A User Guide
A User Guide
Copyright © 2005 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the
accuracy of this information.
First edition: June 2005
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 1-904811-38-8
Author David Mytton
Technical Reviewer
Rikki Tissier
Layout
Paramita Chakrabarti
Indexer
Niranjan Jahagirdar
Illustrator
Dinesh Kandalgaonkar
Commissioning Editor Douglas Paterson
Technical Editors
Paramita Chakrabarti Niranjan Jahagirdar
Proofreader
Chris Smith
Cover Designer
Invision Power Board is the culmination of nearly six years worth of work from me and the other developers at Invision Power Services. My ideas and designs have developed over this time in different products, but the desire to create a product that is not only feature-rich, but also easy to use, has remained constant.
My formative years with the Internet began in 1999, and I joined a few discussion boards to help further my knowledge. The ability to
communicate with other like-minded people from around the world fascinated me. The discussion boards of the time were fairly primitive and I began writing enhancements for them. My combined background of design and programming gave me a good foundation for improving on the basic formula.
Invision Power Board is the result of those first tentative steps. I have always believed that the best way to develop a product is to garner the thoughts and ideas of the end user and our thriving community of customers is vital to our success. Some of the best concepts have developed from a nucleus of an idea contributed by a user of our products. This symbiosis is at the very core of our development ideals and this book cements this relationship.
For the first time, a comprehensive book is available to guide and instruct fledgling administrators on how to get the best out of their Invision Power Board—a product developed in line with the wishes of our customers who are seasoned administrators. Although the Internet is a great resource for information, I don’t think that you can beat a good book to hold in your hands to consume the knowledge contained within. This book will take pride of place on my bookshelf, fitting in neatly between programming references and instructional guides. I hope it finds a place in your bookshelf, too.
About the Author
David Mytton
is a young web developer based in the UK. Although he spends much of his time programming for the Web, he is also a keen writer having written articles for web development resourceSitePoint.com and International PHP Magazine, as well as his own website. These articles included interviews of famous personalities such as Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (PHP architects and Zend Founders), Matthew Mecham (Invision Power Services CEO and Lead Developer), and Nick Lindridge (ionCube Founder). He does all this in between running his software development company, Olate Ltd
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Invision Power Board
5
What Is Invision Power Board? 6
History 6 Development 7
What is New in IPB2? 7
The IPB Advantage 8
Performance 8 Customizability 8
Maintenance Ease 9
Versatility 9
Example Websites 10
Chapter 2: Installation and Configuration
13
Minimum Requirements 13
Licenses 13
Purchasing and the Client Area 14
Installation 16
Step 1: Uploading and Setting Permissions 16
Step 2: Web-Based Installer 18
Your Server Environment 19
Your Database Environment 19
Your Administrator Account 20
Step 3: Post-Installation 21
Conversion 21
Other Downloads 22
Chapter 3: Tour: User Front End
25
Creating a New Topic 34
BBCode and Smilies 34
Post Options 36
Attachments 36
Post New Topic/Preview Post 37
Add Reply 37
Fast Reply 37
User Control Panel/My Controls 38
Empty PM Folders 50
Chapter 4: Administration Panel Tour: Settings
53
Admin CP 53
Settings: Calendar and Birthdays 60
Settings: Converge Set Up 60
Settings: Cookies 61
Settings: COPPA Setup 61
Settings: CPU Saving and Optimization 62
Settings: Date and Time Formats 64
Settings: E-Mail Setup 66
Settings: Full Text Search Setup 67
Settings: General Configuration 67
Settings: News Setup 68
Settings: Personal Message Setup 68
Settings: Search Engine Spiders 68
Settings: Security and Privacy 69
Settings: Topics, Posts and Polls 71
Settings: The Trashcan Setup 72
Settings: User Profiles 72
Settings: Warn Setup 72
Chapter 5: Admin Panel Tour: Forum Control
75
Allow HTML to be Posted? 77
Allow BBCode to be Posted? 78
Turn on the Quick Reply Box? 78
Allow Polls and Vote Bumping? 79
Posts in this Forum Increase Member's Cumulative Post Count? 79 Moderation 79
Permissions, Edit, and Delete 82
Ordering 82
Delete and Empty Forum 84
Ordering 84
Permission Masks 84
Create New Mask 85
Chapter 6: Admin Panel Tour: Users, Groups
Add New Subscription Package 112
BBCode 114
Chapter 7: Forum Maintenance and Administration 115
Hints and Tips 116
Add a New Multi-Moderation Action 125
Using the Multi-Moderation 126
Chapter 8: Skins and Templates
129
Common Tasks 130
Changing the Logo 130
Change the Default Font Type, Font Size,
and Font Color 131
Skin Manager 132
Skin Menu 134
The Board Wrapper 135
Replacement Macros 144
Rebuild Skin Set Cache 148
Update Members Skin Choice 148
Search and Replace 149
Skin Import/Export 149
Export 149 Import 150
Summary 151
Chapter 9: First Steps—A Guide
151
Initial Configuration 151
Licensing 152
User Groups 152
Adding a Moderator User Group 153
Adding a Member to the New Moderators Group 155
Summary 162
Appendix A: Files and Directories
163
Directories 163 Files 165
Appendix B: Further Resources
167
PHP/MySQL Resources 169
Introduction
This book is about obtaining, downloading, installing, configuring, managing, and maintaining a copy of Invision Power Board (IPB) 2 on your own website. It covers general forum management, user
moderation, templates, and skins.
Invision Power Board (www. i nv i s i onboar d. c om), originally called IBForums, allows website owners to add a community to their existing site within minutes. Visitors are able to register and post threads discussing any topic, reply to existing messages, and generally participate in active discussion with other members.
If you are reading this, it is probably because you are either already running a community forum, or are planning on establishing one. You may already be using Invision Board 2, an earlier version, or perhaps one of the rival products. Either way, by working through the chapters, you will be introduced to, and provided with, detailed information about Invision Power Board 2 and how to manage it.
If you are interested in using IPB2 for your website or want to learn more about its implementation, then this book is for you.
