divya Posted October 2, 2004 Share Posted October 2, 2004 So, I am thinking about using either IPB or phpBB (or some other software). I need to get some help here. 1. Is IPB 2.0 available? It has threaded views which is important to me. 2. I wanted my Forum to be "Invitation Only". 3. Can access to forums be controlled? Or another way to put it is, can I have multiple forums that share a common user base? 4. If you chose IPB, what were the features of the most interest to you? 5. If you choose phpBB, what were the features of the most interest to you? Thanks in advance for your interest. Divya Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 1. I am not sure if it is out yet, it it is you should be able to install it on your site. 2. You can do that. 3. You can control user access however you wish. Hide forums, make is password protected. It is up to you. 4. I like the fact that you can have sub forums out of the box with IPB, modding it is relatively easy as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divya Posted October 3, 2004 Author Share Posted October 3, 2004 According to http://forums.invisionpower.com/lofiversio...hp/t150100.html, IPB 2.0.1 is available. This forum is hosted on IPB v1.3. I had assumed that IPB v1.3 was freely available through TCH? Is this true? If not, what subscriptiuon model is used? And do these answer apply for IPB 2.x Here are the requirements for IPB2: * PHP 4.1.0 (or better) * MySQL 3.23 (or better) Thanks Divya Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted October 3, 2004 Share Posted October 3, 2004 My cPanel shows 1.2 and these answers should apply to 2 as well. We are running PHP version 4.3.8 MySQL version 4.0.20-standard Should be enough to get you going but you will have to do a self install if you plan on running 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divya Posted October 4, 2004 Author Share Posted October 4, 2004 Hmm, what's a self install? And how do I do it? Do I need to pruchase my own license of the forum software? Also, one question I had was - is IPB v1.2 available to deploy for free? Because it may be best for me to try out v1.x first and then decide about when to move to v2.0. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted October 4, 2004 Share Posted October 4, 2004 1.2 is free in cPanel but I do not know about using it for commercial use. I think there is a license fee for 2.x. A self install is that you download it from the IPB site and upload and install it yourself in the directory of choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted October 4, 2004 Share Posted October 4, 2004 IPB 2.0 is available, as mentioned and yes, their licensing scheme has changed a bit. Or at least theyre trying to make it seem that way. With IPB 1.x, the license clearly stated that you could use IPB for non profitable forums, for an undefinite time, without paying anything. They don't say the same thing for IPB 2.x. They say you can use the trial version and they kind of leave the question in the air of whether you can use it for as long as you like or not. But don't take my word for it, I wasn't paying much attention while I was reading the license, since I was in a hurry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divya Posted October 4, 2004 Author Share Posted October 4, 2004 Great. Thanks for the answers. I'll try out IPB v1.x and then when ready, I'll move onto IPB 2.x ... I think that's the best approach. Now, how do I go about setting up Secure IMAP/POP3/SMTP access? What is the procedure to get a SSL Certificate? I wanted to get one from http://instantssl.com. Divya Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted October 4, 2004 Share Posted October 4, 2004 Why not start with IPB 2.0 right away? As long as the license is free (as I think it is), I don't see any reason for you to install 1.3 and then having to upgrade to 2.0. Save yourself some work About the certificate, I Can't help you there, never used those - which is quite a hiatus in my experience as a sysadmin... must remedy that soon :\ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oompahloompah Posted October 4, 2004 Share Posted October 4, 2004 Just out of curiosity, why is phpBB so much larger than IPB despite my perhaps-misguided impression that IPB has so much more features than phpBB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 I'm taking your word for it (I didn't check the sizes) but if it's indeed larger than IPB, than it's strange, because IPB does have TONS of features that phpBB doesn't have. Perhaps it's just poorly coded... :\ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darkwoof Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Guys, IPB 2.0 is no longer free, and a downloadable trial is no longer available for non-customers. There is a 15-day hosted trail on their servers though, I believe. 1) IPB 2.0 is already out, there's also an upgrade to v2.0.1 2) You can set it such that guests are not allowed to view your forums (thereby requiring them to register), you can also set the account validation to be "admin only", meaning only people you approve of will get access. 3) Forum access is controlled by means of usergroups and permission masks (you now can have primary and secondary usergroups and combine them as necessary to customize the level of access each user has) as well as forum specific password protection. 4) I chose IPB for the user permission system, ability for unlimited forums/categories and subforums, clean user interface as well as their lifetime license (lifetime support and upgrades) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Rob Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 2) You can set it such that guests are not allowed to view your forums (thereby requiring them to register), you can also set the account validation to be "admin only", meaning only people you approve of will get access. 