EasyForum! 2.x README


Description and features

Easy Forum! 2.x is a Bulletin Board System written in PHP. The output produced by Easy Forum! 2.x is very small, 100% XHTML1.1 compliant and also looks fine with any modern browser which supports HTML4+ and JavaScript.

Features

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License

Easy Forum! 2.x is distributed under a GNU General Public License (GPL): http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

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How to install EasyForum! 2.x

  1. Extract all files in an empty directory keeping the directory structure
  2. Upload that directory (and all files/subdirectories in it) by an FTP program
  3. CHMOD: 
     the subdirectory:  /data         to 777
 the subdirectory:  /backup       to 777
 the file:          -members.php  to 777
    ------------------------------

    CHMOD means to change permissions/attributes of a file or a directory on a Linux/Unix system usually by an FTP program.
    If you are running a Windows server this can be done from the admin panel (in most cases).

    ------------------------------

  4. Run a browser, type the URL: http://yoursite.com/forum/index.php and post a test topic
  5. Enter the admin panel to setup an ADMIN password: http://yoursite.com/forum/admin.php
  6. Add a second (third) forum: create two new subdirectories (data2 and backup2), CHMOD them to 777 and register these changes in config.php
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How to upgrade from a previous version

* OVERWRITE ALL FILES means to replace the files from the main directory and ALL SUBDIRECTORIES with the new ones!
  If you have an FTP client which is able to compare files, you can keep those which are the same.
  For best result first delete all files except the ones from the subdirectories /data, /backup and -members.php and then upload the new files!
  Note that upgrade1.php and upgrade2.php are zipped in upgrade.zip and should be extracted separately if necessary.

* Upgrading from version 1.x to version 2.x is not recommended! The forum will work fine but won't be XHTML compatible!



   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 2.1/2.2/2.3/2.4:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones -> REMEMBER TO KEEP YOUR PREVIOUS "-members.php" FILE AND ALL 'DATA' FILES

   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 2.0:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones -> REMEMBER TO KEEP YOUR PREVIOUS "-members.php" FILE AND ALL 'DATA' FILES
  2. Delete the file data/psss and enter the admin panel to setup a password

   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 1.6:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones -> REMEMBER TO KEEP YOUR PREVIOUS "-members.php" FILE AND ALL 'DATA' FILES
  2. Delete the file data/psss and enter the admin panel to setup a password

   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 1.4 or 1.5:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones -> REMEMBER TO KEEP YOUR PREVIOUS "-members.php" FILE AND ALL 'DATA' FILES
  2. Convert -members.php by running the file upgrade2.php ONCE (and then delete upgrade2.php)
    e.g. http://yoursite.com/forum/upgrade2.php
    If you run upgrade2.php more than once you'll lose your 'members' file!
  3. Enter the admin panel to setup a password

   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 1.3:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones
  2. CHMOD -members.php to 777
  3. Enter the admin panel once to setup a password

   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 1.2:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones
  2. CHMOD -members.php to 777
  3. Create a new directory backup and CHMOD it to 777
  4. Enter the admin panel once to setup a password

   If you are going to upgrade from EasyForum! 1.0 or 1.1:
  1. OVERWRITE all files with the new ones
  2. CHMOD -members.php to 777
  3. Create a new directory backup and CHMOD it to 777
  4. Convert the contents of your data directory by running the file upgrade1.php ONCE...
    e.g. http://yoursite.com/forum/upgrade1.php
  5. Enter the admin panel once to setup a password
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How to set your own colors and settings

First of all, open config.php by a text editor and go through the settings!

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If you'd like to involve some parts of your site in the forum, you can do it using the files incl/cust-top.inc (header) and incl/cust-bot.inc (footer).
Everything in both files will appear at the top and respectively at the bottom of the forum pages.

Take a note that you mustn't put there any starting and ending HTML tags such as <html></html>, <head></head>, <body></body>. 
  <html>
  <head></head>
  <body>

  --- any data from 'incl/cust-top.inc' goes here ---

  ... forum goes here ...

  --- any data from 'incl/cust-bot.inc' goes here ---

 </body>
 </html>
The file incl/cust-top.inc currently contains two different multi-forum navigation bars and links to the wap version and the RSS feeds.

You can replace the title EasyForum! 2.x appearing at the top of the forum with any other title you wish or just insert an image tag: (lang-xx.inc, line #6).

If you do not expect visitors from other countries you can make the forum show your local time, the months in your language etc.
Replace the function time_offset(){...} (config.php) with the following lines: 
---

function time_offset($s){
setlocale (LC_TIME,'xx_XX');
$time_format="%d %b %Y, %H:%M";
return strftime($time_format,$s);}

---
where xx_XX is your country code: 
NETHERLANDS     =  nl_NL (on Win systems: nld_nld)
FRANCE          =  fr_FR (on Win systems: fra_fra)
UNITED KINGDOM  =  gb_GB (on Win systems: gbr_gbr)
SWEDEN          =  se_SE (on Win systems: swe_swe)
SOLOMON ISLANDS =  sb_SB (on Win systems: slb_slb)
etc etc etc
more country codes: http://www.unicode.org/onlinedat/countries.html
arguments for $time_format: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.strftime.php
Finally, replace $show_time=gmdate('H:i',$current_time+$user_time*3600); (config.php) with: $show_time='';


It is recommended to hide the IP addresses of your users by using a .htaccess files in all data and backup directories (an example can be found in /data).
For best results (an obligation on systems that do not support .htaccess) we recommend changing the names of all data and backup directories.
(Do not forget to register these changes in config.php)

It is possible to remove color changing and set custom colors.
Just set $color_changing to 0 (config.php), edit any of the CSS files in the subdirectory /css and set it as a default CSS file.
/* Use a simple text editor or a CSS editor such as TopStyle (TopStyleLite) - http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/tslite */


The URL of the WAP version you should enter in your cell phone or PDA browser is http://yoursite.com/forum/wap.php.


The URLs of the RSS/RDF feeds are:

http://yoursite.com/forum/rdf.php?f=ID (RSS/RDF 1.0)
http://yoursite.com/forum/rss.php?f=ID (RSS 2.0)

where ID is the serial number of the forum (not set = 0).

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How to create a lang file in your native language

Translating Easy Forum! into any language is very easy. All language files are simple ASCII text files - lang-en.inc, lang-bg.inc etc. Create your own file or/and set Easy Forum! which one to load: (config.php). If you are going to use a non-English alphabet it is strongly recommended to change the encoding in your language file to the proper one: (incl/lang-xx.inc file, line #5). It would decrease the loading time and prevent some browsers from displaying incorrect letters.

examples:
$lang[1]='ISO-8859-1:en';    where ISO-8859-1 is the proper charset for English and en is 2-letters language code.
$lang[1]='euc-jp:jp';    where euc-jp is the proper charset for Japanese and jp is 2-letters language code.

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