What This Book Covers
The book starts with an overview of Invision Power Board (IPB), its history, advantages, and some sites that are using IPB.
Chapter 2 walks you through an installation of IPB, including the necessary preparation work and post-installation tasks.
Chapters 4 and 5 give you an in-depth tour of the area you will initially spend your time in, changing settings, creating forums, and later
managing your entire user base. Every option has been discussed so that you can effectively manage everything IPB offers.
Chapter 6 provides you with details about what running a real forum is about. It includes hints and tips from other forum owners and takes a good look at how to manage topics and posts using the advanced moderation tools IPB includes.
Chapter 7 takes you through the various aspects of user management for creating a successful community and provides useful tips for running a successful board.
Chapter 8 guides you through one of the most important aspects of creating your own, personalized forum—the skins and templates. The look of your site is what distinguishes it from other competing forums so this chapter is important to help you make your copy of IPB unique.
Chapter 9 is a step-by-step guide to getting your forum up and running in the shortest time possible. It explains exactly how to get going right after you have installed IPB onto your website. It provides sample settings so you can be ready to launch it in almost no time at all.
What You Need for Using This Book
The only requirement for using this book is that you have a copy, or have access to a copy of Invision Power Board 2. It does not even need to be installed or working since Chapter 2 takes you through the full
installation process.
Conventions
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
There are three styles for code. Code words in text are shown as follows: "To illustrate the difference, you can pr i nt _r ( ) the results of both functions". A block of code will be set as follows:
<i mg s r c =' s t y l e_i mages / <#I MG_DI R#>/ t _addpol l . gi f ' bor der =' 0' al t =' Add Pol l ' / >
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items will be made bold:
<% NAVI GATI ON %> <! - - I BF. NEWPMBOX- - > <% BOARD %>
<% BOARD FOOTER %> <% STATS %>
New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Tips, suggestions, or important notes appear in a box like this.
Any command-line input and output is written as follows:
>\ . my dump. s ql
Quer y OK, 1 r ow af f ec t ed ( 0. 00 s ec )
Reader Feedback
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book, what you liked, or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.
If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www. pac k t pub. c om or e-mail s ugges t @pac k t pub. c om.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www. pac k t pub. c om/ aut hor s.
Customer Support
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
Downloading the Example Code for the Book
Visit ht t p: / / www. pac k t pub. c om/ s uppor t, and select this book from the list of titles to download any example code or extra resources for this book. The files available for download will then be displayed.The downloadable files contain instructions on how to use them.
Errata
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in text or code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing this you can save other readers from frustration, and help to improve subsequent versions of this book.
If you find any errata, report them by visiting
1
Invision Power Board
Now developed by Invision Power Services (www. i nv i s i onpower . c om), Invision Power Board (www. i nv i s i onboar d. c om), originally called IBForums, was created to add more to the existing bulletin board market. Released on June 12, 2002, InvisionPowerBoard (IPB) version 1.0 allowed website owners to create their own community within minutes. Visitors could register and then post threads discussing any topic, reply to existing messages, and participate in active discussions with other members.
Actively developed to keep up with the rival products, IPB quickly distinguished itself as one of the top three bulletin-board applications. Created using the open-source programming language, PHP: Hypertext Processor (PHP), and powered by a MySQL database, the software can be deployed on almost any server platform, adding to its popularity.
The top forum applications today are Invision Power Board, phpBB (www. phpbb. c om), and vBulletin (www. v bul l et i n. c om). However, many other bulletin-board packages (both paid for and free) are available.
Now in version 2.0, IPB has matured into a tool used not only for
personal websites, but also for product feedback, corporate communities, and as an internal communication tool for intranets.
What Is Invision Power Board?
A community adds extra value to almost any website. One of the many goals of website owners is to keep visitors returning for more content. Launching a bulletin board (also known as a forum) can have that effect—members participate in discussion about (but not limited to) topics they are visiting the website for. This can provide extra help, answer questions, and introduce another support channel into your website. All this adds to the 'stickiness' of your website.
But how do you go about creating a community? This is where IPB steps in. Written specifically to allow you to create a discussion forum, IPB provides all the tools, features, and functionality that you need to set up and develop a vibrant community. And because it specializes in this one aspect of your website, all its features are geared towards this goal; you can leave the improvement and additions to the Invision Power Services developers, while you manage the rest of your website.
History
Charles Warner and Matthew Mecham created Invision Power Services in February 2002. Both were working for the company that acquired an existing bulletin board solution called Ikonboard (www. i k onboar d. c om). Both of them noticed the software was left wanting on the development front, and they left the company to join together and launch Invision Power Services. While Matt created IBForums, later renamed Invision Power Board, Charles was selling hosting packages and other services through Invision Power Services.
Ikonboard was created using Perl and Matt felt that even though Perl was a great language, PHP offered greater advantages—mainly its being actively developed. As a result, IPB was created using PHP.
Version 1.2 was hot on the heels of 1.1 and was released on August 6, 2003. Version 1.3 followed on November 19, 2003. Version 1.3 was the last of the 1.x range (with the exception of bug fixes). Matt began work on version 2.0, which included PHP5 compatibility, unlimited
subforums, more attachment support, a rewrite of the templates system, multi-line moderation, and many more new features.
The first 2.0 alpha release was announced on November 25, 2003—just six days after 1.3 was released! Beta tests followed this up to the last public release test, which was made available on September 10, 2004.
The final, stable version of 2.0 launched on 21st September, 2005 has brought Invision Power Board to the forefront of the bulletin-board software market.
Development
In an interview in April 2004, Matt Mecham provided a deep insight into exactly what has gone into IPB2's development. Although he is the CEO and co-founder of Invision Power Services, Matt focuses mainly on the product development side, and is the sole developer of Invision Power Board. He does all the coding and is backed up by outsourced template designers and support team employed by Invision Power Services.
Based in the UK, Matt works with Charles (in the US) to discuss business management, but works alone when it comes to writing the PHP source code for the application. Using an Apple Mac development environment, Matt works in nine-hour blocks, stopping only for coffee-breaks!
You can read the full interview at www. ol at e. c om/ ar t i c l es / 199 to find out more about the development process.
