CyberFreak
Legendary Typer
phpBB3 is much different to phpBB2 in many different ways and offers a lot more feature-wise and security wise.
What is different?
Well in a few words nearly everything is different. The board has a new look to it as you can see. It has alot more features like sub forums, enhanced permissions and the ability to restrict admins permissions with much more (see below). There is a completely new layout of the admin panel and there is a mod control panel for all mods.
What are the new features?
There are many new features available. The main ones are:
sub forums - forums which are inside each other
flood control - set a time a member must leave between posts to stop spamming
Custom profile fields - add you own profile sections and have the option to display them on the registration page
Friends and foes lists - you can reject PMs from your foes and keep track of when you friends are on-line
Birthdays - you can choose to show members birthday at the bottom of forum.
Search Bot recognition - shows when the googlebot, yahoo crawler and so on is online and in the admin panel you are able to add new bots and see the last time each bot visited.
Admin, moderator, user and error logs - keep track of all the actions of your admins and mods to ensure that they are not doing things they shouldn't and see what errors there has been. You can also see all members that have changed user names, emails and passwords.
CAPTCHA - It is adjustable so you can choose how easy or difficult it is
Security - You can force password complexity like numbers and letters, mixed case or must contain symbols. You can force password changes every set number of days. You can also check IP's against DNS Blackhole List for extra security.
Signatures - you can restrict the size and the contents of all members signatures
Board settings - You can set a message to show if you turn the board off line as well as setting how long warnings last.
Warnings - you can warn people via their profiles as well as add user notes.
Test users permissions - You can test out users permission through clicking a links in users profiles. This shows if they can see something they shouldn't. (see screenshot above)
Report system - allows members to report posts they think break rules.
Change poster - you can change the poster of a certain post and see all ips that a user has posted from.
Users - you can prune users and delete users and chose if you want to keep their posts or if you want to delete them as well. Good if you get loads of spammers!
BBcodes and HTML - html is not allowed for improved safety but you can add you own bbcodes to use instead of html which is much safer.
Templates - you have the ability to edit each template through the admin panel for ease of use (this may be disabled with free hosts though to stop users messing up templates)
Attachments - you can set a quota for users and manage file types and you can allow more then 1 attachment per posts and allow attachments in posts too.
Registration - You are able to completely disable sign-ups if you want. You can also setmin and max username and password lengths aswell.
For more features in less detail see here - http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/
Common worries
I have heard many people worry about certain things over and over again.
1) Many have said that that the admin panel looks complicated and that phpBB has lost the ease of use that they had with phpBB2 but they haven't. It may look hard to use but once you look around it is easy to use and it is just the fear of going from something you are used too to something with much more on offer and not using it before and not quite knowing what to expect.
2)Many people worry about the security of the board and phpBB3 has not has any security problems yet and if there is any they will be fixed quickly to ensure that your board is safe.
3) A lot of people worry that if they update that they will lose posts and members. That is not true. If you update your own phpBB3 then if you follow the update instructions it should work, if not you can go back and use the old phpBB2 as it keeps the old phpBB2 tables. If you are with a free host you will not lose anything and you don't have to worry about doing the update.
I will continue to add to this and if you have any questions about anything feel free to ask below and I will try to answer it for you.
Last Updated 25/3/09
What is different?
Well in a few words nearly everything is different. The board has a new look to it as you can see. It has alot more features like sub forums, enhanced permissions and the ability to restrict admins permissions with much more (see below). There is a completely new layout of the admin panel and there is a mod control panel for all mods.
What are the new features?
There are many new features available. The main ones are:
sub forums - forums which are inside each other
flood control - set a time a member must leave between posts to stop spamming
Custom profile fields - add you own profile sections and have the option to display them on the registration page
Friends and foes lists - you can reject PMs from your foes and keep track of when you friends are on-line
Birthdays - you can choose to show members birthday at the bottom of forum.
Search Bot recognition - shows when the googlebot, yahoo crawler and so on is online and in the admin panel you are able to add new bots and see the last time each bot visited.
Admin, moderator, user and error logs - keep track of all the actions of your admins and mods to ensure that they are not doing things they shouldn't and see what errors there has been. You can also see all members that have changed user names, emails and passwords.
CAPTCHA - It is adjustable so you can choose how easy or difficult it is
Security - You can force password complexity like numbers and letters, mixed case or must contain symbols. You can force password changes every set number of days. You can also check IP's against DNS Blackhole List for extra security.
Signatures - you can restrict the size and the contents of all members signatures
Board settings - You can set a message to show if you turn the board off line as well as setting how long warnings last.
Warnings - you can warn people via their profiles as well as add user notes.
Test users permissions - You can test out users permission through clicking a links in users profiles. This shows if they can see something they shouldn't. (see screenshot above)
Report system - allows members to report posts they think break rules.
Change poster - you can change the poster of a certain post and see all ips that a user has posted from.
Users - you can prune users and delete users and chose if you want to keep their posts or if you want to delete them as well. Good if you get loads of spammers!
BBcodes and HTML - html is not allowed for improved safety but you can add you own bbcodes to use instead of html which is much safer.
Templates - you have the ability to edit each template through the admin panel for ease of use (this may be disabled with free hosts though to stop users messing up templates)
Attachments - you can set a quota for users and manage file types and you can allow more then 1 attachment per posts and allow attachments in posts too.
Registration - You are able to completely disable sign-ups if you want. You can also setmin and max username and password lengths aswell.
For more features in less detail see here - http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/
Common worries
I have heard many people worry about certain things over and over again.
1) Many have said that that the admin panel looks complicated and that phpBB has lost the ease of use that they had with phpBB2 but they haven't. It may look hard to use but once you look around it is easy to use and it is just the fear of going from something you are used too to something with much more on offer and not using it before and not quite knowing what to expect.
2)Many people worry about the security of the board and phpBB3 has not has any security problems yet and if there is any they will be fixed quickly to ensure that your board is safe.
3) A lot of people worry that if they update that they will lose posts and members. That is not true. If you update your own phpBB3 then if you follow the update instructions it should work, if not you can go back and use the old phpBB2 as it keeps the old phpBB2 tables. If you are with a free host you will not lose anything and you don't have to worry about doing the update.
I will continue to add to this and if you have any questions about anything feel free to ask below and I will try to answer it for you.
Last Updated 25/3/09
