain sections of your forum, as well as un-include certain areas.

Once the feed is turned on, you can access the feed you have created by adding “feed.php” to the end of your forum URL.  (i.e.:  http://www.cornholeplayers.net/forum/feed.php)

You could start giving this feed URL out to your members, but there’s one additional step that I would suggest.  If you don’t already have a FeedBurner account, create one.  Run your new feed through FeedBurner before giving it out, or linking to it.  Doing this will give you greater control over your feed, and allow you to track the number of subscriptions.

My feed links:

Cornhole:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/CornholePlayersForum

Washers:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/WasherPlayersForum

Outdoor Games:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/OutdoorGamesForum

Outdoor Games Blog:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/OutdoorGamesBlog

Interweb Adventures:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/InterwebAdventures

Making Homebrew:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakingHomebrew

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Usually when you add AdSense to the pages of your website or blog, you might just add the code to your header, ensuring that it will show up on every page.  There’s a catch, though.  It’s actually against Google’s Terms of Service to have your advertising show up on all pages.  You’re supposed to exclude registration pages, and things of that sort.  This may have changed, but I know at one time it was the case.

There’s an easy workaround, though.  You just have to add your ad code to some specific sections of the forum.

In the Admin Panel, go to Styles – Templates – (your template name).

The first one is “index_body.html“.

The second file is “viewforum_body.html”

The third all the way near the bottom, and is called “viewtopic_body.html”

That’s it!  A quick and easy way to keep yourself from getting into accidental trouble!

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One irritating thing about a phpBB3 forum is the way that the titles appear in a search engine. Valuable space is given to “View topic” or “View forum”, when it could be giving people real information. A more descriptive page title is a great way to help people find your website! Rearranging the page titles is actually much easier than you might think. The mod is quick, easy, and only requires that you make changes to 4 files. I’ll walk you through it.

SEO for Page Titles in phpBB3

Files to Edit:

• styles/(yourstyle)/template/overall_header.html
• viewforum.php
• viewtopic.php
• language/en/common.php

Edits:

Before you edit the files, create a BACKUP copy!

1. Open the file ‘styles/(your theme)/template/overall_header.html’

At around line 15, you will see the following line:

<title>{SITENAME} &bull; <!– IF S_IN_MCP –>{L_MCP} &bull; <!– ELSEIF S_IN_UCP –>{L_UCP} &bull; <!– ENDIF –>{PAGE_TITLE}</title>

Replace this with the following line:

<title>{PAGE_TITLE} &bull; <!– IF S_IN_MCP –>{L_MCP} &bull; <!– ELSEIF S_IN_UCP –>{L_UCP} &bull; <!– ENDIF –>{SITENAME}</title>

You’re basically just swapping {SITENAME} and {PAGE_TITLE}. This makes the name of the topic or category appear before your website name in the page title.

2. Open the file ‘viewforum.php’ in the root of your forum

At around line 137, you will see the following line:

page_header($user->lang['VIEW_FORUM'] . ‘ – ‘ . $forum_data['forum_name']);

Replace this with the following line:

page_header($forum_data['forum_name']);

This will remove the words “View forum” from the page title when a user navigates to a forum.

3. Open the file ‘viewtopic.php’ in the root of your forum

At around line 1590, you will see the following line:

page_header($user->lang['VIEW_TOPIC'] .’ – ‘ . $topic_data['topic_title']);

Replace this with the following line:

page_header($topic_data['topic_title']);

This will remove the words “View topic” from the page title when a user views a topic.

4. Open the file ‘/language/en/common.php’

At around line 274, you will see the following line:

‘INDEX’ => ‘Index page’,

Replace this with the following line:

‘INDEX’ => ‘Your New Title’,

Replace “Your New Title” with anything you’d like. Use whatever is appropriate for your forum. I use “Forum Index” on my sites. That lets users easily see where they are, and it’s short enough not to be annoying. At least it’s more descriptive than “Index page”.