What is New in IPB2?
The major feature highlights include:
• Inline moderation
• Lo-fi content version
• Custom BBCode
• Improved calendar
• Attachments Manager
• New Emoticons Manager
• Threaded, Outline, and Linear + View Mods
These additions, plus all the other features, are covered in the relevant chapters of this book.
The IPB Advantage
There are many different forum software packages available either for free, or to purchase. Why should you use IPB2?
Performance
Running a successful website or forum with thousands of members and threads can place considerable strain on your web server. Yet with IPB2, this is not the case. It is designed to scale extremely well, and has demonstrated the ability to do so on massive forums! Using advanced caching for templates and language files to reduce the number of database queries (and coming in version 2.1, even more caching and load-reducing features such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
(AJAX) to allow instant changes to be made with no page refreshing), and content caching, IPB will certainly stand up to anything you can throw at it.
Customizability
In this book, you will learn all about this system including how to download and import templates created by other people, and how to make your own templates.
Maintenance Ease
The unique and intuitive moderation controls present in IPB2 come as a direct result of the developers using their own software. For example, the multi-moderation feature allows actions to be defined through the Admin Control Panel, and they can be performed on multiple topics and posts at once (for example, rename the title and post an auto response).
In addition, the Admin Panel itself is extremely well designed to allow access to every option from a left-hand menu. Each section is color-coded and includes descriptions for every option to help the maintenance of the board as it grows. Development is based around the experiences of customers and IPS themselves. Version 2.1 shows this with refinements to the moderator controls and the admin panel.
Versatility
Not only can IPB be used as a forum, but also as a bug tracker by taking advantage of the features provided by the multi-moderation tools allowing mass actions to be performed.
The fact that all the source code is available to view means that many modifications can be downloaded or bought—especially those created by IPB. These include:
• Invision Gallery: The Gallery product plugs directly into your forum to allow members to upload their own photos and to create a community photo gallery.
• Invision Blog: Take advantage of the massive growth in use of web logs (blogs) by allowing you and your members to create blogs, through your forum.
• Invision Top Site List: Create a classified list of websites and useful links that you and your members can add to using the Top Site List product.
• Invision File Manager: A free product to add to your forum: allow members to manage their own files and download them directly from within your forum.
All the products above are integrated directly into IPB itself to take advantage of the built-in member database. This can be coupled with the Converge system, which you can use if you are a developer, to ensure your members need to log in only once at your website.
Example Websites
Many busy websites use live versions of Invision Power Board 2. At the time of writing, the second biggest IPB-powered forum was S2KI (www. s 2k i . c om/ f or ums /)—a Honda S2000 owners' community. This had over 4.5 million posts and over 32,000 members. The largest forum was i dol f or ums . c om—a point of discussion for the American Idol TV Series. At over 6.3 million posts and with over 34,000 members, it certainly shows off how IPB can scale to any size!
One of the best examples of this is the Invision Power Services
Company Forums themselves. At ht t p: / / f or ums . i nv i s i onpower . c om, they use the very latest version on a live site with 700,000 posts and 50,000 members!
My own website uses IPB and takes advantage of the Converge member system to integrate into my own products. This means customers only need to register once to get access to all resources. This is very easy to achieve using the PHP classes and documentation built directly into the IPB source code. You can see my company forums at
Other websites using IPB include:
• ac ne. or g/ mes s ageboar d
• bl ac k adder hal l . c om/ f or um
• c r edi t boar ds . c om
• dr unk f oundat i on. c om/ f or um
• f or ums . amd. c om
• f or ums . nv i di a. c om
• f or ums . r ev or a. net
• gmai l f or ums . c om
• i nv i s i oni z e. c om
• s quar e- eni x - f or ums . c om
• t hi r dwat c h. net / f or um
This demonstrates how scalable IPB can be—from the very smallest of member bases to millions of posts and thousands of members.
ISBN: 978-1-847196-22-4 Paperback: 340 pages
Find the best CMS and start working with it to create web sites, blogs, communities, e-commerce sites, and intranets
1. Understand different types of CMSs and select the one that best fits your needs
2. Install and customize a CMS with themes and plug-ins
3. Learn key concepts of Content Management Systems and how to systematically assess your requirements
4. Introduction to the major CMSs including Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, Plone, Magento, Alfresco, and more
5. A hands-on, easy-to-read guide that gives you practical tips on hosting, project management, working with specialists and communities, and finding experts
phpBB: A User Guide
ISBN: 978-1-904811-91-6 Paperback: 176 pages
Set up and run your own discussion forum
1. Simple, practical steps to create and manage your own phpBB-powered online community
2
Installation and
Configuration
As of the stable version 2.0 release (21st September 2004), the full version of IPB cannot be downloaded for free. You have the option of purchasing a full license (of which there are two varieties) or obtaining a restricted version, which is limited to five thousand posts, one thousand topics, and two hundred members.
In addition, you can purchase a hosting account that includes a full lifetime license (for the duration of the hosting), although the forum is encoded to work only on the IPS servers.
Invision Power Services is one of the many web-hosting companies available. A simple search on Google will reveal many other top companies.
This chapter will focus upon the purchase, download, installation, and configuration of IPB2 at the end of which you will have a fully licensed and working copy of Invision Power Board 2.
Minimum Requirements
In order to use IPB, you need to have the following available to you:
If you are using the restricted version, you will need the ionCube or Zend Loaders, which can be downloaded from www. i onc ube. c om and www. z end. c om respectively
PHP 4.1.0 (or better) available at www. php. net
• MySQL 3.23 (or better) available at www. my s ql . c om
Although the Zend-encoded version of IPB requires loaders to be installed, ionCube has a feature to allow run-time loading so that you do not always need to install the loaders. If you are unsure, you should contact your web-hosting company.
You only need one MySQL database—IPB supports table prefixes. You will need your MySQL access details—username, password, and database name. You will also need approximately 2MB of free web space and 3 MB of SQL space for installation and a moderately sized community. You can obtain advice from your web-hosting company about this.
Licenses
IPB2 is not free software. In order to use it, you must purchase a license. Once purchased, you have access to the software and the additional services that are offered by Invision Power Services.