3) Forum access is controlled by means of usergroups and permission masks (you now can have primary and secondary usergroups and combine them as necessary to customize the level of access each user has) as well as forum specific password protection. I believe one can still do this with earlier versions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 IPB 2.0 is no longer free I think it sucks Yuck! First they want $69.95/year Then they want $275 for copyright removal. If I buy something I expect it to be mine as long as I pay for it. I guess they will loose a lot of potential customers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darkwoof Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 Rob is right, for earlier version you can already set forum password and usergroups. What is new in the permission system v2.0 is the addition of permission masks and secondary user groups. Let's say we have 4 forums: Biology Physics Law Marketing We can set permission masks to correspond to access to the forums (i.e. Biology mask to give access to Biology forum, as so on.) So now we have 6 permission masks: Biology Mask Physics Mask Law Mask Marketing Mask I can then create some usergroups: Biology Usergroup (uses ONLY Biology Mask, access to Biology Forum) Physics Usergroup (uses ONLY Physics Mask, access to Physics Forum) Business Usergroup (uses BOTH Law Mask and Marketing Mask, giving access to both forums) I can also have multiple usergroups for a member, for example, John might be a Business (both law and marketing) student, but also takes Biology. So I'd set his Primary usergroup to Business and Secondary usergroup to Biology. If he takes Physics as well, I can add that as an additional Secondary usergroup too. Alternatively, I can just set his Primary usergroup, and apply the Biology and Physics permission mask to him as well. Having permission masks within usergroups allow you to finetune the form access better. Having multiple applicable permission masks or usergroups allow you to stack the access levels, allowing for greater forum access control. Bad thing is the price though. It's rather expensive IMO. You can own it for as long as you want if you buy the lifetime licence, but it costs $199. I can't be bothered with spending $275 for the copyright removal though. It's just a small text link anyway. Already quite a number of users are annoyed by the change in their policy, but I guess such things do happen sometimes in business. Can't expect everyone to be like TCH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 So, IPB is no longer free... good. Now I can stop whining about how much I'd like it to be Open Source and get out of this indecision: no more IPB for me Back to Google, searching for good forum scripts. If only phpBB 2.2 would move a little faster... :\ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 IPB 2.0 is no longer free I think it sucks Yuck! First they want $69.95/year Then they want $275 for copyright removal. If I buy something I expect it to be mine as long as I pay for it. I guess they will loose a lot of potential customers. Thomas, you are purchasing a license to use it. Don't get me started on license fees. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Thomas Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 No, but what I mean is like here on TCH there is no need to show the link to TCH. We do it if we like a link back (for free). With IPB it costs alot of money even to use it and if you want the link to ipb removed you need to pay for it. Like if TCH put a link on each site and told us it would cost to have it removed. Bill would not have this many customers then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Bruce Posted October 5, 2004 Share Posted October 5, 2004 I see what you mean. Yes, it is a bit excessive what they charge to remove the copyright. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divya Posted October 6, 2004 Author Share Posted October 6, 2004 Hmm, so I am back to my original question - which forum software to use. I was looking forward to using the IPB's THREADED view of forums. I'll have to wait and see what other forum software is available for a reasonable cost. (I don't mind paying for one, but I do mind the approach that IPB has taken with 2.0). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divya Posted October 6, 2004 Author Share Posted October 6, 2004 FWIW: I found a listing of some available forums at this site: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59251 Comments on the Forums listed? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LisaJill Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 Even more discussion board software. =) I admin a phpbb forum on a friends site and quite like it. But I dont' really have much more to input. =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borfast Posted October 6, 2004 Share Posted October 6, 2004 divya, take a look at the upcoming phpBB 2.2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
divya Posted October 9, 2004 Author Share Posted October 9, 2004 Hi all, I have decided upon using IPB 1.2 as available through my CPANEL and will wait to upgrade. I think that both of the following all will likely meet my needs: -- IPB 2.x -- vBulletin as these are the boards that I have found being used at most of the sites that I have frequented. Also, it seems that IPB's new licensing is in line with other non-Open Sourced forum vendors. FOr example, vbulletin has similar restrictions. Can anyone point me to a tutorial on how to use IPB 1.2? Is there a HowTo document for most common things that people want to do with the forums? Regards Divya Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TCH-Don Posted October 9, 2004 Share Posted October 9, 2004 There are a few things you can change listed in our Third Party Script Tutorials And besides the IBP site user guide they have a page for Unofficial Third-Party Resource that may help. My advice, is to use ftp to download the files you want to change and have a back up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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