Liu Seong Gung Fu Forum Features

News and announcements not present on the main page news block, along with some basic forum tips
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kungfujoe
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Liu Seong Gung Fu Forum Features

Post by kungfujoe »

I wanted to let you guys know what we've done to this forum that's not part of the standard phpBB installation, for two reasons - so you know what extra features are available (beyond what you'll find in the standard FAQ), and in case you see some features missing from this list that you'd like to see added (Send me a PM or email with suggestions).

Styles - these are pretty much "locked." I can tweak them or change the default, but adding new ones means uninstalling and reinstalling all of the mods, which is a pain. You can choose which theme you see by making a change to your profile. (I take no responsibility for the names of the themes)
<ul><li>AcidTechBlood Ex - This is the default theme, and what most of you are looking at right now.
<li>AcidTechBlood - The same theme as above, but with a fixed width. On higher-res screens, this will mean you'll have lots of blank space on the sides. Some people prefer that (for reading longer messages), and it was no trouble to add it.
<li>Aoelus - The old default. A slate-blue/cyan theme
<li>BlueAndGrey - A basic, fixed-width theme. The name kinda says it all.
<li>ExtremeDark Red - Another red/black theme like the default, but with more black and dark grey, less red.
<li>subSilver - The default phpBB theme. If you've been to other web forums that use this software, you've probably seen this, since most of them use it. It's a blue, white, and silver theme.</ul>

Mods - these modify the look and functionality of the board, across all themes.
<ul>Mods that affect how you use the forum
<li>Add "Full Name" to Profile - Since real names were encouraged on the old board, I added this mod, which lets people add their names to their profiles. The admins have decided to make these fields mandatory in an effort to thwart would-be spammers and trolls.
<li>Search latest 24h 48h 72h - Lets you quickly see all the posts in the last X hours, instead of just the posts since your last visit
<li>Left/Center/Right Align BBCode - Lets you specify how your text is aligned on the screen
<li>Fixed date format for non technical users - Lets you determine your date format with a pulldown menu instead of the arcane text-entry format phpBB normally uses
<li>Resend Account Activation E-mail - If new users don't get their account activation email, they can request another email</ul>
<ul>Mods that affect how you see the forum
<li>News Block Mod - Allows you to see news items on the main index page.
<li>View Profile Sig - Displays your signature in your public profile, and not just at the bottom of your messages.
<li>Welcome on Index - Adds a simple welcome message if you're logged in, and an invitation to register if you're not.
<li>forum logo setting - Lets us define a forum logo, and lets us make it different for each theme
<li>Auto Shorten URLs - If someone posts a really long URL in a page, this will shorten it on-screen, but keep it clickable
<li>Available characters in signature - Shows you how many characters you have left when you're entering a signature (requires JavaScript)
<li>Better captcha - <acronym title="Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart">CAPTCHA</acronym> is an acronym that refers to visual human-verification schemes. This mod only affects new users registering for the forum, but it makes the visual verification a bit more robust, making it harder for automated programs to create accounts and send SPAM to it.</ul>
<ul>Mods that otherwise affect users
<li>Remote Avatar Check - Keeps users from using a remote avatar that's too big (this affects you only because a really large avatar could mess up the appearance of the page or how long it takes to load)
<li>Profile Only For Logged In - Protects your profile from being viewed by guests. Only registered members can see your public profile.</ul>
<ul>Mods for administrators (most of you won't care about these, but I'll list them anyhow)
<li>Admin Userlist - Lets admin manage user accounts more easily, without having to type a user's name in.
<li>Admin phpInfo - Lets admins see various info about the version of PHP installed on the server
<li>Styles Usage counter - Lets admins see how many users are using each style (on the style management page)
<li>Ban reasons - If admins need to ban anyone for some reason (hopefully that never happens), they can add in some text explaining the ban
<li>Forum Meta Tags - Lets admins define meta tags to help search engines categorize our forum.
<li>Fix username and password for FireFox/Netscape browser - When admins edit another user's account, this prevents Firefox from plugging the admin's password into the user's account, which could result in the user's password being accidentally changed.
<li>Change Poster - Lets admins change who posted a message - installed primarily to help us manually move the forum over from the other server. Otherwise of limited use.</ul>

If you ask for other features and I am able to add them, I'll add them to the list in this sticky message.
Erik Harris
Chinese-Indonesian Martial Arts Club

"A man's not a man when he takes the lower road,
Dragging his tail to cover his tracks" -dTb