Two different licenses are available for purchase:
YearlyLicenseat$69.95: This license provides access to IPB for one year. During this time, you can download the latest version and all updates released for use on one installation. Installation is also allowed on a private server with no public access or registrations disabled for testing purposes. At the end of the year if the license is not renewed IPB will continue to run, but you cannot download any updates or new versions released.
SupportService: You can submit tickets to obtain technical support from the IPS support team as well as via the Live Chat support services. Free telephone support is also included. (US customers use a toll-free number. International customers will have to pay
international dialing rates to call the United States.)
• InstallationandUpgrades: You can have the IPS staff install or upgrade existing versions of the product onto your hosting account within 24 hours.
Purchasing and the Client Area
Once you have decided which license you would like to buy, ordering only takes a few moments. When you visit www. i nv i s i onboar d. c om/ ac t . i ps / downl oad you are presented with a number of extra options including different database drivers (MySQL included) and copyright output removal.
Clicking Continue will then provide you with a summary of your order. You are also notified that orders can take up to 24 hours to verify due to fraud prevention checks. The following steps collect personal
Payment is accepted through Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB Diners credit cards, Electronic Check drawn on US bank accounts, PayPal, United Kingdom Debit Cards (Delta, Maestro/Switch, Solo, Electron), and check or money order from US or UK banks.
Once your order is completed, you can log in to the Client Area at ht t p: / / c us t omer . i nv i s i onpower . c om. You will be presented with various options. Click on Invision Power Board on the right hand side, under Purchased Services. This will show you a list of the licenses you have purchased, a form to submit a technical support ticket, and (at the bottom of the page) a link to download the latest version of IPB.
Click on the Download IPB Now link and after a few seconds, the ZIP package will be offered as a download. Save this to your local computer and get ready for the next step.
Installation
The first part of the installation is uploading the IPB files and setting the correct permissions. Once that is completed, the automated, web-based installer guides you through the setup of the database. Finally, the installer file must be deleted for security reasons. The entire process is completed in three steps.
Step 1: Uploading and Setting Permissions
Once you have obtained the I PB . z i p package, you need to extract all the files. This can be done using the extraction tool WinZip(www. wi nz i p. c om) or by using any of the many free tools available (see www. s napf i l es . c om/ f r eewar e/ downl oader / f wz i p. ht ml).
Next, you need to upload the upl oad/ directory to your web-hosting account. This can be done using your favorite FTP Client. There are many clients available—free, as well as paid for. One of the best freely available clients is SmartFTP (www. s mar t f t p. c om). You should upload all the files and sub-directories of the upl oad/ root directory:
FTP, or FileTransferProtocol, is used when you transfer files from your computer to a remote server. These files are
"uploaded" to the server so they can be accessed via the Web. FTPing is done via an FTP Client such as the free SmartFTP mentioned above. You will find an introduction to FTP at the SmartFTP website:
ht t p: / / www. s mar t f t p. c om/ s uppor t / howt o/
Following that, you must change the file permissions so that IPB can write to certain directories. This can be done using the c hmod command from Linux or by using your FTP client. Most FTP clients build this into their right-click menu. Right-click on the files, select Properties, and select the options to change the file permissions. You should c hmod (or set the permissions) as the following:
Directory c ac he/ to 0755
Directory l ang/ and all contents to 0755
Directory s k i n_c ac he/ to 0755 (or 0777 if you get permission errors)
Directory s t y l e_emot i c ons / to 0755
Directory s t y l e_i mages / to 0755
Directory upl oads / to 0755 (or 0777 if you get permission errors)
• File c onf _gl obal . php to 0666 (or 0777 if you get permission errors)
c hmod is a Linux command. For Windows users, you must ensure that your web server has access to the files concerned, which is usually done by right-clicking the file on the server (or through your FTP client) and changing the permissions options to read and write access.
This allows the application to write to those directories during the installation and during the normal use of the software. If you do not set the correct permissions, a warning will be displayed when you try to run the Web-Based Installer in the next step.
Now that all the files have been uploaded and have the correct permissions, you can use the installer to begin the setup process.
If you uploaded your files in Step 1 to f or ums / and your domain name is ht t p: / / www. ex ampl e. c om then you would access the installer by going to ht t p: / / www. ex ampl e. c om/ f or ums / i ns t al l. To give a real-world example: for a domain name ht t p: / / www. ol at e. c o. uk with the files uploaded to f or ums /, the setup URL would be ht t p: / / www. ol at e. c o . uk / f or ums / i ns t al l. You will then be shown the welcome screen for the installer. Click on Proceed.
The next step requires input of the information available from your web host. This includes the database details and the administrative account login information.
Your Server Environment
The IPBi ndex . phpURL should already be set to the correct address. If not, you can set it manually. Following the example we used above, if you uploaded your files in Step 1 to f or ums / and your domain name is ht t p: / / www. ex ampl e. c om, then the correct value will be
ht t p: / / www. ex ampl e. c om/ f or ums:
Your Database Environment
This is just a case of adding f or ums _ (or whatever prefix you would like to use) into the SQL Table Prefix box:
If any of the information you enter is incorrect, when you click Proceed, you will be shown an error message explaining what went wrong.
Your Administrator Account
The first account created on your forums will be your own and will have full administrative access to all functions of the forum. You should specify a username and password for this account here. Note that it is important to choose a strong password (i.e. not admin for username or password). If someone guesses or cracks your username and password, they will be able to access everything in your forum.
Once you have clicked on Proceed, you will be told that the board has been installed with the exception of the templates. Clicking on the Click here to continue link will continue the setup process. You then need to clean up the installer and caches. Clicking on the Click here to finish link will complete the installation.
Step 3: Post-Installation
Before you can finally use your new Invision Power Board, you must delete the i ns t al l / i ndex . php file on your server—simply renaming the file will not suffice. This prevents any malicious user running the setup process and overwriting your board.
Once you have done this, you can login to the Administrator Control Panel of IPB2 using the username and password you specified during Step 2.
