Building Online Communities with phpBB 2, Packt
Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio
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C# Online.NET Book Review
The most popular bulletin board software on the Web is phpBB—PHP Bulletin Board. phpBB is open source and free. It is supported by a large community of users and developers. phpBB is written in the PHP scripting language and uses the popular relational database—MySQL. phpBB is easy to set up and administer. And, it scales well.
"A practical guide to creating and maintaining online discussion forums with phpBB, the leading free open source PHP/MySQL-based bulletin board"
The book begins by installing and configuring phpBB. The simple troubleshooting tips could save beginners a lot of time. Next, the book introduces—virtually— all the phpBB features. You will learn to configure and administer phpBB. Up to this point, the book is suitable for anyone new to phpBB.
In the second half of the book, you will learn to customize your bulletin board, primarily, by creating your own template to customize the site appearance. Despite the authors' easy manner and reassurances, to be successful in template creation, one needs a background in CSS and HTML and, perhaps, a little PHP.
You will also learn how to create and install mods—PHP modifications which are a source of additional functionality. For this, one needs to be comfortable with PHP.
One of the most practical features of the book is a list of phpBB filenames and their uses. These help one locate the correct file to modify or customize. And, there are appendices containing phpBB resources, the phpBB directory structure, a BBCode guide, and the phpBB database layout.
Customizing your phpBB is not an easy proposition. This book can help keep you out of trouble; but, customization is still a very involved and error-prone procedure.
Bottom line
Building Online Communities with phpBB 2 is a useful guide for administrators and tutorial for template and mod hacks.
Publisher's description
A practical guide to creating and maintaining online discussion forums with phpBB, the leading free open source PHP/MySQL-based bulletin board
- Simple, practical steps to build and customize your own phpBB-powered online community
- Learn from experienced phpBB administrators and enthusiasts to get the most from phpBB
- Full coverage of powerful features including customization, administration and developing your own modifications
From the back cover
This book gives you the power to use phpBB to set up and run your own online discussion forums with ease, and develop your own Internet community. It takes you through the whole process of setting up your phpBB site, and helps you create, customize and manage your own online community with phpBB. Written by experienced phpBB administrators and enthusiasts, the emphasis is on simple, and practical guidance for you to get the most from phpBB.
What you will learn from this book
This book will give you the skills to setup your own phpBB-powered discussion forum and online community. You will learn how to create, customize, and manage your own phpBB-powered community.
- Install and configure phpBB
- Learn the basics of working with phpBB forums
- Manage topics, postings, smilies and users
- Understand phpBB themes and styles
- Customize the look of your phpBB site
- * Master forum permissions to protect your community
- Create a phpBB theme from scratch
- Creating a phpBB modification
- Packaging and making your modification available to others
- Custom programming of phpBB
Who this book is written for
This book is written by phpBB enthusiasts for new and intermediate users. It's ideal if you are just starting with online communities and want a powerful and free tool, or if you've already started with phpBB and want to take it further. Anyone with a basic knowledge of HTML and a willingness to learn about phpBB will benefit from this book.
About the author(s)
Stoyan Stefanov is a web developer and a project manager from Montreal, Canada. He has studied in the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, and McGill University, Montreal. He is a Zend Certified Engineer, with more than five years of professional web-development experience and has worked on award-winning websites for companies of all sizes?from multinational corporations to two-man startups. He volunteers his spare time administering and programming a Bulgarian-speaking phpBB-powered online community, and contributing to the PHP community through code and articles.
Mike Lothar has been around as a web designer for several years, both as a freelance artist working for some of the major Danish advertising companies, and as a co-founder of an independent web company. His interest in phpBB and its templates came fairly late. At the time of this book's release, his templates had gained a wide recognition, used by a variety of sites ranging from those of US presidential candidates to those of artists and bands. Mike supports modification and personalization of phpBB skins at his community forum.
Jeremy Rogers has been developing web-based applications in PHP and other languages for a little more than six years. Shortly after discovering phpBB in early 2002 and deploying it on a video-game website, he began tinkering with and learning about the internal workings of the software. Since then, he has authored dozens of expansions and tutorials related to phpBB. Jeremy currently serves the phpBB community as a phpBBHacks Support Team member, a capacity in which he has answered thousands of questions regarding the software, its applications, and related topics.
Table of Contents (abbreviated)
Introduction
1: Introduction to phpBB
2: Installing and Configuring phpBB
3: A Quick Tour of phpBB
4: Customizing Your Forum
5: Forum Administration
6: Creating Your Own Template
7: Creating a New MOD
8: Programming phpBB
Appendix A: Directory Structure
Appendix B: phpBB Resources
Appendix C: phpBB Code and Permission Cheatsheets
Appendix D: phpBB Database Structure
