Category: Site news

February 2024 work summary

On: By: Mark

Not too busy in February, even with the leap day. Here’s a summary of my February work for clients.

  • Updated a board from phpBB 3.3.10 to 3.3.11. There were styling issues using my custom style with 3.3.10. I think it’s a web server issue. I doubt this was fixed. Updated board announcement extension from 1.1.1 to 1.2.1.
  • Updated a board from phpBB 3.3.10 to 3.3.11. Two extensions needed to be updated: SEO Metadata and Advanced BB Code box. List of forums on index did not show but content was in database. The problem was related to the quickstyle dropdown. Tried updating the extension but it didn’t work. I deactivated the anime-based style, added the logo to the prosilver stylesheet and both prosilver and prosilver_se showed the logo with quickstyle. Worked but one less style to choose from. Next day the Latte style seemed to stick and not overwrite the index when invoked from the quick style extension.
  • Updated a board from phpBB 3.0.8 to 3.3.11. 3.15M posts so this turned into a big project because of its size. The update took hours to run and never showed a completion message but seemed to work. Added translate page Google Translate widget. Added sample ad after installing advertisement management extension. Added old links above navigation bar by hand by editing the overall_header.html template. I also had to add American English language pack. I installed the Latte style, and added the old logo to overall_header.html template. Wanted old style icons but couldn’t get them to work. Client rejected advertisment management extension, must have a column on the right. Installed Board 3 portal instead and disabled the ad extension. Translated Google Ads to use BBCode but they needed to be displayed in a random order. I suggested another developer who I thought could write the Javascript to do this.
  • Troubleshooted a BBCode issue for YouTube that didn’t show the embedded video. Pointed client in right direction but he eventually figured out the right BBCode to use.

New version of my book is available. Covers phpBB 3.3.7

On: By: Mark

With a little time on my hands, I updated my book Mastering phpBB Administration. You can find links on the book’s page, at the bottom of any page or post on my site, or on my site’s sidebar. This covers through the latest release of phpBB, which is 3.3.7 as of this writing.

With every release, I find yet even more things to add, change or delete, along with a number of mistakes that make me wonder, “How did I miss this?” or “Why was I wrong about that for so long?” Even someone like me with twenty years on the phpBB platform can find features I hadn’t noticed or assumptions I have made that were not entirely correct. So the book is always in a process of becoming more correct.

One major change since the last edition is the renaming of the update and upgrade types. This is for the good as the old names were very misleading and I criticized them in the past. On phpbb.com’s download page you can see how they renamed the tabs. The old full package method is now the update method and the automatic update method is now the advanced update. So Chapter Nine needed quite a bit of new wordsmithing.

Otherwise, the content is pretty much the same, just new and improved. Like last time, if you bought an earlier edition, if you provide me a sales receipt I will send you a link to the new PDF version of the book.

My book is back for sale on Amazon

On: By: Mark

Having experimented with putting my Mastering phpBB Administration book on Lulu.com, the book is now back for sale on Amazon.com and I retired it from Lulu.com. You can buy the paper book (338 pages) for $19.99 here. Note it’s also for sale as a Kindle eBook for $9.99 here. Links are also in the sidebar ad and appended to every page and post. This version is fresh and covers up through phpBB 3.3.4.

The eBook is enhanced as I took the time to convert it to an ePub format which allowed me to do things like fix issues with some embedded screenshots and create a usable linked table of contents. Amazon converted the ePub version to its proprietary Kindle version, so only the Kindle version is available as an eBook.

I moved it from lulu.com because after months of trying to update the eBook format and getting no support from their support team, I realized they just didn’t care enough to fix the issue, plus I couldn’t offer the eBook with new content. I’m no fan of Amazon, but at least their publishing process is reliable if a bit cryptic.

Paper edition of my book is now available

On: By: Mark

Updated October 2020. The publisher, prices and editions for the book has changed. See this post for details.

My book, Mastering phpBB Administration is now available in paper. The paper version is 337 pages and costs $19.99.

As I am new to publishing, this is a learning experience. I haven’t found a way to download the Kindle version of my book without paying for it. There is a preview app I downloaded, but it just took the .docx source and transformed it. The result shows an eBook where figures are often misaligned. It may be the preview app is faulty and the Kindle version is fine. If there is an issue with the formatting of the Kindle version, I’ll do my best to correct it as soon as possible.

The paper version though looks great, and you may prefer that. The layout is exactly how I formatted it. As there are many figures and screenshots, it was important to present them so they can be read. I settled on using a Dummies book size as a good size for the book, which is 7.5 inches by 9.25 inches. However, except for the cover, it is in black and white. I could create a color version but it is cost prohibitive for most people. I’d have to price it at over $40. If you’d prefer to purchase a color version let me know and I may go through the hassle of offering one.

Please leave reviews (hopefully positive ones) on Amazon if you read it, as it should help me sell more copies. I began working on it in October 2019, and it turned into a major project. I’ve invested quite a bit of money on the book and am hoping for a return on investment. It was professionally edited, which is a costly endeavor. It should fill a niche very well. Aside from documentation on phpbb.com, there is no book like this. To the extent there are phpBB books out there, they tend to be very old. And they don’t go into the detail I do in this book. If you are a phpBB board administrator and my typical sort of client, you really need this book. It’s a wise investment and a lot less expensive than hiring me or others like me.

I hope to update the book at least annually.

My book is out

On: By: Mark
Mastering phpBB Administration, by Mark D. Hamill

My book, Mastering phpBB Administration, is available for downloading and in print. The eBook is $9.99 with a paper version available for $19.99.

It’s truly chock full of information and basically a brain dump of everything I’ve been doing for 14 years in the phpBB field. It’s meant for phpBB administrators, i.e. my clients. You may not need to hire me if you read it instead. That was certainly its goal. Of course, I’m always available for hire if you prefer me to do the grunt work.

