Some requested phpbb mods - no rush at all :)

I wasn't online much last night, but I did get the mini registration written up for you here it is:

In your fetch page FIND:



REPLACE with:



And you can change the hidden form fields. I'll work through teh list after I do some critical work here at the office.

u r 2 awesome!
I did go to phpbbhacks.com and downloaded a few mods - but then had too many phone calls to make
one request (as i'm never satisfied) is a small security number for the guest to register (i.e. anti robotic flood) - for this log in box, and for the normal registering box. on a nuke system, i saw numbers and letters in a gridded box that would make ocr very difficult - versus the cartoonish anti-robotic registration i previously had, where you could not tell a capital from a lower case, and it had some distorted characters - still, thank you so much!
also, i've seen span before - what does it do? thanks again!

In the above code span is just used to define CSS classes. As to anti robotic regestration 2.0.5 has elements of this. It should be easy to turn on.

I don't use it or intend to (when 2.2.0 comes out I'll have to remove that feature).

WOW! Worked perfectly, first try, amazing.
Seriously, I wish I didn't have to lean on you so much and ask you to do extra work - how can i learn this stuff? my undergrad degree is computer science/mathematics, i've written many a program, and i understand MOST of the syntax - but geez, it would take me HOURS to write something like that, if it even worked....

Well, the trick with that one is simply to realize that most of the forms in phpbb can be submitted from other pages. Lot's of mods use that.

For example, the quick reply mods, they are just a form that sends the data to the regular posting page. With this code I giave you, it's just a form sending data to the profile page under register mode.

i figured it was something like that, but there are several things going on (that you may be doing unconciously) but to me is a big deal, which is:
1) locating the posting variables (ok, i can probably do that)
2) correctly inserting so it appears in the right spot (okay, not i'm starting to get into trouble, though even i can figure out it will appear by the "welcome guest"
3) getting it into a coherent, pretty table (okay, now i'm in trouble)

here's yet another question for you - i found an anti robotic registration hack, and it has this requirment:

## You MUST have the GD Lib installed and be
## using php4. Depending on your version of
## GD Lib, it may or may not work on
## a Windows server, so be advised. This is
## a fault of the GD Lib path seeking, not me.

a) do you think I have the gd library on powerweb?
b) i don't recall YOU using an anti-robotic registration mod - doesn't that leave you open to a DOS or robotic registration?

Thing is, getting the stuff into tables and such is basic HTML. If you aren't good with HTML try using a WYSIWYG editor.

As to the anti-robotic registration, I'd not worry about it too much. I don't know if ipowerweb installed GD Lib on their servers so you'll have to ask them.

I don't use it because a DoS attack doesn't need robotic registration to succeed. I am testing and implementing a much more advanced solution at a server level (as opposed to a phpbb level).

The anti-robotic registration foils robots but also some humans. It's not a worthwhile exchange for me.

In any case, all sites are vulnerable to a DoS. It's just about the degree of vulnerability. Any fool could disrupt traffic to teh largest sites on earth. It's not at all difficult to do a dDoS. A site like Yahoo can be taken offline for hours.

So my lil' operation here is no different. A good DoS attack will put it off the air. Once the DoS is over it'll be back.

Other defenses are at the router and server levels. I can make the server reject an IP after a certain level of activity.

But there are ways around that too. The DoS attacker could spoof IPs and rotate them.

So then you ahve to analyze the type of packets you are getting.....


Basically it's a constant issue, simple tricks like anti-robotic registration code will help, but minimally, and I don't consider it worth it.

Now if someone starts doing robotic floods on this site I'd consider implementing it. But there are many other ways to attack my server, a robotic registration flood is not even the main one.

kewl - i figured anti robotic is the way to go, but if my mentor avoids em, well, so will I (at least for today!)
so if i use frontpage or another wysiwyg editor, will that likely help me produce table code? or is the best bet to emulate the tables i find in the modules and hope i get the spacing right?

the other major question i have for you - sometimes when i comment out text, it gets sent to the screen and not treated as a comment at all - is that because it is possibly within a table, and the commenting can't take place there?

Now on to cache.

The cache is simple, it is a way of decreasing server laod. So it should make little to no difference to you (until your board starts consuming large amounts of resources).

Two third party template cache options ship with phpbb. One is database based and the other is file based. The database one is nor very helpful.

The filw one, makes your board run with less of a load on the server.

To use it just rename the template_file_cache.php file in the contib directory to template.php

Then upload it to your includes directory overwriting the original file.

Then you create a directory called cache (the latest versions of phpbb ship with the directory if I'm not mistaken) in your forums directory and chmod it to 777.

I'd not bother with it if I were you. This is somethign I am very concerned with because I get between 50,000 - 100,000 visits a day. The load on the server is always an issue and I keep outgrowing dedicated servers.

So for that reason template caching is huge for me. I am writing my own code for templating as I really need to reduce the server load. phpbb 2.0.x is a load consumer!

phpbb plans to address this emphatically in the 2.x versions but I am writing my own solution in a complex workaroud because I use the code elsewhere (outside of phpbb) as well.

So don't worry about cache unless you really want to.

As to tables, you should either know the HTML behind tables very well or use a wysiwyg editor to draw the tables and then copy the html.

I used to rely on WYSIWYG but now I do not use them at all. Tables was one of the things I left for last to learn.

And about the commenting:

When the code is parsed is there is a tiny error in the way it's commented it will print the comment characters. There are many ways to comment code so I can't tell you one reason that it goes wrong.

Gadget, wysiwyg editors will certainly help you produce table code quickly & easily, but if your wsyiwyg editor screws up a complex table somehow you're gonna have to go in & edit it anyway. I haven't used newer versions of frontpage so I can't speak for that one, but dreamweaver certainly does tables very well. At any rate: LEARN THE HTML!

#2 is an A2K exclusive, but it was a quick tweak, when I get around to the email templates in my current project I'll have a look at how I did it and post the code

#3 eventually I will write up a huge list of modifications you can do to optimize for search engines, it's not just one thing but rather hundreds of little details. But I haven't really tackled the SEO of A2K in earnest yet. When I do it then I'll release the code.

#5) php ads new is pretty easy. And they ahve extensive documentation. Zones are where the ads would be sisplayed, for example you could have a forums zone or a fetch zone.

If you want to know all about phpadsnew let's discuss it in a new topic, it is a huge program with lots of options and possible doubts.

When you get around to it, 'twill be a fantastic resource no doubt.

He he, but people is gonna be pissed, I dunno if you are following the development on the testing forum but I'm removing many links. Gotta keep the pagerank distribution on the pages it needs to be.