Conversion
If you have one of the many rival forum packages, the Invision Power Services team can assist you in the conversion to IPB2. The following applications can be converted to IPB2:
Ikonboard 2.1.x
Ikonboard 3.1.x DBM and MYSQL vBulletin 2.2.x
vBulletin 3.x phpBB 2.x
XMB 1.x YaBB SE
YaBB Gold UBB 5.x & 6.x
OpenBB 1.x Burning Board 1.x
BlazeBoard 0.x tForum
• DCForum
More information about paid for and free conversion can be found at www. i nv i s i onboar d. c om/ ?c onv er t or s.
Other Downloads
Various other downloads related to IPB are available at
www. i nv i s i onboar d. c om/ downl oad. These include the latest full release, update packages, development releases, and the Graphics Development Kit for IPB2. The creation of your own skin is covered later in the book.
Summary
Configure, manage and maintain your own vBulletin
discussion forum
1. Get your own forum up and running quickly
2. Extensive coverage of the Administration Control Panel to put you on the right track for managing your board
3. Customize the appearance of your vBulletin forum
4. Change the site’s behavior by developing and installing hacks
Blogger: Beyond the Basics
ISBN: 978-1-847193-17-9 Paperback: 356 pagesCustomize and promote your blog with original templates, analytics, advertising, and SEO
1. Customize your Blogger templates
2. Grow your blog into a professional, feature-rich site
3. Add social bookmarks to your blog
4. Optimize your blog with SEO
5. Integrate analytics and advertising with your Blogger blog
3
Tour: User Front End
Now that you have a copy of Invision Power Board installed, configured, and ready to go, you should be itching to actually use it! Most of what you and your visitors will see while browsing the site is the User Front End. This is where most of the action takes place: creating and replying to threads, viewing new posts, updating your profile, and much more.
This chapter will take you through the main features present in the user front end starting with the forums and postings, and then moving on to other features like the User Control Panel; I will explain each of the features, which will soon become a major part of your daily routine:
Forums and Threads: The real meat of the board, where the "community spirit" lies.
Posting: How to get involved, and participate in active discussions.
User Control Panel: Manage your online profile and control specific settings relevant to your viewing experience.
Miscellaneous features:
o Using the search engine: Find the information you need,
quickly and easily.
o Private messaging and subscriptions: Keep up to date
with your contributions to threads and messages to other members.
o Calendar: Manage your time effectively; share important
The Index Page
On visiting your page, users see the site's index page. This presents users with a list of forums (categories of content), allowing them to find the topic they are interested in, much like a table of contents for a book. On successful installation, if you visit your site you will see the following:
During installation, your board is automatically created with some sample data. This consists of a forum (named A Test Forum), and a thread within that forum (entitled Welcome!) posted by IPB Team.
As you can see, there is quite a lot of information to take in, so we will now go over the major parts.
The Member Bar
This bar is shown at the top of the page. If a user not logged in, this bar is red and asks the guest user to either log in or register. When the user logs in, this bar will show links to the Admin Control Panel (if you are an administrator) and the User Control Panel, a link to view any new posts since your last visit, a help tool called My Assistant, and a count of your private messages.
Forums and Categories
On a freshly installed copy of Invision Power Board, you can see a category called 'A Test Root', with a forum and thread. Categories are the main sections of your community. For example, in a site that discusses methods of travel, a category could encompass the major methods of travel: land, sea, or air. Within these, you would have forums for each of the specific ways to travel. These would then hold discussion relevant to that particular method of travel.
For each forum, you will see the name, the description, the number of topics and replies within that forum, along with the details of the last post within that forum. The topic and the name of the user are shown as clickable links so that you can go to that topic or the user's profile.
The Footer Bar
At the bottom of the forum, on every page, you will notice a (by default) blue bar with several options:
On the left is a skin selector that lets members choose a forum skin (if you have several installed); this is followed by the quick language selector, which allows users to switch between the languages you may have installed.
On the far right, you will see some debugging information. Enabled by default, you (if you are the administrator) can see how long it took to generate the page (in seconds), and the number of database queries executed. Clicking on queries will take you to a page listing all of them.
At the bottom of the page, you can see which version of IPB you are running.
Lo-Fi Version
The lo-fi pages are cut-down versions of the main areas of the forums. They provide a very simple interface displaying the categories and forums as well as topics and threads. This is useful for users on very slow connections but more importantly, for search-engine spiders. It is much easier for search engines to spider your forums if there is a simplified section that provides the main content and nothing else.
Viewing Forums
Clicking on the name of a forum will take you to the 'showforum' page. It shows a list of all the topics posted by members within that forum, along with its subcategories.
You can see two links below the buttons: Mark this forum as read and Subscribe to this forum. The first will mark all the posts and topics within the forum as read even if you haven't read them, and the second will subscribe you to a list that will e-mail you when there are new topics and posts within this forum.
The topic listing shows all the topics created in the forum, along with the following extra snippets of information:
• Topic icon (user selected): a post icon selected by the user when they start the new topic. These are predefined, but you can alter those shown through the Admin Control Panel:
Topic title.
Number of replies.
Topic starter (the user who created the topic and therefore made the first post).
Number of views: This counter will be incremented by one every time a user views the topic.
Last action: The last post made, along with the date and the user who posted.
• Moderation selector: A checkbox that allows you to select topics on which to perform moderation actions such as mass deletion, topic renaming, merging, or locking.
Topics
Every post is contained within a topic (sometimes known as a thread). A topic is common to a group of posts about the same subject, in the forum, within the subject of the category (e.g. Category: Transport; Forum: Cars; Topic: What car do you have?). A user starts a topic with an initial post, to which other members can reply with their own comments:
Under this is the main body of the post. The body is split into two sections, with the left-hand side being much smaller than the right. Some details about the user who posted are shown on the left—their username, their avatar, their rank (and rank image), their member group, the number of posts they have made, their join date, their member number, and finally, the warning tools (if enabled). Clicking on their username will take you to their profile page.
You can add extra fields to this display either by manually editing the templates or by adding a new profile field. All this can be done through the Administration Control Panel, and is explained in Chapter 6.
