1 Topic by trenchnz (edited by trenchnz 2010-06-04 01:25)

  • Registered: 2010-06-01
  • Posts: 18

Topic: Looking for advice.

Hello punbb community.

I need to try to chop up a forum software package to use on a new business website. The site is my own idea, and is a first for my country, and I am starting it on a shoe-string budget, and as a result, and trying to do as much of the work myself, despite having very little skill.
The idea will be to enable users to list materials they have that they don't need anymore, and advertise them in front of a national audience.

  I have spent weeks chopping up phpbb, removing a heap of functionality and changing words and phrases to suit the site, but a recent crash has left me unable to restore the database successfully. I have ended up here after being recommended punbb, and did a quick installation of it, and I absolutely LOVE the software, it's clean, it's easy to understand, and seems to be a lot faster in it's execution.

My questions are:
How easy is it to chop up the coding?. I need to remove a lot of functionality that just won't be needed, but can I do this without ending up killing the software completely?.
As an example, i would be removing links like "active topics, new topics and unanswered topics from the top right hand side of the page.
   On the bottom right of the screen are "total number of posts" and "total number of topics". I would need to chop out the total posts one, and rename the other one to "total number of listings"

This was the sort of stuff I modified in phpbb, and cannot really afford to spend weeks doing it again. I was hoping punbb would be easier.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

  • Slavok
  • PunBB Developer
  • Offline
  • From: Russia
  • Registered: 2008-06-11
  • Posts: 1,238

Re: Looking for advice.

trenchnz wrote:

How easy is it to chop up the coding?. I need to remove a lot of functionality that just won't be needed, but can I do this without ending up killing the software completely?

In my opinion, it will be very easy to remove some functionality.

trenchnz wrote:

As an example, i would be removing links like "active topics, new topics and unanswered topics from the top right hand side of the page.

To remove the "Active topics" link, you need to remove the 204 line of the "<FORUM_ROOT>/header.php" file. Other links removed in the same way. To completely forbid these actions, remove the 'show_new', 'show_recent', 'show_unanswered' values from the $valid_actions array at the 823 line of the "<FORUM_ROOT>/include/search_functions.php" file.

If you have some questions, ask here.

Slavok's Website

3 Reply by trenchnz (edited by trenchnz 2010-06-05 21:35)

  • Registered: 2010-06-01
  • Posts: 18

Re: Looking for advice.

Thanks very much Slavok, that is very helpful. I have just redesigned my homepage, and am starting on the punbb side of the site. I will probably annoy you again soon.  tongue

4 Reply by trenchnz (edited by trenchnz 2010-06-08 23:32)

  • Registered: 2010-06-01
  • Posts: 18

Re: Looking for advice.

Okay, I have edited a bit of code out, and it's coming along nicely thanks to your generous help. I have a another couple of questions if you wouldn't mind helping me out. A lot of the questions I am answering myself as I open up various parts of the files, and experimenting, but I am stuck on these ones.

Searching:
Is there a way to make the search system automatically search by posts. It seems to default back to topics, and my board will have to search by posts to work properly.

Backup.
If I am modifying code, and changing files, what would the backup procedure be?. I would run backups every night, but if I had a hacker bring the whole thing down, what order do things happen in?
Re-install punbb - do I have to make the new database excatly the same name/user as the original?
Do I then run the back up once it's reinstalled, or upload the modified files first, then do the restore?

Thanks troops.