phpbb3 released!

after so many months of long gap and the hard work of team members of phpbb, the team has released phpbb3 version last december. It has arrived after so many betas and then 8 release candidates.

The latest phpbb has all the latest features which are to be present in a forum software. The look and feel is too good. It is sure to give competition to VBulletin script and Invision plus boards which are proprietary softwares.

The version 3 is named as olympus. It has many many features which we dint even imagine. Unlike old versions, this version is very easy to upgrade. And the display of the board mostly uses CSS and javascripts. Very importantly it has bot management functions. Due to the session ID's, many search engines found it difficult to index the pages. Now the search engine spiders can crawl on the pages better.

And there is a temporary suspension feature. Warning messages to spammers and violators. Report post feature comes as a good feature for moderators who find it difficult to find abusing posts between the large forums. And the user layout can be shift to right or left side.

The new feature list can be found on phpbb website www.phpbb.com . It is a loooooong list. And the extra modules will come out soon. And there is no need for many many modules. Because the features of those modules has already been integrated in the core release! For example, the build search tables (database tables of Mysql) is an option already available in admin panel. And avtar controls are now enhanced i heard.

And the templates... many templates have already come out. But we have to wait till march time to get all our regular templates to be compatible with phpbb3. And i heard there are some enhanced features for modifying or customizing the forum.

I am installing the latest forum on my site now. Let me see how it works :)

phpbb3 gold released

after so many months of long gap and the hard work of team members of phpbb, the team has released phpbb3 version last december. It has arrived after so many betas and then 8 release candidates.

The latest phpbb has all the latest features which are to be present in a forum software. The look and feel is too good. It is sure to give competition to VBulletin script and Invision plus boards which are proprietary softwares.

The version 3 is named as olympus. It has many many features which we dint even imagine. Unlike old versions, this version is very easy to upgrade. And the display of the board mostly uses CSS and javascripts. Very importantly it has bot management functions. Due to the session ID's, many search engines found it difficult to index the pages. Now the search engine spiders can crawl on the pages better.

And there is a temporary suspension feature. Warning messages to spammers and violators. Report post feature comes as a good feature for moderators who find it difficult to find abusing posts between the large forums. And the user layout can be shift to right or left side.

The new feature list can be found on phpbb website www.phpbb.com . It is a loooooong list.

I am installing the latest forum on my site now. Let me see how it works :)

Content management system

A content management system is a software which allows a person to manage a website’s content in a systematic and easy way. Gone are the days when websites were created using individual html files.

Now I am going to tell you about my experience using content management systems. First of all, I did not have any idea about CMS. Then My friend told me about Joomla. It is available for free under GNU license. I started using Joomla on one of my site. But to learn using joomla was the biggest task.

I took some 3-4 days reading the online joomla forum articles about the terminologies of joomla and other things. I did not even know that modules existed. At first time I did not use any modules. Somehow I took some 2-3 weeks and built the site using joomla.

Drupal:

Then started the problem for me. I did not have any ideal gallery built in joomla. I had to depend on some gallery modules. But they were not at all useful for me.

At this stage, I heard about drupal. But my friend told me that drupal was difficult to learn. I took some 2-3 days reading some tutorials on their site. But I did not give it a try. Finally I realized that joomla was not offering me anything better. I finally decided to shift to drupal.

When I changed the servers, I installed drupal and started testing it. It was quite easier than joomla and the admin control panel was too good. I can tell you that the admin panel of drupal is one of the best one’s I have seen. If you do not know how to navigate or want a specific function, you can use the slash search on mozilla firefox and type the term. You will get it. Asking how it works? There is a long list of the controls available. And a description is also given in it. Hence it is easy to search what you want.

Modules of Drupal:

There are hundreds and thousands of drupal moduels developed by the community. Each one is so good. I think you should naturally use at least some 10-12 modules to make a standard site. Modules which we cannot live without are XML site map which was developed under the funding of Google summer of code. And the flash tools module, image module and many more. And the themes are good and you have a long list to select from.

Drupal I feel is the best way to manage a site’s content. And you get blogging and community featured by default. Drupal is a database driven software. You need a Apache environment for drupal to work best.

Microsoft server comes along with a CMS software which can generate asp pages. I have no better idea about it. You can go through wikipedia article about the comparision of CMS software. Best article on web for CMS reference.

My mobile phone

Right now I am using Sony ericsson w200i walkman phone. Earlier I used Nokia 1108 phone. I then started using sony ericsson. Ever since I was thinking of changing my phone, I wanted to have a walkman feature in it. But during those times, walkman phones were very costly.

So I had even decided to buy I pod of transcend if I cannot afford apple I pod. But I am now satisfied that sony ericsson mobile is what I expected. Excellent quality of music. Up to 1 GB expandable memory (Micro SD card). The interface and graphics are excellent. Games are good. But I need a couple of better games.

But the annoying feature is the phone book which is not compatible with old phones. And another drawback is the sms features. I took more time to get adjusted with the new sms features. And the number of sms stored in inbox is not more than 40. Hence this was a drawback feature I feel.

Apart from these, there is a metronome for beats generation. And there is a piano to check the music scale (or pitch), there is a guitar which generates chords. This is useful for a musical passionate like me.

The camera has still and video featues. BGA camera, even then good quality.

But this model of sony is a best phone with affordable price. Its price in India at present is somewhere around 5000 rupees.