Creating the best forum software in the world

[SHOwned]

I am almost starting to wonder if phpBB is being modeled after what people want and could use, or what YOU guys need in a forum? It should be a shame to see phpBB get held back by this.


1.) You all feel that HTML is a security risk if used improperly (I appreciate the added BBcode functionality added in its place, but thats not the point). Perhaps that may be a problem for you guys right here, but what if I need HTML to be posted and displayed on my forum and I can't be constantly making new custom BB codes 5 times a day? You already had the feature programmed in. Maybe make it "off" by default for those that don't know any better? Removing a feature that already exists doesn't make sense to me.

Not everyone needs the luxury of a radio in their car, so what if the majority of people listen to CD's instead of the radio, that doesn't mean every car manufacturure should remove AM/FM capability from every car they produce.


2.) Quick reply might not fit YOUR user base here at area51.phpbb.com or phpbb.com, and may detract from serious discussions, but many forums out there do not have YOUR problem. I am part of one forum that runs off of VB and is known and has a reputation for excellent post quality. It has quick reply. Quick reply is nice in that you can still type a 2 page post in it, you just don't have to deal with the extra step of dealing with all the BS of the screen I am typing in right now, who needs the title? The smilies? The colors? The post options? When you are focused on making a good post, quick reply is nice...you are right there looking at the thread, your thoughts are still intact and you can just start typing, and if you want to review something in full, you just scroll up.

Just because quick reply might send the post quality straight to hell at this forum and the phpBB.com forum doesn't mean it will for everyone out there.

Also, what if someone wants to have a phpBB board that is very active and just zinging with chatty posts?


All I am saying, is that phpBB3 looks VERY promising, and it would be a shame to see it handicapped and turn away potential users due to close mindedness.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate what everyone here has done, and you all have created a marvelous forum that even gives IMO VBulletin 3 a run for its money (hell...a lot of money at that). Just keep an open mind. 8)

[Highway of Life]

I am almost starting to wonder if phpBB is being modeled after what people want and could use, or what YOU guys need in a forum? It should be a shame to see phpBB get held back by this.

They had a Feature Tracker open for quite a while, where people put in the most wanted feature requests, then the Devs ultimately decided what got put in the system, what would have to wait for another version, and what was not feasible. (post voice recording etc)

1.) You all feel that HTML is a security risk if used improperly (I appreciate the added BBcode functionality added in its place, but thats not the point). Perhaps that may be a problem for you guys right here, but what if I need HTML to be posted and displayed on my forum and I can't be constantly making new custom BB codes 5 times a day? You already had the feature programmed in. Maybe make it "off" by default for those that don't know any better? Removing a feature that already exists doesn't make sense to me.

Not everyone needs the luxury of a radio in their car, so what if the majority of people listen to CD's instead of the radio, that doesn't mean every car manufacturure should remove AM/FM capability from every car they produce.

If the AM/FM Radio meant it kept the doors unlocked at all times, then car manufactures would remove them.
That's the equivalent of allowing HTML on your board... you wouldn't drive to town everyday, and leave your car unlocked.
So HTML is certainly not a feature.
Spambot and I tested this extensively... we were able to create a fake page using the HTML feature in phpBB2 that would email a users username and password to a specified email address... and this was just a simple exploit, but it demonstrated how dangerous HTML is to have.
Even ONLY allowing CSS can be heavily exploited, as we've done on STG... it's not a "security" risk, but it gets annoying when people decide to make 40pixel borders on everything on the page. (you get the idea)

2.) Quick reply might not fit YOUR user base here at area51.phpbb.com or phpbb.com, and may detract from serious discussions, but many forums out there do not have YOUR problem. I am part of one forum that runs off of VB and is known and has a reputation for excellent post quality. It has quick reply. Quick reply is nice in that you can still type a 2 page post in it, you just don't have to deal with the extra step of dealing with all the BS of the screen I am typing in right now, who needs the title? The smilies? The colors? The post options? When you are focused on making a good post, quick reply is nice...you are right there looking at the thread, your thoughts are still intact and you can just start typing, and if you want to review something in full, you just scroll up.

Then install Lew's Quick Posting MOD
The Devs did not want to add that feature, so they didn't... there are (amazingly enough) quite a few people out there that do NOT want Quick Reply. In the end, it is/was the Devs decision... we have to respect their judgment on creating really great software, and if we want a unique feature added, install a MOD, it's really not difficult.
We've added it to STG, and I'm not complaining.