On the right is the main body of the post. This is what has been typed when replying and it may include images or other formatted text:
The bottom of each post gives you eight buttons to perform several actions. From left to right, they are:
OFF/ON: Shows if that user is online or offline
CARD: View a small business-card type window about this user
PM: Send the user a private message
REPORT: Report a post to all the moderators and administrators
TOP: Go to the top of the page
EDIT: Edit this post
QUOTE: Quote this post when you add a reply (turns red when selected)
• REPLY: Reply immediately to this post and include the full post as a quote
On the left are topic moderation options, which are performed on the entire topic:
These moderation options are covered in depth in Chapter 7, Forum Maintenance and Administration.
Creating a New Topic
Topics are at the centre of your forum, and so creating new ones is a common activity. You can do this by clicking on the New Topic
icon.
The page that loads then asks you to provide a title for the topic and a description. The post box beneath this is where you will type the first post of your new topic.
Topic titles should be concise and to the point. It is the first thing that users will read before deciding whether to read the whole topic. If you are asking for help, a brief summary of the problem is usually the standard way of titling the topic. Otherwise, a very short summary limited to a few words will suffice.
BBCode and Smilies
You can also use it to enter web addresses, code snippets, and quotes. The IPB BBCode formatting options appear just above the post box and can be added to in the Administration Control Panel:
An example of BBCode usage would be to make some text bold and then add a URL, as shown below:
[ b] t hi s wi l l be bol d[ / b]
[ ur l =ht t p: / / www. ol at e. c o. uk ] t hi s goes t o Ol at e[ / ur l ]
URLs starting with ht t p: / / are automatically converted if you do not add the BBCode tags. Note that if the URL does not begin with ht t p: / / (e.g. www. ex ampl e. c om) it will not be converted to a URL.
A common way of showing personal expression and feelings is by using emoticons or smilies. Some default smilies are included in IPB as standard and are shown at the side of the post box:
Each one is clickable; so you can easily enter it into your post. By default, only a small number of smilies are shown here; the full list of smilies can be accessed by clicking the Show All link beneath the group of smilies. You can also add your own smilies through the
Post Options
Under the post box are several extra options you can specify when making a new post. As the administrator you can enable HTML on a case-by-case basis from the drop-down menu. The three checkboxes enable or disable emoticons, the displaying of your signature, and whether you wish to subscribe to the topic.
Post icons appear next to the topic in the topic list explained above. They can be used to highlight or draw attention to specific topics and take the (default) form of several smilie-type icons. As with the BBCode and smilies, you can add your own from the Administration Control Panel.
As an administrator, after posting you can choose to pin and/or lock a topic immediately. This is done by selecting the appropriate action from the drop-down menu below the attachments box.
Attachments
You can attach files to a post just as when sending an e-mail. They will be uploaded to the forum and will be displayed within the post for other members to download. You may set a limit for the total size of files that members are allowed to upload to save disk space.
To upload a file, click on the Browse button to find the file on your PC, and then click on Add This Attachment. Once the attachment is uploaded, it will be listed below the upload box along with the file size. You can choose to delete the file or insert it into a certain place within your post. If you wish to do this, click on Add into Post and it will be displayed in the post where you put the placeholder. Otherwise, the attachments will just be listed at the end of the post.
Post New Topic/Preview Post
Before you finalize the new topic and post it, you can click on Preview Post to see what the post will look like. If you are happy with what you see, click on Post New Topic and it will be added to the topic view and members can start to view it and make replies.
Add Reply
Adding a reply to an existing topic is almost exactly the same as creating a new one. Clicking on the Add Reply button will take you to a page that is more less the same as when you were creating a new topic, but with two major differences. Firstly, you cannot choose a topic title or a description, and secondly, the bottom of the page has a list of the posts within that topic to help remember what you are responding to. If you chose to quote a reply by clicking on the Quote button next to the post, it will appear within BBCode tags when you reply.
Fast Reply
User Control Panel/My Controls
The User Control Panel provides a large number of options to allow complete customization of many forum features, which all users have access to. The main functions include:
Private messaging
Forum and topic subscription management
Profile, signature, and avatar setting
• E-mail and board settings (skin selection, customized topic viewing preferences, and time zones)
Control Panel Index
On the left side, you have a menu with a list of all the options:
Messenger
Private messaging is covered later in this chapter, but the User Control Panel provides extensive controls for sending private messages to other members. You can create your own message folders, add members to buddylists and blocklists, and track messages that you have sent to see if they have been read or not.
Subscriptions
You may only wish to visit a forum when something changes or is updated. Or you may wish to be notified as soon as there is a reply to a certain topic you are interested in (by subscribing to a topic or forum you can do just that).
When a notification is e-mailed, only one message will be sent per topic until the next time the user visits. This is the case even if there is more than one new post to help prevent the members' inboxes being spammed by busy topics.
The Subscriptions options allow you to review any topics or forums you are subscribed to, delete the subscription, or change how the subscription is working. There are four types of subscriptions you can use:
Delayede-mailnotification: E-mail notifications are sent out a short period after the new post or topic is created.
Dailye-maildigest: You are sent an e-mail every day with a summary of new topics and posts that you subscribe to.
• Weeklye-maildigest: Like daily digests, but sent weekly.
Personal Profile
Your personal profile comprises your publicly viewable information.
Edit Profile Info
Clicking on the Edit Profile info link will take you to a page where you can fill in as much information about you as you wish (everything is optional). You can add the following:
Your date of birth: use the drop-down menu to select the day, month, and year.
Website URL: if you have a website, fill in the URL here and it'll appear in your profile (useful for self-promotion!).
Your ICQ UIN: If you use the ICQ instant-messaging service (www. i c q. c om), fill in your ID number here.
Your AOL identity: as with ICQ, you can provide your AOL instant-messaging screen name.
Your Yahoo identity.
Your MSN Messenger identity.
Your Location: If you wish to enter where you are in the world, you can do so in this field. This has a character
limit (1000 characters by default), and you can click on Check Length to check whether you have exceeded it.
When you are happy with the details, click on Amend my profile, and the information you have provided will be entered into the database.
