Forum set-up & configuration

[Justin Passing]

I'm a bit unhappy with the level of customization this host provides. It seems rather limiting, both on an artistic level and on a technical level. All of phpbb's actual settings seem to be hidden from us, and I'm not real happy about that. I'm no expert, and I'm probably missing something, but I can't find things like log out timeouts, and the backup situation is all or nothing, with no way for me to create a local copy that I could move to another host if need be. I've also discovered no way to archive threads, or more importantly preserve them in a "generally useful" format.

[Logan (Earthmaiden)]

Do you have any suggestions?

[Justin Passing]

Logan,

My original thought was to take the time to learn the phpbb software, but sadly I don't have time to do that right now, and probably won't until sometime later this summer. Then, armed with the knowledge of what we (technically) wanted to be able to do, we'd shop for a host which was both affordable, reliable, and able to give us the features we want. Once the host was settled, people with a flair for the artistic (I'm terrible with such things) could have fun setting up various looks for the place, and hopefully I'd be knowledgeable enough to fix whatever problems arose with the underlying html code.

I was also starting to think we should anticipate having an associated website. That way we could put "permanent" links and articles there rather than littering the forums with stickies. It would also help to give us better presence on the search engines so more people could find us on google or whatever.

[Logan (Earthmaiden)]

.

[melodiccolor]

I'm wide open for ideas on this. Justin, have you checked the free forum support? There's lots of stuff in there for doing some of this as well as answering questions about growing this forum. Then there are the other sites on the admin. bar as well.

It may turn out that they don't meet our needs, but for now, we need to stay in one place long enough for people to find us and for us to set up the site. It will give us time to also find the ideal location if it should turn out that this host is not a good fit.

Give me tools to develop the art side of things, ones that I can understand, and I can develop something great. I may be temporarily tech impaired, but I am artistic.

[melodiccolor]

I just looked over at the phpbb section, and that is where it appears all the customization and downloads stuff is for our forum.

[Justin Passing]

That phpbb site is the support site for the base software Melodi, but we're operating on a highly customized version of it that's much more limited in what we can do. As far as I can see, even the admins have no access to the underlying code, or even the standard phpbb settings pages.

[melodiccolor]

Now that I've finally found the administration panel, I completely agree. I even tried to make a simple change to increase the amount of pm's the boxes will store, but it wouldn't accept my changes. There is not much we can do with this forum. So we'll find another solution.

[Rivershine]

Now that I've finally found the administration panel, I completely agree. I even tried to make a simple change to increase the amount of pm's the boxes will store, but it wouldn't accept my changes. There is not much we can do with this forum. So we'll find another solution.

I just went over there and increased it to 99 because that's how high it will go, so it should be ok now...

[melodiccolor]

How did you get it to accept the changes? I noticed that was as high as it would go, but when I tried to save it, it just went back to the old settings. I tried 3 times.

I guess the program isn't recognising me as an admin, even though it is clearly listed that I am.

[melodiccolor]

I guess I'm not that clueless afterall; it is this forum!! I went and checked and your changes have been rejected too. Apparently, the way it is set up, only Nucky can make the changes right now (???).

Oh dear. (or is it yikes!) (or something stronger....)

[Rivershine]

Sheesh.

[Justin Passing]

General internet wisdom dictates that it's best to only have one admin for a forum, and perhaps this site is enforcing that somehow. That may or may not be true, but I'm not going to take the time to find out right now. We can post, and we can talk, and that's all that really matters.

Settings like the number of PM's we can store can have a large effect on our storage needs on the host's servers, so it's quite likely they don't want it increased. While disk space is cheap these days, it's not infinite, and never will be I expect. Ultimately, given the private nature of PMs, it would be best if people either resolved themselves to deleting their PMs periodically or storing them on their own computers. Online storage is nice, but it's also limiting, and will always be less secure than offline local storage by it's very nature.

[StrawberryLife]

Having a site along it sounds great!! Maybe there could be articles posted as blogs - some blog software is even kinda like 'pages' with a 'tree-like stucture', or so I read...
I had the idea for such a site even back at HSPOTS, pre-VL... but then VL happened... & the idea got (indefinitely) postponed.. I think there were some really great threads at AIMOO already & at the other sites, which would be awesome to be summarized as articles/blog posts!! (Not sure if they would allow us to do so, but anyway, here's an idea... )

Maybe this site could be a bit helpful when running the board (or something similar, there are such sites online..) http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/articles.php I just googled it up.. some articles there seem interesting... (Again, not all things may be doable right now, or best for this board, but at least there are ideas 'out there'...) And it's REALLY great to have this board to discuss things on!!

PS Loga, black labs - sounds AWESOME!!! I always adored them!!! (never had 1 though... - hmm, yet )

[reb]

i just got back from 'the forum of the forums forum' (i shit you not!). had to register to get in there.

there is a slew of help resources; i dint try to plumb them all, as i need to do some outside work...here's the link.

http://help.forumotion.com/rules-important-points-f10/official-support-forums-t2079.htm

reb

[Nucky]

I couldn't increase the private message capacity beyond 50 either, that's the limit of this forum.

[Sponsored content]