Topic phpBB3

Donkey

I personally can't wait until the final release of this FREE forum software. I currently use phpBB2 and well it lacks in many departments but hey you dont have to pay for it.

I have installed a beta version of phpBB3 and messed around with it a bit, let me tell you a lot has changed. The whole administration side is prety much completely overhauled and it is for the better. I found that after a few minutes of messing around I was able to do so much more and with much less effort than in phpBB2. Things like admin rights, moderation, permission settings for forums are so much easier to do. The entire structure of how the forum is organized has also been changed and again after a few minutes was amazed at how much better it was. For example instead of spending 6-8 hours of hacking (scripting additions) to the forum to add sub categories all you have to do is make one. Yeah that is right they finally added this to the app.

Anyways have a look over at there forums and if anyone wants to test out a beta version PM me and I can give you login details for the one I set up.

http://www.phpbb.com/development/ - dev site
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=46 - beta support forum

Sunb!

I remember this being an option in BB2 already...?

I used the BB2 for the forum attached to codersdelight when that domain was running - and found it quite easy to operate and run though the administration menu was a bit of a hazzle to understand.

I am looking forward to the new version, it sounds like a real improvement.

Donkey

Would be news to me...

Sunb!

I accessed the BB2 scripts pre-installed on my server by my vendor, so I might have had a tweak or two installed without my knowledge - but I clearly remember it was possible to create categories and sub categories...

Donkey

What I really like is the ability to allow bots to index restricted categories... like you have to be a member to view said category but you can allow SE bots to pass through said category...

Make sense?

-HAL-

That phpBB had the be pre-modded since the plain version don't use subforums. But there is a mod/hack that adds this.

That's not a very good idea IMO, since that would/could be considered cloaking and Search Engines doesn't like that very much at all...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaking
Some larger sites/boards do get away with this, but I personally wouldn't risk it..

There's been several discussions about this on the phpbb site, and I personally wouldn't use that feature at all..
And is it ethically correct to show content to SE's that your members thinks is "safe" in hidden forums??
Their personal info/post would be publically available in SE caches then...

I've used phpBB for a while, and it's a really good free alternative to vBulletin, and phpBB looks even more like vBulletin so I'll probably test it myself when it gets more stable.
But after I switched from (a heavily modded) phpBB to vBulletin a while ago I would never go back, even not with phpBB3, since I personally find vBulletin much better and easier to use..
But as a just said, phpBB3 looks like a really good free alternative, and there's a really good hack/mod community for phpbb that will make a lot of great mods to that one as well so it doesn't look bad at all.

Could you please PM me with login details, it would be interesting to test it. Thanks.

Donkey

I was thinking more for sections that you restrict for a "bonus" if you join a site....Like say you offer a bunch of free sections on a certain topic, but then more in depth places where you provide more info and allow more discussion but in order to do that and help support the way it is there you require people to join...

IMO that is what it would be best used for, why should people be penalized for sharing information with out getting anything back...And how are people going to find that information with out a search engine indexing it....

Noting in life is free!

-HAL-

I can certainly see some good uses for it, but I'd still be worried for being de-indexed for cloaking, since it's technically just that...

And I can see several ways this can be abused as well, like webmasters/admins creating hidden forums (for the rest of their members) and stuffing the threads there with unrelated keywords just to show them to the SE bots etc....