Edit Signature
A signature is displayed underneath every post you make in the forums. Signatures are typically used to advertise your own website, display your favorite quotes, or just as a personal signature. You can create your own signature by clicking the Edit Signature link from the menu in My Controls. This will take you to a page with a box similar to the one you see when replying to a post or adding a new topic. It includes the BBCode formatting tools since you can include formatting in the
signature. Your current signature (if any) is shown above this box. In the following screenshot you can see how my signature is shown underneath any post that I make. In this case, I have also used an image here:
Once you have created your signature, click on Update my Signature. You can also check the length as it can be restricted (10,000 characters by default).
Edit Avatar Settings
You can edit your avatar by clicking on Edit Avatar Settings:
You can even create your own avatar. Once you have done so, you can add it to your website through one of two methods: link from your own website, or upload it to the forums. The upload option can be enabled and disabled in the Administration Control Panel. If you decide to link to it, you will need to upload it to your own website and then enter the full URL in the box on the page. Otherwise, you can click the Browse button to browse your PC to find the image and upload it.
There is a limit to the file size and image dimensions for avatars. By default, it is set to 90 pixels by 90 pixels and a maximum size of 50Kb. Also, you can only use . gi f, . j pg, . j peg, and . png file formats.
You can change this limit in the Admin Control Panel to suit your requirements. If the image is too large, the forum will usually resize it to the maximum dimensions, which is an option in the Admin Control Panel.
When you are done, click on Update Avatar to apply it to your account.
Change Personal Photo
A personal photo is similar to an avatar except that it can be much larger, and is only viewable when someone views your personal profile.
Typically, it will be your photo. As with editing your avatar, you can either upload the photo or submit a link to your website.
The photo's maximum file size is 50Kb but the file dimensions can be anything up to 150 pixels by 150 pixels (by default). You can edit these values in the Admin Control Panel.
Options
Manage Your Attachments
If enabled in the Admin Control Panel, when a file is uploaded and attached to a private message or post it is listed in this section of the control panel. From here, you can see which files you've uploaded, and delete any that are no longer needed. Note that deleting an attachment from a post or private message will remove it completely—it cannot be recovered. Every user has an upload quota, and once you have reached that limit, you cannot upload any more files. Therefore, you will need to delete some before continuing, which can be done from this section.
Every file has a checkbox on the right. To delete it, check the box and then click on the Delete Selected button at the bottom.
Manage Ignored Users
Some members can become annoying! If you do not wish to view any posts that they make, you can add them to your ignore list, after which any posts they make will be masked until you decide to read them.
To add a user to the list, enter their username into the box. You can search for users by clicking the Find User button. Once you are done adding, click on Update Ignored Users.
E-Mail Settings
The forum uses e-mail to send out notifications as well as let other members contact each other directly. You can modify several options to control how e-mails are sent to you:
Hide my email address from other members:
This will stop your e-mail address from being seen by other members. They will not be able to contact you via e-mail.
Send me any updates sent by the board administrator:
Include a copy of the post when emailing me from a subscribed topic:
Ticking this box will include a copy of the new message in the e-mail when you receive notification for new replies to a particular topic.
Send a confirmation email when I receive a new private message: If this option is enabled, you will receive a "new message" e-mail notification if someone sends you a private message.
• Enable 'Email Notification' by default?:
You can specify whether you wish to receive e-mail
notifications for a topic after you have replied to it. You can also choose the type of topic subscription you wish to have.
Board Settings
You can further customize the way the forum works by altering the settings in this section. This includes time-zone settings (and compensation for when daylight saving time, DST, is in effect) and viewing of different features in posts.
Change E-Mail Address/Password
You can change your e-mail address or password any time by clicking on the relevant option from the menu. You will be asked to provide your current password and security information to make sure that you (and not an automated system) are making the request!
Moderator Tools
As an administrator or moderator, you get access to three extra options in your User Control Panel:
IP Address Look-up Tool:
This allows you to find out which IP address members are using and who owns a specific IP address. This can be useful for
Member Look-up Tool:
Finding a specific member is made much easier by using this tool. Enter part of a username or the entire username, and you will be able to find out more about a specific user and alter some of their profile and account. To alter all the options for a member, you need to use the member-search option in the Admin Control Panel.
• Manage Announcements:
You can publish announcements on any or all of the forums, and these can be set to appear and expire on a specific date. From the Manage Announcements screen, you can see existing announcements and add new ones.
Searching
Searching the forums is a very common task, especially if you have a lot of useful posts containing information or help. IPB2 includes very advanced search functions that (if using MySQL 4.0.2+) utilize the high performance MySQL FULLTEXT search capabilities.
Users can click on More Options for detailed search options:
Along with keywords, you can search by member or date, specify search location (entire post or just the title), sort results, and choose how they are displayed.
Apart from using the dedicated search page, you can also use the search box that appears by default on the homepage. This is located just above the start of the forum/category list:
The search feature accepts Boolean search terms. This means you can narrow your search down using specific language constructs. For example, you could perform a search forums and forum and fora, and it would search for all three terms. Likewise, you could search for olate.com not olate.co.uk and only look for the first option. For more information on Boolean searching, see ht t p: / / s ear c hengi newat c h. c om/ f ac t s / ar t i c l e. php/ 2155991.
Private Messaging
Private messaging allows you to send e-mail type messages to other members of the forum. You can PM any member using the IPB Private Messaging system. From within the control panel, you have six menu items to manage your messages.
Compose New Message
Very similar to the new post screen, the Compose New Message window allows you to write a new message to send to another member.
If you have members added to your buddy list, you can select them from the address book or can otherwise enter the member's name into the box. On the next line, you can choose to send the messages to (by default) up to six additional users.
The "send to other members" option is equivalent to the CC option for a normal e-mail. If you wish to use it like a BCC option, check the Hide CC recipients from others? option.
The two final options allow you to put a copy of the message in your Sent Items folder for future reference and track the message (see the
Message Tracker section for information).
