If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
Best Free PHP Forum Software?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Using phpBB 3 - don't really think too much of it - especially how you go about having to upgrade to stay current with latest security patches - any other suggestions?
0
Comments
with phpBB everything is a hack and not very automated.
One feature I'd like to have is say a person cannot post a new thread within 24 hours of joining - just something to put off spammers.
I also see about 100 automated bots are joining the forum site everyday - although not getting as far as the confirming of their email addresses - would like to stop those if possible.
Try MyBB.
I've heard lots of good stuff about Simple Machines Forums.. I think they are free too..
Oh and Phbb is terrible for leeting spammers through, the simplepress forums makes you complete a calulation before you can post.
Also for Wordpress theres a plugin called "Bad Behaviour" it stops spam bots, and does a good job of it.
I think it's also available to install on your server/site that isn't Wordpress based.
phpBB is good, but phpBB3 is a pain to setup. Once it is setup it's okay. Regardless of the forum software, you will need to change its signup process.
It's quite popular so I shouldn't go too far wrong, although it's a hole big pile of hassle as I have to put it inside a paid membership site..
So might be a while before you see the results.
yeah I know that BUT I like the way it works.
Adding new features ad doing upgrades is so easy with Wordpress.
Ideally I want a Forum software Script that works in a similar manner
I've just seen this update and would like to apply it but afraid of screwing up the existing board
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1625005&sid=9d3153366a631af15c84804bbbf4082b
The board I have is currently version 3.0.1 and the upgrade to 3.0.5 doesn't seem very straight forward.
I'm sure there are lots out there.. Not sure where to find them though.
I added Simple Machines and I'm happy with it.
I ended up getting a *cough*copy*cough* of vBulletin to play with. For modification purposes, it's second to none.
Check out www.hybrid-gamers.com and go to the bottom (theme chooser) and pick out the Matrix Online (MxO) theme I made. Rather pleased with that one
But it is officially a pay-for software, and you can't get plugins for it unless you're registered (we eventually purchased a license)
http://starfoxtj.phpbbhelp.org//phpBB/toolkit/
good for exporting the email addresses of the people in your database.
Virtually nothing added to help get rid of spammers or simple tools to email certain groups of people on the forum.
Although there seems to be some improvement to stop spammers registering now in the first place.
Spam account registrations have gone from around 10 per day to 0 in the 9 or so days since the upgrade. A mod in phpb2 meant in phpbb2 we got no spam either so I'm glad its swiftly gone. Spam accounts are easy to get rid off as mod/admin, simply find the account or a post by the user, go into profile, administrate user then delete account, block IP and remove all posts, done in two or three clicks. Piece of cake.
Its also easy to email groups, as an admin go to System > Mass email and just pick a group. If emailing three groups it will take 3 individual attempts but otherwise its stress free.
Before I relaunched it on a new server it was established on a free forum site (forumup) and was seriously limited in what could be done.
I'd like a simple way to email or select all the people that have a URL in their personal info field and who have never logged in once or posted to say come back, log in and post something or I'll delete you.
Have you any captcha for signup?
Because I know exactly why this happens.
There is software out there that automatically crawls for certain forums, signs up and posts a barrage of whatever the user wants it to.
If it's generic web based automated spam you could probably single out the Ip's.
Also something called "Bad Behaviour" is a very good option for keeping bad bots off your site.
However I've just followed the advice in this page and added 3 different additional fields with 3 different questions to answer when registering
http://www.everything31.com/2009/05/using-profile-fields-in-phpbb3-to-stop.html
Hopefull tthat should be enough to stop the spambots.
I was hoping adding some more questions above would stop the spam bots but they still keep on coming - I have noticed in 90% of cases they're using GMAIL as their email address
It's most likely semi-automated posting software.
It's going to be difficult to stop those.
I haven't had any on my forum mind you but I would search for auto forum post creator or something like that, you'll find it there somewhere, it's pretty darn good as it's only semi-auto.
You'll see which forums it works on and if there is one it wont work on.
Really interested in looking for a hack that would close accounts that haven't been authorised within a couple of days - just haven't the time at the moment.
I activated as many things that came as standard as I could without making the sign up process so unreadable that humans would have problems signing up ..
... Anyway I found a MOD for the forum software which actually changes the entire background and since applying that not a single new registration - so - so far - so good.