Videohelp going to do the big switch?

[thecoalman]

Guess this is more of a question for Baldrick. The current version of phpbb is well... just old. After many years phpbb 3 is finally in beta and adds a substantial amount of built in features.

http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24053

<grins as Baldrick heads begin spinning as he considers the work involved due to all the modifications he's implemented over the years>

[Baldrick]

I will wait for the final release...then I might consider switching...

have you tested it? what is the best new features?

[thecoalman]

have you tested it?

Briefly a few months ago before the beta release. Mostly just to look around. I'm nmot touching it with a ten foot pole until a few weeks after the official release.

what is the best new features?

I don't know, best is an objective term?

They added many of the most popular mods such as the file attachment modification. The biggest thing that I saw was vastly improved CP's across the board for Users, Mods and Admins. The user CP for example now has options for PM's such as ignore etc.

[CrayonEater]

Baldrick Wrote:

I will wait for the final release...then I might consider switching...

Hopefully, then, the final release isn't for another 20 years. Thank you for not switching. I like this site as it is and I'm tired of seeing all these other sites and forums that look all the same.

[SingSing]

Here. Here.

[Faustus]

I'm still afraid of using phpBB personally. I don't know enough PHP to feel confident that I wouldn't get hacked.

[thecoalman]

I'm still afraid of using phpBB personally. I don't know enough PHP to feel confident that I wouldn't get hacked.

I don't think you really need to know anything about PHP to feel confident in the installation. A plain vanilla up to date installation is about as secure as you can expect. It's just like any other software. Add to that it recently underwent a massive security audit....

If you go to the phpbb forum you'll see where many boards have been hacked but the common thread is that they have an older version and in a lot of cases a very old version. That's the fault of the forum owner, blaming the forum is like blaming an OS that you haven't updated in 5 years.

Thank you for not switching. I like this site as it is and I'm tired of seeing all these other sites and forums that look all the same.

The look or the theme doesn't have to change, you can make it look however you want. It's the functionality that changes many of which you as user won't see.

[thecoalman]

RC1 was released a few weeks ago. Here's a few screenshots, note that this is stock theme which of course can be modified.

Front page:



Forum View:



Topic View:



Front Page of the user control panel, this is probably the most extensive thing that users will find improved. Note the many options available such as bookmarking, friends and foes, and the draft option among others



Slick new admin panel, if you have administered a Phpbb3 forum you'll find this quite more more extensive and easier to use IMO.



Last one, thumbnails of attached images so you don't get a bunch huge image like the ones I just posted. :P





Note that due to the gif compression the background header image is off in the above images, also note that some text may look a little misplaced but that's due to the program I'm using to grab the images.

[Baldrick]

Looks nice!

Have they improved the search? Search this topic is a good feature even though we don't have that many big topics...

[thecoalman]

It seems to work pretty good but I have not tested it extensively. But the search I did here is pretty specific and to the best of my recollection pulled most of the references. It doesn't copy the search tables when you convert, you have to create new ones, about 4 minutes for my 10,000 posts.... Good luck with that. Here's a screenshot of the results, note where I circled. You search within search.




There's settings for search in the admin panel, I have not played around with any of them.:

[Baldrick]

Yep, it looks better and much more search settings.

But 4 minutes for 10k posts!!!??!! That's ~10 hours for our 1.6 million posts...

[yoda313]

our 1.6 million posts

WOW! I knew this site was large but I had no idea videohelp was that large! Way to go baldrick!!!

[thecoalman]

I'm on shared hosting account so I'm sure your dedicated server has a little more juice.. Also note there's two ways to index. There's a MySql full text index and the native PhphBB fulltext index. I tried them both and the MySql index was pretty quick, about 10-20 seconds.

Perhaps the phpbb index is more robust.

[Faustus]

I'm still afraid of using phpBB personally. I don't know enough PHP to feel confident that I wouldn't get hacked.

I don't think you really need to know anything about PHP to feel confident in the installation. A plain vanilla up to date installation is about as secure as you can expect. It's just like any other software. Add to that it recently underwent a massive security audit....

Yeah except phpBB does not have the best track record. The truth is that I found phpBB a bit hard to KEEP up to date. You have to install a bunch of mods to get the features you want which leads to the filed being all edited up. So then you gotta remove half those mods if there is a major update then put them back when you are done. Which is well and good if you installed them with easymod but half the ones I've tried with easymod didn't work right and I had to manually edit the files anyway.

Plus go search the phpbb site for the words "site hacked".

I'm not saying that SMF is any more or less secure... I honestly have no clue. I just know more funtions that I want are already in it. (there a few OBVIOUS ones are missing sadly) and their mod install system works great for me.