Chapter Titles

  1. What is phpBB?
  2. Why phpBB?
  3. Using phpBB: the basics
  4. Installing phpBB
  5. Basic phpBB configuration
  6. Advanced phpBB configuration
  7. Growing your board
  8. Administrative chores
  9. Handling versioning
  10. Troubleshooting
  11. The future of phpBB

Appendices

  • A. phpBB and web hosting
  • B. Setting up and using File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
  • C. Creating a custom style
  • D. Converting to phpBB from other forum solutions
  • E. Rehosting

The book is 347 pages, formatted for print (7.5 x 9.25 inches).

phpBB 3.3 is a pretty minor minor version

On: By: Mark

So I’m starting to port my extensions to phpBB 3.3.

I’m surprised by how easy it has been, at least compared with porting my extensions from phpBB 3.1 to 3.2. This is because not much has changed between 3.2 and 3.3.

In moving from 3.1 to 3.2, there were all sorts of changes under the hood that made porting extensions challenging. The way posts were encoded in the phpbb_posts table was changed, which was a big deal. FontAwesome support, which was very limited, was introduced, meaning we could use these in our templates instead of embedding images. A new TWIG library meant that the old way we extension authors inserted dynamic data into pages changed pretty fundamentally. We were asked to use a new template syntax in our templates. Template library calls also changed quite a bit. In short, 3.1 to 3.2 required quite a bit of reengineering, both of the phpBB base code but also of its extensions.

For 3.3, there’s not much upgrading of the database needed. Only one table is altered: phpbb_users, to change the properties of the reset token. The content in the phpbb_extension_groups table is changed. The Flash media group finally goes away (Flash is obsolete) and any non-Flash files in the group are now assigned to the downloadable files group.

As noted, you can use more Emoji codes in 3.3 and can put Emoji in a topic title. But this doesn’t alter the database. I have to test for these in my extensions, but so far it’s not a problem because the existing function I used to display these fields handles it for me. So nothing to do there.

So phpBB 3.3 feels more like an update to phpBB 3.2 than it does a new minor version. On the whole, the new functionality is quite minor. The main thing I have to do is test with PHP 7.4, since phpBB 3.3 now supports PHP 7.1.3 to 7.4 only. Getting my extensions to a stable 3.2 place before upgrading PHP is turning out to be much more work than retrofitting my extensions.

So yea for that.

September 2018 work summary

On: By: Mark

Things slowed down a bit in September, which was okay because I also started teaching a class this month.

I did have one large job at the start of the month that more than paid the rent. This was a commercial job and it involved moving a forum from phpBB 3.0.14 to 3.2.2. I was working as a subcontractor. The contractor’s client had a very particular look and feel to his forum and he wanted that to be retained as much as possible, so the challenge was to do this despite the fact that many modifications on the forum were not available as extensions. Obviously this meant making sure the style closely matched the phpBB 3.0 style. I did the prototyping work in a development environment. It took a long time to get things tweaked before I was given permission to move the changes into production. The first attempt at an upgrade of the database failed due to a resource timeout. The second attempt worked but took about six hours using command line interface. I installed the mChat, ReImg Imag Resizer, Google Analytics, Post Count Requirements and later NavBar search extensions. I set up Q&A spambot countermeasure. I removed dead modules and dead software including Tapatalk. The rest was styling work. I created a custom style based on Prosilver SE and then tried to emulate look of existing site. I added archives link to navigation bar, put the Twitter logo in the footer, and customized the footer to add link to site. Three templates were changed. Style customizations were placed in stylesheet.css. Later, there was four hours of additional styling work working from a punch list. One of the challenges was to do the work quickly. It was four days from start to finish. Given that this was a big forum, this was a moderate challenge.

Also in September:

  • I updated a forum from phpBB 3.2.1 to 3.2.2. There was a routing error caused by modSecurity being enabled. I disabled it and was able to post. Also upgraded PHP from 5.5 to 7.1 for about 50% faster performance for the client.
  • Similar to my last work for this client, I created MySQL triggers to subscribe people in the registered users and newly registered users groups to get topic and post notifications, but on a different domain.
  • I updated a forum from phpBB 3.1.4 to 3.2.3. (phpBB 3.2.3 was released in the middle of the month.) I installed an updated Aero style. I removed the Board3 portal extension. I installed updated extensions: Topic Preview and Notify Admin on Registration. I upped PHP version to 5.6 from 5.4. I changed the spambot countermeasure to use reCaptcha V2. I installed my digests extensions (version 3.2.8) and tested email using both a manual test and cron.
  • I updated phpBB from version 3.2.2 to 3.2.3 for a client using update files method. Updated five extensions that were out of date.
  • I updated another forum from phpBB 3.2.2 to 3.2.3. I updated the Tapatalk extension from 2.0.8 to 2.1.3. I had to reapply a style change to common.css.

With the release of phpBB 3.2.3, the phpBB group not only fixed some bugs that really needed fixing (including one that only allowed one attachment per post) and the migrator issues that gave me hell, but it also appears that the update program will now update any extensions that need updating, if the links work correctly. This is normally a good thing but if you wrote any custom changes to these extensions this might overwrite them, and there is no warning of this. You are not supposed to do this, but I have clients who have done this or asked me to do it for them. The update program really needs some sort of warning or a switch of some sort so these don’t happen automatically.

Site cleanup

On: By: Mark

I’ve spent the last two days cleaning up the website. Some pages were removed. My services page was broken down into a number of pages for easier reading. I changed some page titles and edited one form. I also updated the theme. Hopefully the site is cleaner, less cluttered and easier to use.