Additional Note:

Another big step to make this all work for you is to change the name of your forum that will appear in the title. This can be done in the admin panel. Choose Board Settings from the Board Configuration menu on the left.

Under the Board Settings, change the Site Name to be whatever you would like to appear on all page titles.

I hope this works for everyone. Let me know if I’ve stated anything incorrectly!

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When phpBB3 was released, the new CAPTCHA was supposed to finally beat the bots. Well… according to my three forums, that lasted until about February 3rd. I’ve been flooded with bot registrations ever since. On my old phpBB2 forum I’d installed a great mod that added a simple question to the registration form. It worked great, but I hadn’t found one for phpBB3 at first. It wasn’t needed then, but it is now.

After some searching, I’ve found the Anti Bot Question mod. As you can see from the 38+ pages of comments, this mod isn’t quite as easy as the author would have you believe. I had my fair share of issues getting this installed, but once it’s up, it’s GREAT.

To save you some grief, I’ll give you a heads up to the areas that troubled me.

• The mod shows an SQL database addition, and it lists 5 files les to edit. Look a little closer, there is actually a sixth file to edit! There is a separate .xml instruction file in the “templates” folder. You need to modify a file in the template you’re using, and it changes whether it’s based on prosilver or subsilver2. If you don’t do this, the field does not get added to the registration page.
• Follow the directions exactly. That sounds simple, but there’s one place you might get caught. The very first step has you add a line after ‘tz’ => request_var(‘tz’, (float) $timezone), Make sure that’s where you add it. There’s another line that comes first and is very similar. ‘tz’ => request_var(‘tz’, (float) $config['board_timezone']),
• Purge the Cache. After you complete all the steps and upload all of your files, you’ll need to clear the cache of your forum. This is on the main ACP index page. You may also need to refresh your template files, but I didn’t have to do that.

That should do it!

In my experience, this is the one mod that effectively keeps bots from registering on a forum. While not easy, it’s definately worth your time.

Links:
Mod entry in the forum at phpbb.com

Mod Database

***UPDATE***

There are a few things to update concerning this mod.

First off, you MAY not need this anymore. With the release of phpbb 3.0.6, there is a Q&A Captcha. There’s a catch, though. Your theme may not have the updated files to support it. Unless you create your theme based on one of the current phpBB default themes, you’ll probably have issues. In my case, I still choose to run this Anti Bot Question Mod.

Second, if you’re installing this Mod to 3.0.6, there are some differences.

For includes/ucp/ucp_register.php, you will no longer find

‘S_CONFIRM_CODE’ => ($config['enable_confirm']) ? true : false,

Instead, you should insert your code after

‘S_LANG_OPTIONS’ => language_select($data['lang']),

Other than that, everything seems to work about the same.

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Remembering to backup your phpBB3 forum database can be a challenge.  You may never need it, but you can bet that that one time you do, it’ll be in a stretch where you haven’t backed anything up for weeks.

Luckily, somebody has written a mod to automate this task for you.  I’ve been running it on one of my forums for a few weeks now, and it’s working great.  It creates a daily backup for you, and saves the backup files in a place where you can access them with your FTP program.

Installing this mod is really simple, and will only take a few minutes.  The steps include adding some database info in MySQL, copying 2 files to your forum root, and modifying 2 existing forum files.  That’s it!

The Mod download and full information are available at this link:   http://www.lithiumstudios.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=794

The mod will backup your database daily, assuming you have at least a few visitors per day. If your forum is very inactive this may not be ran daily.  You can also manually to have the database backed up by going to yoursite/auto_db_backup.php.  Also worth noting that this script will only allow 1 backup per day and any further attempts will be blocked (unless you delete the prior back up made that day).  There are additional links to mods that will email you the backup file or add a log entry in the Admin Log upon backup.  I haven’t done them, so can’t verify how well they work.

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