[thecoalman]

So then you gotta remove half those mods if there is a major update then put them back when you are done. Which is well and good if you installed them with easymod but half the ones I've tried with easymod didn't work right and I had to manually edit the files anyway.

I've only had to unistall a few mods over the last few years, usually becuase it was conflicting with something else. Never for an upgrade. They have some pretty strict coding guidelines now if you want to relese your mod on the phpbb forum. As far as updating they always release the updates with a easymod update, usually it goes off without a hitch as long as it doesn't hit any code that was changed which is rare for me. If it does you manually edit just the part its having problems with. Remove that part from the update script and run easymod again.

Generally easymod will fail for the templates, I remove any code for that anyway and do it manually because my templates have been modified quite a bit already and I'd rather put the new link or whatever it is that gets added where I want it.

In any event, I've decided that I won't be using anything like easymod for installing anything in phpbb3 for myself. Unlike phpbb2 I'll be keeping track of everything and keeping sets of files. Basically I'll be able to fall back to any point without doing anything.

[lordsmurf]

I recently tried to use phpbb3 and installing it was a major monkey-clusterfuck. Topics and posts would randomly not show up. The phpbb3 bug list is about 7 pages long, I think. It's on the phpbb site. The new phpbb is built by different people, from what I read. And then it is not really backwards compatible with mods or skins. The new one uses CSS, not PHP, for the themes.

I rolled back to phpbb2 and didn't have much trouble. I have more skins to choose from. It's on a private network, behind both password protection and firewall. It's an internal site, not accessible outside.

Along with Faustus, phpbb is a pest to maintain, it really does get hacked most, of all the forums out there. I'd rather pay for vbulletin or Invision. Free stuff based on ASP.NET is also a bit safer (much in the way a Mac is safe, less users, off the radar, harder for kiddie hackers to learn).

[thecoalman]

I recently tried to use phpbb3 and installing it was a major monkey-clusterfuck.

RC1 or a Beta? There was a lot of issues with beta versions especially with the updater. That was the last thing they coded. I had no problem at all for the forum I'm using for testing, took a total of 10 minutes. The Betas on the other hand were handful at points but I guess that's why they call it Beta. :P

The new one uses CSS, not PHP, for the themes.

PHP is a processing language, what would that have to do with the theme except parsing it out to the template? CSS on the other hand is used on just about any page on the internet for formatting HTML... If you aren't using CSS you're making yourself A LOT of work. 2 & 3 both use the same system for generating a page. The PHP page for processing>appropiate HTML Template for markup>CSS for formatting . They are practically identical as far as that is concerned. The HTML may have changed, the CSS may have changed but generally speaking there's no difference. There's even a template editor included, you only need to know a little HTML and CSS if you want to change the look, actually quite easy if your novice.

[lordsmurf]

RC1

I read up at phpbb about the themes. The documentation, the writers of phpbb3, said it was completely different. They said v2 used php and v3 used css.

I know what CSS is.

[Faustus]

Cascading Style Sheets?

[Baldrick]

No, Content Scrambling System...

[Faustus]

No, Content Scrambling System...

Microsoft bought them out?

[lordsmurf]

CSS is also a vision problem -- "Can't See Shit"
People who think VCDs are "DVD quality", for example.

[thecoalman]

The documentation, the writers of phpbb3, said it was completely different. They said v2 used php and v3 used css.

I haven't fully looked at it yet but my only guess LS is that some of the features are manipulated using CSS instead of being processed with PHP which would make sense, 3 has more features but is supposed to be a lot faster than phpbb2. Least that is whatI read if I remeber correctly. Probably a good example of that is the feature for switching the font size, it's done with a combination of JS and CSS. Otherwise the preference would have to be stored in the database and each page would have to query the databse and process the additional information. Actually probably not much different than what Baldrick has here where you can switch the styles.

FYI there is already many themes to choose from, same thing for the mods but none that have been officially released yet. .

[lordsmurf]

I plan to retry it again here in the future, once the final release is available. I think RC1 is too fubar at the moment for anything serious in nature.

[Baldrick]

RC5 has recently been released so the final can't be long away.

I will do a test install now, test convert all posts, see how it looks like and prepare the template before I do the big switch.

[Baldrick]

Installation went fine, demo test https://forum.videohelp.com/phpBB3/

[redwudz]

I like the gradient shading in the title bar. Overall it looks very clean and modern.

[Baldrick]

It's the default theme. I will videohelp:ize it a bit so it wont be that good. .

[Baldrick]

Converting the posts didn't work...it get stuck in a looooooooooop. I give up.

[redwudz]

Sorry. What are there, about 2 million posts? I have enough problems just backing up my boot drive over my LAN.