Now that we have a different look to the Board - which I’m taking an age to get used to - I have noticed the forum icons more than I used to. I think they must be different. I’d like to know what they all mean, and I would think that that would be useful to others as well. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Red Unread posts (which seems redundant, since there is also a little turned down piece of paper which also shows that there are unread posts)
Grey You’ve read them all
Flame Popular topic, which currently is set to 15 posts or more
You've posted in this topic yourself
As well as that, the ‘i’ symbol appears to mean a global announcement, and as far as I can tell, the light bulb is a sticky … I think.
I’ve been looking for a list of icons. Surely phpBB publishes one somewhere, doesn’t it? If it does, I can’t find one …
… and in the meantime, if anyone knows any other icons and their meaning, please do tell.
There’s an arrow in the circle, which indicates that the topic has been moved. I’m not totally sure whether that’s visible to all though. And it could be that it’s only visible when a ‘shadow’ topic is left in place.
If you click on the red to go to the first unread post in an existing topic then scroll to the posts above it (or click on the red icon within the topic), you’ll see a reason for the colour.
Of course, you can almost certainly theme the board to look however you want, although it’s always easier/quicker to update a stock board than have to worry about theming too.
I can see the arrow in the circle for a topic in the flute forum, however I’m not certain if the single post I can see in that thread is the original post that has since been moved elsewhere (the shadow post?), or if I am viewing the relocated post.
That’s right. In the past the topic title would automatically read “Moved: Blah blah blah” when leaving a shadow topic. We don’t have that now. I don’t recall the icon, but it probably had some kind of arrow, too. It still seems to all operate the same way, though.
I’ve never done it for phpBB, but know how it worked for YaBB SE and SMF, to which I contributed as a team member (not a developer — I wrote documentation). The principles for phpBB look similar: https://www.phpbb.com/styles/
Theming could be anything from simple recoloured versions of the default theme to complete new layouts where you choose where and how to display however much of the database information you want to show. While that page I’ve linked says ‘a powerful templating-system that keeps the PHP code separate from the HTML code’, it’s really talking about the serious core PHP code there because some PHP will still be required in the templates that generate the HTML to display the pages. New graphics (e.g. icons etc.) are another very popular and simple theming mod. Of course, the more non-standard your theme, the more you either need to take responsibility for updating it yourself to keep pace with developments to the basic system or hope that your theme author does. But it’s also usually possible to keep running an older theme if you’re not bothered about keeping pace with new features, at least till the next major version of the software gets released (e.g. I recall themes and mods for SMF 1.x no longer being valid for SMF 2.x). And the way it usually works is to keep the default theme untouched as a backup or selectable alternative with your chosen theme modifying just the templates you need to modify.
Ideally you want to talk to someone with experience of theming the current phpBB, but I’m guessing that ‘a few pet changes’ sounds closer to the simpler end of the theming spectrum than the ‘let’s make it all look and behave like something completely different’ end?
I think one could … my impression, however, is that some of the changes need to be made at server level. We could change the style. However, since, apparently, the old style was one of the things causing issues with the upgrade, I’m a bit reluctant to do so.
It would be nice if we had the “number of times viewed” displayed for topics, that’s one thing that seems to have disappeared with the change.
Is everyone comfortable with the fact that ages and birthdays are being displayed? Seems like TMI available from an infosec standpoint.
Any chance we can finally revisit direct posting of images? This is practically the only forum I’ve visited in recent years still requiring offsite hosting/linking for images.
Have you checked to see if anything you want to do is available as options from your admin pages? If not and it’s just a bit of shuffling etc., I could probably help, but not without installing phpBB on my test server and familiarising myself with its template system first. So your first choice should still be to see if you can find someone who’s done this with phpBB before but, failing that, I do have some experience of this kind of thing…
PS (edit) it would also be a good time to make the site HTTPS!
Yeah, I’ve done that already. It’s cumbersome. As a mod, I found the previous convenience of PMing directly from a post to be highly useful, because that setup automatically referenced the post in question in a quotebox. If I’m to refer to a post’s contents now, I have to jump thru a few more hoops. Doable, but of questionable utility when you’ve been spoiled by the alternative.
Yes, but from what I can see those options aren’t available. Ben probably knows better than I, for by default that’s become his department.