All I am saying, is that phpBB3 looks VERY promising, and it would be a shame to see it handicapped and turn away potential users due to close mindedness.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate what everyone here has done, and you all have created a marvelous forum that even gives IMO VBulletin 3 a run for its money (hell...a lot of money at that). Just keep an open mind. 8)

They have, but they also want to be able to keep it "light" and that means dropping some features.
If you want to MOD the heck out of your board, go for it... but the Devs are the ultimate decision when it goes to default features, if we paid for this software, we might have more of a say... but we don't. And I don't care, because it's the best Darn BB Software on the Market, and you certainly can't beat the price.

[Mike.XIII]

I love how Highway of Life's posts always seem to change my mind about something, very convincing, he should be a lawyer lol

The one good thing about not having quick reply is the fact that I don't see so many people making mistakes with the BBCode, when they use quick reply I guess they just type what they think it is and get the code all messed up. Weird because BBCode is so simple, but it seems to be an effective way to teach my users the proper BBCode since no one has had any mistakes in there posts anymore.

[jimmygoon]

As much as I want to agree about leaving features out.... its not like they stop you from adding them back in with a MOD

[Nicholas the Italian]

The best thing IMHO would be to have some modular installation procedure, that lets you decide which components to download/install: the very-vanilla (very basic) version, plus some of the most popular MODs.
Not very different from now (you already can install the core product and then add all the MODs you want), but if it could be done automatically in few steps when first downloading/installing, that would be great. I mean, how many people do you think know that MODs exist?
I don't know how difficult would it be to implement something like this, of course.

The one good thing about not having quick reply is the fact that I don't see so many people making mistakes with the BBCode...

8O
Odd, I have tons of posts with things like
[/quote] or

or quote] etc. in my little phpBB2 forum. It just seems people are not able to get how the thing works (or they don't bother). I used to correct some of them, but now I quite gave up.
That's why I push for very-user-friendly posting/formatting tools.

Edit: Curious, new-line is inserted before/after quote tags even if they're not parsed...

[jimmygoon]

Truly modular (non editing, etc) should be the focus of phpbb4. Make it so modular that you just goto your phpbb4 control panel and see a listing of "trusted" mods from the phpbb4 website and you can click-to-install that would be amazing!

[Ectoman]

If you want HTML in your forum its really easy..

You literally have to change two lines in message_phraser.php (or maybe somewhere else? bbcode.php?)

Ofcourse.. you will leave your site open to attacks (I will drop Iframes into your site).

You could put the strip_tags function back into it.. and only allow the tags you want though.

I hardly see how hard it is to add bbcodes that makes you need to do it 5 times a day. Maybe 5 times total...

[Highway of Life]

Jimmygoon,

You have a good idea there, but actually, we don't have to wait until phpBB4 to have it.

It's not very difficult to make everything a module, phpBB3 was thought out this way, the only thing they are missing are the MODs, but that's a given, since you can't have MODs until phpBB3 is released anyways.
Another example of an on/off option... Lew added the UCP option to turn the Quick Reply on or off on a per-user basis.

Again, I cannot stress enough how important it is to NOT have HTML enabled on your board.
However, there is a solution, but it's going to be a MOD. We are already working on it, but it's not in Beta yet...
The ability for HTML use based on permissions might be okay... for example, you can give your Admins the ability to use HTML or advanced PHP BBCodes without giving your users that same ability.
If you did it that way, then I think people would enjoy it...
It seems the Admins are the only ones who believe the HTML feature is really "necessary".
It's not used much by normal users.

[SHOwned]

1.) You all feel that HTML is a security risk if used improperly (I appreciate the added BBcode functionality added in its place, but thats not the point). Perhaps that may be a problem for you guys right here, but what if I need HTML to be posted and displayed on my forum and I can't be constantly making new custom BB codes 5 times a day? You already had the feature programmed in. Maybe make it "off" by default for those that don't know any better? Removing a feature that already exists doesn't make sense to me.

Not everyone needs the luxury of a radio in their car, so what if the majority of people listen to CD's instead of the radio, that doesn't mean every car manufacturure should remove AM/FM capability from every car they produce.

If the AM/FM Radio meant it kept the doors unlocked at all times, then car manufactures would remove them.
That's the equivalent of allowing HTML on your board... you wouldn't drive to town everyday, and leave your car unlocked.

I agree, but what if I was stuck in a blizzard and needed to get a traffic report on the radio? I would then be willing to turn my radio on and sacrifice the ability to lock my doors (heck im in the car with the engine running anyway). Then I could turn off the radio and lock the doors when I got out.

The ability for HTML use based on permissions might be okay... for example, you can give your Admins the ability to use HTML or advanced PHP BBCodes without giving your users that same ability.

I was under the impression that was the way it was before it was removed. If it wasn't, then I should shut up because I certainly would not allow EVERYONE to post HTML on my board. Most definitely not.

[battye]

.....

Edit: Curious, new-line is inserted before/after quote tags even if they're not parsed...

Submit this as a bug to the bug tracker: http://www.phpbb.com/bugs/