Clan Forum

[FireFrenzy]

I came across your code via the Promisance entry on Wikipedia, and I do say, I'm rather impressed -- it seems a great deal more advanced than that of any of the other listings. That being said, perhaps it's too advanced for the likes of me as well. =X

My question concerns the Clan Forums. As I prefer working things out by my self, I've extensively searched for information on how to integrate or "synchronize" miniBB into various applications; this tutorial describes what appears to be the exact process you used to perform the integration.

Yet, my attempts have been unsuccessful -- the result is that only the header is loaded after clicking "Clan Forum." However, what really irks me is that even when I simply try your code, the clanforum will display, as it does on your site, but it does not post topics nor link to the manual -- instead, it simply refreshes itself. In basic, it seems to be a static page, and I'm not sure why. I've scoured your site for any information on the topic, finding only this topic on the subject.

Apologies for the verbosity and thanks for any enlightenment!
-FF

[Slasher]

You could post a link to your site (unless it is hosted locally) so we could check it out and possibly help you more on the matter, maybe?

[The Beatles]

Thanks for finding that topic! I'd quite forgotten about it.

We took a much simpler process with minibb than you seem to think. Indeed, we use version 1.7, although versions won't be much of a problem for what you may be trying to do.

Before I answer your question, I do urge you to give FAF a try. It can be customized down to resemble old-style promisance almost exactly, and subsequently, of course, expanded where you see a need. It's very customizable, and probably easier for you to work with.

Now as to integrating minibb. Our signup and clan creation scripts simply insert an appropriate row into the database, where passwords, etc. don't matter. This is why we can avoid synchronization -- we handle all the authentication without minibb knowing about it, and we don't allow users to change names once they've signed up (although that would be an easy change).

We have a clanforum script that sets up correct authentication and includes minibb. You can see the source code of it here:
http://frostnflame.org/?source&script=clanforum
As you can see, it's very simple. Beyond that, we made a few changes to minibb, but just for customisation, and a few to the templates. I think we also changed some includes so everything could go into the minibb folder. To check the sourcecode out in more detail, the download link is at
http://frostnflame.org/?source&bundle=tgz&srv=1
but you may have already found that. I think WinZip or 7-zip handle tgz files if you use Windows. For Mac and Linux, just type 'tar zxvf faf.tgz'.

Hope this helps.

[FireFrenzy]

Thank you for your responses!

Indeed, my development is currently based on your code. It was an idea of few friends and myself (all of whom have being playing EndRev, an Elite Squadrons-based gamed, for seemingly innumerable years) during the bygone academic year to develop our own vision of Promisance for the local community, and your source seemed an ample place to learn and to begin bringing to project into fruition. At the moment it is quite a limited project, managed only by me, but I'd be delighted for you to assess the game and alert me as to your opinions, so that I may do your source code justice.

I appreciate your explanation of the issue. I have gone through your clanforum.php, as well as the miniBB scripts extensively. However, I have even tested the Clan Forums directly after unzipping your FAF code in "htdocs/FAF", setting-up a MySQL database, and altering the config.php file appropriately, and still get the same result. My only two postulates, assuming the basic configuration should work (and does on your servers), are that some part of code has become deprecated or unsupported (I am using PHP 5.2.3, Apache 2.0.59, and MySQL 5.0.37) or that something is uncompatable due to currently hosting via Windows XP (deplorable, I know; I'm planning on setting-up Linux, perhaps Ubuntu, in a matter of weeks), as I've been one of those borish Windows users all my life. Nevertheless, as my familiarity with PHP and MySQL can be measured by only weeks, my postulates are likely quite, let's say, incomprehensive.

For further illumination of my problem, feel free to create an account and attempt using the "Alliance Forums." Continued thanks for your help!

EDIT: Well, I seem to have provided a quick solution to the problem. I found that the server Administrator could view and post in the forums, and likewise focused my gaze upon the forumadmin.php file. What it came down to, it seems, is some sort of permissions discrepancy in "set_var('action', 'vtopic');." After removing that line and fidling around with the miniBB.php file itself, I've managed to get everything working -- though it's likely the kludgiest thing you ever saw.

Additionally, I've been browsing your boards for additional ideas; I came upon this topic suggesting individual Clan Treasury management. Well, I've gotten this suggestion as well, so I made it a top priority. Likewise, though I'm sure it's not as elegant a solution as you all could develop, here's what I came up with; link to it from the Treasury page, add the necessary database entry, etc. and it should be set.

All the best,
FF

[Freenhult]

Mmm. Decided to give it a little poke. If any of the admins want account info to poke things. I'm more than happy to share.

[FireFrenzy]

In the interest of consolidating threads, I'll continue posting in this thread, as my current question likely doesn't deserve more than one or two healthy replies:

What is the procedure you all perform for resetting servers? Do you manually delete entries in the MySQL database, or do they automatically reset? Is there a way to pause the server (rather than simply stopping turns) so to take records of the set? Do you take a .mht or similar archive file of the Scores page for Hall of Fame-type record-keeping, or do you utilize a different method?

Information on the general gist of this would be greatly appreciated!
-FF

[The Beatles]

Sorry for forgetting about this -- I'll post tomorrow.

[edit] That forecast was optimistic, but it's realistic now.