Message Folders (Inbox, Sent Items, and Saved)
Just as with normal e-mail, private messages are stored in folders. New messages are placed in your inbox and are shown in a list. Clicking on the message displays it for you to read it. Each message has a checkbox on the right to allow you to move it to another folder or delete it. The message-list screen also includes a bar to show you how full your inbox is (the administrator sets this limit). Sent messages are placed in the Sent Items folder only if you choose to save them when sending, and not otherwise.Edit Storage Folders
You can rename any of your existing folders (you cannot delete the three default folders) and create your own new storage folders. Clicking on Edit Storage Folders will show you a list of current directories. You can add a new folder by typing the name into the empty boxes at the bottom of the page. Renaming is the same—change the text in the boxes already filled out at the top. To delete a folder, delete the text from the text box at the top and it will be removed when you click on Submit Changes.
Empty PM Folders
To quickly remove all messages from a folder, click on the Empty PM Folders link. This will display a list of your folders and a total message count. Check the box next to the folder name and then click on Continue. All the messages will be deleted.
PM Buddies/Block List
This serves as an address book and block list. If you add your friends to your buddies list, you can quickly select them from the address book when composing a new message. If you are receiving annoying messages from a certain member, you can add them in a way similar to adding a buddy, except you'd select No from the drop-down menu labeled Allow this member to message you?.
Message Tracker
When you send a message or reply to a message, you can choose to track it. This will add it to the list of messages in your Message Tracker, where you can see if the recipient has read the message.
Once you have checked if a message has been read, tick the box next to it, and then click on Delete or End tracking to remove it from the list. You can even delete the message before it has been read.
Calendar
IPB2 includes a fully functional calendar that allows events to be added. Possibly an under-utilized feature of any forum software, it does have some useful features! The main use is to record members' birthdays. Members who add their birthday to their profile have it added to the calendar. On their birthday, a note appears on the forum index (unless that feature has been disabled in the Administration Control Panel).
Finally, the Add New Event button is located at the bottom right of the page. Clicking this takes you a page very similar to the "add new topic" or "reply to post" page.
After you have entered the event title, you are asked to provide the range of dates for the event. This can be a one-day event or can stretch over several days. You can even change the color of the text and background that shows it is a ranged event. The last option is to set up a recurring event, which happens at regular intervals.
You can make this new event public or decide that it is only relevant to you—your own personal calendar. To make it public, you can choose to only allow users within specific member groups to access it.
Once you are done, click the Add Calendar Event link.
Moderation
The moderator tools will be covered in Chapter 7, Forum Maintenance and Administration.
Summary
A Concise and Practical Guide to Installation, Administration, and Customization
1. Get Community Server Express Edition set up and running fast
2. Learn to manage blogs, users, forums, and file and photo galleries
3. How to customize, market, and monetize your site
Building Websites with the ASP.
NET Community Starter Kit
ISBN: 978-1-904811-00-8 Paperback: 268 pages
A comprehensive guide to understanding,
implementing, and extending the powerful and freely
available application from Microsoft.
1. Learn .NET architecture through building real-world examples
2. Understand, implement, and extend the Community Starter Kit
3. Learn to create and customize your own website
4
Administration Panel
Tour: Settings
The Administration Control Panel is where you can control all aspects of your board; users, forums, and word filters, to skins, templates, and maintenance, all can be taken care of via the web-based control panel.
This and the forthcoming chapters will guide you through the options available, how to use them, and also the optimum settings. This includes:
• System settings
• Defining forums and their settings
• User and usergroup management
• Other features such as:
o The Post Office
o Subscriptions
o Languages
o Filters and BBCode
o Statistics
Clicking on Admin CP will launch the Administration Control Panel.
Another way to access the control panel would be using a direct URL such as ht t p: / / www. ex ampl e. c om/ f or ums / admi n. php, where ex ampl e. c om is your domain name, and f or ums / is the directory name of your forums (for example, ht t p: / / www. ol at e . c o. uk / f or ums / admi n. php).
... and on the right you will see the main content of the menu section that you are currently viewing:
The Menu
The menu on the left is your navigation tool for the control panel. Initially, you will see various blocks, color-coded for ease of use. These are collapsible and will expand to reveal further options when clicked. This method of navigation allows you to hide all the options you do not wish to work with.
The menu frame is scrollable because there are lots of different menu options that you can choose. Since different frames are used, the left menu remains static while you browse the Administration Control Panel, providing you with access at all times.
ACP Home
As soon as you have logged in, you will see the ACP Home. This gives you useful information at a glance. You can quickly locate and edit member's profiles, leave notes for other administrators, check whether you have the latest version of IPB, view statistical data about your forum, and so on.
A log is kept of all administrative actions to leave an audit trail for you. This is especially useful when you have multiple administrators.
The version information only shows 'point' releases where the version number has been increased. For security updates, the version number is not increased because that would allow would-be hackers to identify vulnerable systems. Therefore, it is advisable to regularly check the Invision Power Services forums for updates—ht t p: / / f or ums . i nv i s i onpower . c om.
System Settings
Every configurable option can be altered to fit your requirements from the SystemSettings option. Expanding the menu will reveal several options including shortcuts to common settings (Turn Board On/Off, Board Guidelines, General Settings, and CPU Saving).
A handy search tool makes finding one specific setting very easy. This is extremely useful if you cannot remember where a setting is grouped! All search results will be displayed for you to alter. Make your changes and then click on Update Settings to update all those settings.
Most settings are changed by selecting different radio buttons (Yes or No), checking boxes, or altering values. At any time you can click on the Revert button and the original settings will be restored. In addition, any settings you change from the default value will be highlighted in red. This helps if you make a mistake because it allows you to see what you have changed:
Important Settings
The following pages describe all of the setting options in detail.
However, it is important to change some settings before others. You need to perform initial configuration of your board to get it up and running.
You should configure two main sections first:
General Configuration: This is the very first thing you should configure. You should change the
1.
, Board Name , and
Website Name Website Address to match your site. For example, the Board Name could be Olate Community Forums, the Website Name could be Olate, and the Website Address could be ht t p: / / www. ol at e. c o. uk.
In addition, if you wish to allow user uploads—file, avatar, and picture uploads—as explained in Chapter 3, then you need to change the values in Upload URL and Path to 'upload' directory. You may need to ask your web host for help in filling out these values.
