phpBB 3.2 Discussion

[Prince of area51]

Well I personally thing 'roles' make it easier to handle permissions. What lacks is an explanation and understanding. I do plan to do some flash videos explaining what are roles and how they make the permission system a walk in the park. I've found that creating forums and assigning permissions in Olympus is a lot less time consuming than phpBB 2.x I'll see if can get something round for the weekend

[Malphas]

I think the permissions system is far far superior in 3.0 than 2.0, although it would be nice if it were possible to view all of them on one page at once somehow.

[Highway of Life]

I just skimmed through the replies in this topic and wanted to address a couple of them.

First of all, Quick Reply, it’s probably the #1 most requested MOD for the last 1¾ years that I’ve been watching the development of phpBB3. I’m sure many of you remember when "Quick Reply" was even in the Area51 word censor. I think at this point the Developers are well aware of the request to add it into the core of phpBB3, but once again, I’m sure you all know their stance on it.

no way

Whether or not we agree with it.
Any questions?

Automatic MOD Installer.
For those of you who have been listening to the phpBB Podcasts (as you should. ) ... you would know there is an MOD Installer for phpBB3 that is coming called “Blinky” (aka PacMan, Package Manager). The MOD Team has been working on this for some time and we’re still working on it, and you know the regular rhetoric “It will be done when it’s done” but we do hope to have something prior to 3.2 release, unless the Devs get freaky and crank out 3.2 like there’s no tomorrow.

@Malphas, viewing all the permissions on one single page would be near impossible if you wanted to list everything that it was associated with. If you just want to see what types of permissions are there, I encourage you to crack open the file: /language/en/acp/permissions_phpbb.php -- this will give you a quick description of what all the permissions do.
Doubtful that something would come out that would list everything all on one page, though it would be easy to make a MOD/module to do that (no code edits required. )

@Prince of area51, if you would like to submit a feature for consideration for 3.2, I would suggest submitting a new ticket to the 3.0 Feature Tracker.
If you have any suggestions on how to make the permissions system easier to understand, we’re certainly all ears.

[Malphas]

I just skimmed through the replies in this topic and wanted to address a couple of them.

First of all, Quick Reply, it’s probably the #1 most requested MOD for the last 1¾ years that I’ve been watching the development of phpBB3. I’m sure many of you remember when "Quick Reply" was even in the Area51 word censor. I think at this point the Developers are well aware of the request to add it into the core of phpBB3, but once again, I’m sure you all know their stance on it.

no way

Whether or not we agree with it.
Any questions?

Yes. Is there any legitimate reason for this, other than a personal distaste for quick reply on the part of the developers? For instance, does it require any more work to implement/use any more resources/have less userbase demand than, say, the Friends/Foes feature - which to me, for example, is utterly pointless, yet I have no problem with it being included by default since (I assume) there are many other people that find it a necessary or worthwhile feature.

[Prince of area51]

If Quick Reply Mod would've taken me 30 minutes to install, I would've made an issue about it. The problem (which I think) with adding Quick Reply in the core is requests for it, sooner or later it would become the post reply page at the button of the page (with all the bbcodes, smilies, etc). Thats the reason in the earlier post, I said its better to have this kind of a feature in the Modders hand, because then you would have a variety of options to choose from.

Yes, the friends/foes list might seem pointless but I think its was done for the 'hide-away-the-post' if the member is in foes list. To be honest, I think phpBB should start doing libraries kind-of approach, the core is simple and straight-forward. People can get 'libraries' that can be added, for example, this friends/foes feature, point system, topic ranking, etc. Someone might say, we already have Mods for that. But I'm thinking something like Wordpress, drop the files in a folder and install it from the Admin Panel and your done.

If you have any suggestions on how to make the permissions system easier to understand, we’re certainly all ears.

I think the permission system rocks, its the best than ANY (paid, unpaid, leased, rented, you get ma drift ) other BB has got. I think we need to explain roles a bit more to the user. Instead of always going and editing permissions, how they can create a role and keep using that.

[Tienchen]

Hi!

About Quick Reply: Use the mod. And perhaps (hasn't Highway developed it?) make it such easy for 3.2: Download -> Go ACP -> Automatic Install the mod uploaded from your PC (at least the CMS I work with handles Mods that easy). But when developers have decieded, there And with other mods too of course. And I think Quick Reply is a nice feature, but not a "we have to have it". And I think the commercial ones (VB/IPB) have too many widely unused features (like the way the topics are listed).
I really like the permission system as is.
Michael

[ChrisRLG]

The problem with the premission system is, it is not complicated enough.

So many features of a Moderator are given as default as soon as they have an additional feature that as a mod function that to me I cannot give room mod powers to anyone anymore. Could with v2

EG - if you give them the power to edit other peoples topics in one single room, they auto have access to all the user notes and moderator logs etc.

The timer edit feature is very nice to give everyone say 15 minutes to edit thier post before it is set in stone - but it is global - not by room, so if you make use of the timer feature, you cannot have a single room where everyone has the power to edit forever. Its an all or nothing global setting.

I can see a lot of those type of settings needing more involved permission settings rather than less.

[Tienchen]

@ChrisRLG:
Then the best would be "standard" permission system and a "extended" permission system. Because even more permission are for non-technical users not all the way phpBB3 should get. Best is as simple as possible, but when the extended permissions are wished, then there should be two different system (like per default the standard, when going at a "extend" link this ones... Ok, then we have three different...)

[ChrisRLG]

We already have the 'Roles' system for that - with predefined settings that most will use.

[Pit]

Yes. Is there any legitimate reason for this, other than a personal distaste for quick reply on the part of the developers?

Personal distaste is a legitimate reason. But I believe* the dislike for Quick Reply to be based in the phpBB philosophy of seperation of concerns; that forum software should be just that, and not take on the aspects of a chatroom. To employ the beloved slippery slope funslide argument, including features not appropriate to phpBB's mission would merely attract and encourage those whose goals are orthogonal to those of phpBB.

Although it does not seem the extra barrier of the posting page is fully effective against poorly structured and meaningless conversation, it does seem at least to fall into the Chit Chat honeypot.

* Based on the constant restatement of this opinion by phpBB developers.