1

(38 replies, posted in News)

Is it safe to overwrite the new style/oxygen.css and oxygen_cs.css files with the old ones from version 1.23?

I always have to ask about these file with each update. Is there a way for me to find out on my own?

2

(9 replies, posted in PunBB 1.2 show off)

I really like it. Better probably than my own design. Would you mind sharing the two css files?

It works...

I've made some color changes in the oxygen_cs.css file. Everything is fine except I lost the three dimensional effect in the little blue buttons that appear before forums and threads which have not yet been read.

Which part of the code deals with the three-dimensional colors on the buttons. If I know, I think I can dink with it to straighten it out.

5

(15 replies, posted in News)

Thanks Paul.

One more question, since I can't exactly remember when I made the changes. Are the original first 1.2 version oxygen.css and oxygen_cs.css files alright to also upload and overwrite the newly upgraded files?

6

(15 replies, posted in News)

After doing the update, is it safe to overwrite the new 1.2.3 version Oxygen.css and Oxygen_cs.css with the older files of the same name from 1.21 or 1.22 versions? I've already made some changes in those older files to change color and size, and it would save doing it again.

mysterioz,

Making sure punbb is search engine friendly as you are talking about really needs to be done and should be a top priority. It's very important. Please keep us updated on your work...

One thing that would be very useful is to be able to change the way the title is automatically added to posts. Right now the title of the entire bulletin board appears first , then there is a backslash /, and then the subject of the posts comes next. For example, the title of this post title up in the upper left hand corner is:

PunBB.org Forums / Let's Start an SEO and Web Debelopment Forum...

What would be very handy for search engine optimization is to be able to have the option of using the Forum Name in the title of the post rather than the bulletin board title. If that could be accomplished, then the title of this post would be:

Integration / Let's Start an SEO and Web Debelopment Forum...

What this allows one to do is name the forums in such a way that they are specific for search engine keywords. For example, I might have a web site about fruit. I could then name three forums - apples, oranges and banannas. Those key words would appear in the title of the posts, and that would zero in the search engines specifically to those key words. That would be very handy for SEO.

Great...

I'm going to upgrade to 1.22. I've dinked round the the Oxygen_cs.css file in 1.21 to change the colors, etc.

After the upgrade and the styles are back to the default, can I then overwrite the new and default Oxygen_cs.css file with the old one I used in 1.21? Or, do I have to go in and change the coding in the new Oxygen_cs.css file to get my modified colors back?

Yes, thank you for your work...

11

(142 replies, posted in PunBB 1.2 discussion)

reviewum.com wrote:

I think people should be posting what types of machines / systems their boards are running on.   Do these monster boards (with thousands of users) require a dedicated server like most other forum applications do, or is PunBB efficient & lean enough that it will run well on a shared server or VPS?

Like This:

Total number of registered users: 
Total number of topics: 
Total number of posts: 
DB Size: 
Monthly Bandwidth: 
Host System: Shared server, VPS, Dedicated, Specs, etc.

I second reviewum's request...

12

(6 replies, posted in PunBB 1.2 show off)

Very nice soft color pattern.

You've done something I have been wanting to do. Can you point me in the right direction to perhaps do a search and learn how to do it. Specifically, you put some white space on the sides of the screen when the screen size is large, which I have done also. But when the screen size is less, say it is resized to 800 X 600, the forum is reduced in width but also fits on the screen exactly with no white space on the sides. And it's not a fixed width for the forum, because the forum width on your site changes depending on the screen size. How did you do that.

I have put white space on the size of the forum, but that white space is there on both large and small screen sizes.

Thank you Connorhd. It works fine, now.

When I click the "save changes" button in Administration > Options, I get the following error:

An error was encountered
Error: Unable to write configuration cache file to cache directory. Please make sure PHP has write access to the directory 'cache'.

