If i keep writing articles related to phpbb i might turn this blog into a “phpbb howto” site.
Unfortunately there are too many platforms, programs, scripts and other cool stuff to write about. However phpbb3 is truly the best open-source forum out there. It is almost as good as IPB is, but of course there are some features that you can’t have without paying for them or coding your head off. In the end the “good” label is just a matter of personal opinion.
So why use RSS instead of email subscriptions ?
Power of choice. That my friends, has a tremendous power. I’ve been interacting with forums for many years now and early in 2006 i started to help a friend of mine with a forum instance. That forum was then using phpbb2. Every now and then i helped this guy with different things and i loved it mainly because I looked up at phpbb2 as a great thing. That great thing was indeed a neat forum platform. Easy to administer and most important: easy to use. We kept installing different official and unofficial mods. I just loved playing with phpbb2. At that point we had about 500+ registered users. Finally i convinced my pal to grant me administrator privileges. I was very excited and since that day I kept playing with phpbb. I remember the day when phpbb3 was launched. Of course not the final version. I upgraded our phpbb2 forum almost without any problems. Minor issues were solved. Anyway, all I want you to know from these off-topic, irrelevant (you name it) lines is my opinion about this awesome forum platform called phpbb. To get back to what i was trying to tell you earlier, phpbb3 offers a decent amount of control for both administrators and users. Decent when it comes to comparing phpbb3 with IPB or vBullentin. As i was saying, it is really important to let your users/visitors choose the way they want to be kept informed. For example the basic email notifications are pretty decent but we all know what RSS can do. Because of the fact that you want all of your visitors or users to enjoy their stay on your forum you might consider enhancing it with an optional RSS subscription. Practically an important extra option is always very handy and when it comes to a popular and very useful method of keeping your visitors informed about almost everything that happens on your forum, the RSS mod is a must-have. Overall this mod is very likely to do you more good than harm.
How does it work ?
Of course that this has to be one of the first questions you ask yourself. What this great mod does is to generate a valid RSS or ATOM feed based on your selection. Basically you can select your preferred forums to include them in your feed. Another great thing is that you can choose to syndicate posts or only topics. The amount of items displayed in the feed can be customized as well. These few but important options help you manage your subscription making sure your feed suits you best.
Sound great but is it difficult to install it ?
No, not at all. For example it took me about 10 minutes to get it working with all the afferent settings. Backing up your files is very important because if you somehow manage to mess things up you can restore your original files. I think that even a person with almost no PHP knowledge at all can follow the readme that contains the install guide. Basically all you need to do is to edit some files according to the given instructions. You need to find certain pieces of code and insert after or before them the corresponding code. This mod can be installed without any problems whatsoever on both prosilver and subsilver2 based styles. I don’t see any reason because of which i should post the install instructions as you can download the mod and inside the archive you have the readme file containing everything you need.
Just a small notice
If you plan to install the 1.0.RC1 version you should know that you need to rename the file info_acp_syndication.php located in /language/en/mods/ directory to acp_syndication.php
Here is the official forum from where you can download the Full Syndication Suite (RSS/ATOM) mod. You can choose play with the mod a little on the same forum if you want to make sure that it’s the right thing you need.
Integrate RSS and ATOM into a phpbb3 based forum
If i keep writing articles related to phpbb i might turn this blog into a “phpbb howto” site.
Unfortunately there are too many platforms, programs, scripts and other cool stuff to write about. However phpbb3 is truly the best open-source forum out there. It is almost as good as IPB is, but of course there are some features that you can’t have without paying for them or coding your head off. In the end the “good” label is just a matter of personal opinion.
So why use RSS instead of email subscriptions ?
How does it work ?
Of course that this has to be one of the first questions you ask yourself. What this great mod does is to generate a valid RSS or ATOM feed based on your selection. Basically you can select your preferred forums to include them in your feed. Another great thing is that you can choose to syndicate posts or only topics. The amount of items displayed in the feed can be customized as well. These few but important options help you manage your subscription making sure your feed suits you best.
Sound great but is it difficult to install it ?
No, not at all. For example it took me about 10 minutes to get it working with all the afferent settings. Backing up your files is very important because if you somehow manage to mess things up you can restore your original files. I think that even a person with almost no PHP knowledge at all can follow the readme that contains the install guide. Basically all you need to do is to edit some files according to the given instructions. You need to find certain pieces of code and insert after or before them the corresponding code. This mod can be installed without any problems whatsoever on both prosilver and subsilver2 based styles. I don’t see any reason because of which i should post the install instructions as you can download the mod and inside the archive you have the readme file containing everything you need.
Just a small notice
If you plan to install the 1.0.RC1 version you should know that you need to rename the file
info_acp_syndication.phplocated in/language/en/mods/directory toacp_syndication.phpHere is the official forum from where you can download the Full Syndication Suite (RSS/ATOM) mod. You can choose play with the mod a little on the same forum if you want to make sure that it’s the right thing you need.