phpBB 3.2 Discussion

[Highway of Life]

To be clear, it’s quite alright and certainly encouraged to make suggestions and requests for phpBB 3.2 and even phpBB 3.
The line is really crossed when users start making demands, features or changes that they want.
The ultimate decision is really up to the developers, but the phpBB Team does listen to the community, so make your requests heard, but demanding them is only going to make us defensive and probably less likely to take the suggestion seriously.

This is also [one] of the reasons the phpBB Group does not accept donations, once users donate, they begin to feel some kind of entitlement to manipulate the project how they see fit.

[Alfatrion]

prosilver can easily be edited to have the profile info on the left. It takes like 3 edits to the css files.

There is a tutorial for it somewhere on phpbb.com, perhaps in the KB.

I know, it was the first thing I did after installing phpBB 3.0, but it causes other issues with MODs

Edititing CSS files causes issues with MODs? Shoudn't those mod's add a css file instead of editing them?

[Alfatrion]

Tanks for the tip paulus.

What I would like is a options where admins can force ppl to search the forums first before starting a new topic or perhaps even posting something. The user would enter there message, when they post they get the search result and can choice to post it in one of those topics instead.

Thats pretty much a MOD request. Try posting it in [3.0.x] MOD Requests.

The functionality of lots of mods for 2.0 where include in to 3.0. I'm saying this would be nice to be included in to 3.2.

This, to me, seems like a very unique situation that would likely not be used by most people, and in my opinion better suited as a MOD only instead of core functionality.

I don't want to cross the line here... but would like to point out that I administrate a political discussion forum and a technical forum, and this would be handy for both. I'm fine with the decision of the developers either way.

[yais]

Here are the 2 most needed features in my opinion:

1. Sphinx search integration..i hugely dislike the current search.
2. Some sort of "Mod Manager" built into the ACP. All mods validated my phpBB.com will show up in the mods manager and any new version submitted to phpBB.com will also show up with a warning to update.

[Prince of area51]

Here are the 2 most needed features in my opinion:

1. Sphinx search integration..i hugely dislike the current search.
2. Some sort of "Mod Manager" built into the ACP. All mods validated my phpBB.com will show up in the mods manager and any new version submitted to phpBB.com will also show up with a warning to update.

I really like your second suggestion but the sad news is the Mod Manager so to speak is not being developed by Dev Team (although I believe it should have been released with phpBB3).

I believe any system that makes a user manually edit a code is a step backward. I hate the fact to install simple MODs in phpBB, one might end up editing 10 files or so!

[yais]

I prefer manually editing files to install mods as sometimes you have to change parts of the code to work properly, especially with complex mods.

I feel the mod manager is urgently needed as currently, I have to check the topics every so often to make sure I am using the latest version. That takes a lot of time and its difficult to keep track of every mod you are using.

[Eelke]

I don't believe the mod manager should be included in the default distribution. Modding may be the only way to expand phpBB's functionality, but it's by far not for everyone. Including an automated mod manager into the core product is too much like an official "thumbs-up, anyone can and should use this" and I don't think that's a good idea at all [at least not at present time]. Modding will always be for the more experienced users, because especially the way it works in phpBB, there are problems lurking that no automated mod manager can overcome. Offering it as a separate download is a great way to emphasize that. I also think that anyone that wants to download an automated mod manager should be able to prove they have installed at least five mods the manual way (Of course, only kidding, but I do think that, when installing MODs, people should be aware what is going on. People nowadays are used to squeaky clean plug-in systems from e.g. modern browsers and installing a phpBB Modification may look a lot like that when using an automated tool, but what's going on under the hood is a completely different ballgame).

One thing I would very much like to see in 3.2 is phpBB using as much as possible its own extension mechanisms. Currently, there's a separation between standard and custom profile fields and bbcodes. Ideally, the "standard" parts would just be default configuration, not using completely separate code. When I read reports about a new bbcode interpreter, it seems that's exactly what's being worked towards

I agree to an extent that relying on code changes for modding is not ideal, and I think it is a good idea to work towards cleaner mod installation. We should not forget, however, that the current system is extremely flexible, and that it does have its advantages over a more modular, hooks-based system, as well. I think that the direction taken with the module system for the various control panels is a great one, and hopefully the team can expand on that and make more parts of the system modular like that. Hooks at strategic, non-performance-essential places sounds like a great compromise. Maybe at one point, when a good number of mods MODs can do completely without editing core files, that integrated mod-installer would be a good idea after all

[Acyd Burn]

I don't believe the mod manager should be included in the default distribution. Modding may be the only way to expand phpBB's functionality, but it's by far not for everyone. Including an automated mod manager into the core product is too much like an official "thumbs-up, anyone can and should use this" and I don't think that's a good idea at all [at least not at present time]. Modding will always be for the more experienced users, because especially the way it works in phpBB, there are problems lurking that no automated mod manager can overcome.

SMF for example is not any different here. Their "plugin manager" is nothing more than a tool applying code changes (as is our diff engine doing). And a lot of so-called plugins are no more than code changes. The only "fear" here is really only the users think the support team need to support installed mods. Apart from this there is indeed a chance such a tool gets integrated into the core, but then only supporting validated and "for the tool approved" mods.

One thing I would very much like to see in 3.2 is phpBB using as much as possible its own extension mechanisms. Currently, there's a separation between standard and custom profile fields and bbcodes. Ideally, the "standard" parts would just be default configuration, not using completely separate code. When I read reports about a new bbcode interpreter, it seems that's exactly what's being worked towards

Yes, the new bbcode engine will define all integrated bbcodes as "custom bbcodes". Eventually the same with profile fields.

[yutt]

I'm a recent convert from SMF and have been diving into learning to style and mod PHPBB3. Two things I immediately noticed are some of the limitations on deviating from the default styles.

Globally Accessible Style Template Variables
To display the current user's avatar on the index page, you have to make (minor) changes to the actual forum engine. While this isn't terribly difficult on the individual basis, it does limit the creative direction of any strict Style. You can't distinguish a style heavily from prosilver or subsilver without making modifications.

Would it be possible to have {USER_AVATAR}, and other useful styling variables moved to ./includes/functions.php, or ideally to their own separate include that is accessible from any template file in the forum?

Style Specific Language Files
It is also difficult to vary from the default themes when you are required to use almost exactly the same text in order to maintain multi-language support. A simple solution to this would be to allow styles to reference their own independent language file. That way a style could list its own language variables and distribute them along with the style package.

Both of these changes would greatly improve the ability of Style Devs to make creative and unique styles without requiring source code modifications, hard coding specific languages, or fighting the limitations of the current architecture.

[EXreaction]

Yes, developing styles seats yourself in a rather nasty spot if you want to make any real changes other than just to the layout.

If phpBB ever gets a plugin/hook system I'd like to see styles able to use their own plugins which would only be loaded for that style. I built a plugin system for one of the mods I build, the User Blog Mod, and recently I added an option for styles to have their own plugins (users can also select their own styles to use on their blog). It makes styling for it so much more powerful.