I double-checked the permissions using both WS_FTP, and the Cpanel file manager. The cache directory is set at 777. And when I installed punbb 1.2 a couple weeks ago I made some changes in the Options and it saved it fine. Another odd thing is that even though I have the Oxygen style picked, the error message is in the Sulphur style.

Any suggestions on the cache problem?

15

(65 replies, posted in PunBB 1.2 discussion)

I think it would be just fine, and very reasonable.

In fact, what would also be very helpful is a thread on where to place the code on our forums, too. I've seen it at the top of forums, on the side, at the bottom, and maybe below individual posts. But I don't know exactly where to put the code to have it work in those locatons. Probably some other readers here don't know, either.

16

(7 replies, posted in Feature requests)

Hi Gizzmo,

I would like to do that with my forum also. I have a smattering of knowledge of a lot of web stuff, but NOT a good knowledge of css or coding. I mostly stumble around, and trial and error things when I have to mess with that. Is it overly difficult to make the board appear as one unit as you did at your site? Are there any fairly easy instructions one could follow.

The way you have made it look is quite good. And I think graphically it is the best way when one has a big contrast in the background color and the main board. If you can tell us you did it, that would be great.

First, very nice software. Thank you very much. It's great when people do this kind of good work and the rest of us can use it.

Four suggestions here. It's possible I may not be seeing how to do some of the following:

1. Animated Avatars - a way to ban them from the board would be great, or at least a way to keep them from doing their animation.

2. Forum subscribe - personally I would prefer this to the topic subscribe. For instance, a host I use puts any really important messages in one particular forum which can be subscribed to. Then if something urgent or really important occurs, I get notified automatically and immediately. But, admittedly this isn't that big a deal.

3. Email export - Is there any easy way to get all the usernames and email addresses?

4. Censor list import - at least the ability to open a file and paste in a whole list of censored words would be good.

Fantastic. It works great, and is easy...

I don't know anything about CSS, yet. But I was fooling around in the oxygen.css file to increase the font size by 2 points to 12px.
I set it at:

.pun {FONT-SIZE: 12px}

And it works like a charm in Firefox. But nothing changes in IE6. I cleared the cache, of course. Is there something I'm not seeing?

20

(9 replies, posted in General discussion)

Funnelweb Analyzer is the best free stats analyzer I have found.

http://www.funnelwebcentral.com/

The download links are on the left.

thank you hcgtv

Connorhd - I did not realize the Punbb pages were the same everytime. I thought they were like the phpbb pages which do change every time. So, maybe I am all wet on what is necessary. It would be a lot easier if I am.

Anyway, I will double check it by doing some searches on subjects of punbb threads, and checking forum info in some other places, also.

thank you hcgtv

I'm not quite sure of the question. But as far as Google is concerned,
forums.mypunbb.org
and
punbb.org
are two different domain web address, or two different web sites.

I guess rather than debate whether the static URLs are best from a search engine optimization and ranking standpoint, I'll work on how to turn the forum URLs into static addresses using .htaccess or the ForceType Directive. If anyone has a link to a very simple tutorial on this to get me started, that would be great.

Search "forum software" and you will find that punbb is not even in the top 1000 results. The problem isn't the index page, because that is a static URL. "Punbb" will come up fine because it is the title of a static page, and it's a keyword with little competition. The problem are all the threads. If the subject of a thread is "dog breath," for instance, that is not going to show up in Google if it is in a punbb forum as it now stands. Neither Google or any other search engine does a good job on dynamic URLs that have the ? and other characters in them. In fact, the ranking will be poor to non-exisistent.

I am not an expert on the why of this, but I am an expert on getting things to rank high in search engines. And I can state for an absolute fact that in order for this to rank well for a lot of terms, which it should if you want to get a lot of traffice, then there must be static URLs. That isn't really a debating point. It's a well known fact among search engine optimization experts. The question is how is the best and easiest way to achieve those static URLs.

25

(13 replies, posted in PunBB 1.2 discussion)

Or, get punbb registered as a trademark and then go after them to get it for free.