Feedback about phpBBex 1.x

[brainex]

I write in English for convenience but I'm Italian.
Since 2007 I have been running a personal forum which has always been based on Olympus, I grew up with phpBB2.
The forum obviously over time was filled with changes and personalized style.
When phpBB.com thought about switching to Ascraeus, effectively breaking the continuity with Olympus, I abandoned everything. I picked it up again a couple of years ago, now deserted, but I made use of it to be able to update it to PHP 8 and later to MySQL(i) 8.0.26. to complete Emoji management, Argon2id Password Hashing, Responsive style etc. etc.
Then I don't remember how, I came across your Fork and only now do I see that by following other similar paths, you have preceded me by many years.
But I kept Olympus without any HTML or database changes, You went further and even updated STK. What can I tell you, really good!
Certainly not all implementations will be to everyone's liking, but the underlying philosophy is certainly appreciable.
I think I will localize your distribution in Italian, and if you think it might be useful, I will send it to you.
A question, however, arises spontaneously: why still use prosilver and not a responsive style?

[VEG]

I'm glad that I'm not alone =) What is your forum? Interesting to look at it.

The most active days of phpBBex were in 2011-2015, a lot of new features were developed. I still have tons of stuff in backlog, but nowadays I can't spend that much time on this project anymore. I try to update it yearly to support newest versions of PHP and fix the most annoying issues (e.g. phpBBex 1.9.6 supports PHP 8.2 and emoji).

I think I will localize your distribution in Italian, and if you think it might be useful, I will send it to you.

It will take a lot of time to translate. The language files diverged quite a lot from the original phpBB 3.0.

A question, however, arises spontaneously: why still use prosilver and not a responsive style?

It's in my backlog, but its priority is quite low. I don't think that anybody seriously uses old-school web forums on a smartphone, so I don't think that being responsive is that much important. It will require significant amount of time to update current style to properly support small screens. So... maybe one day in the future =)

There are a lot of small changes here and there in comparison to original phpBB 3.0 styles, so you can't just take an existing responsive style and use it here, you will need to invest significant amount of time to adopt it properly.

[brainex]

I'm not a professional programmer, for PHP fixes I based on Dion Design work, for responsive style I only ported to 3.0.14 Artodia Deluxe by Vjacheslav Trushkin
and Florian Gareis' free Comboot based on bootstrap.
To adapt them, a kind of code changes with your prosilver could be enough, but perhaps that is asking too much.
For the translation, there are several differences, I had already noticed, but nothing impossible.
Keep in mind that I'm from 1961, and in the years 1977/1985 I was a DJ specializing in Funky Music
PhpBB section from my old forum

[VEG]

for PHP fixes I based on Dion Design work

Thanks for the link, I'll check if I can borrow something from there =)

[brainex]

Dion is a phpbb olympus extremist almost like me!
His work, he wants to be disseminated without altering his credits in the PHP files.
Unfortunately, in recent times he had to protect his work with an algorithm to prevent anyone from connecting to the site and downloading: he had several discussions on phpbb.com with programmers who took his work and passed it off as their own.
I'd only be happy if Dion and Veg brainstormed Olympus, however in case you can't download its attachments, I can provide them all in full, even a retail version of phpBB 3.0.14 already ported to PHP 8.1.
In my forum, if you want to take a look, I have manually written all the steps to carry out and also a guide to implement the transformation for my host server.

[VEG]

Thanks to you, looked a bit at Dion's changes related to SMTP support, investigated related phpBB 3.2 updates, and made significant improvements in this part of the phpBBex.

[brainex]

This was precisely my aim: Dion made several functionally interesting changes.
Without going into the theme or style, if you prefer.
Have you ever considered integrating with the Sort Topics Alphabetically mod ( Vojtěch Vondra )?

I've practically finished the Italian translation but I have to test it thoroughly.

[brainex]

Dion replied after seeing the to post message.
With the link I create a tangible connection

[VEG]

Have you ever considered integrating with the Sort Topics Alphabetically mod ( Vojtěch Vondra )?

But you can sort topics alphabetically (by title) already, it can be enabled in sorting settings that go right after topics list. It's a standard feature of phpBB.

[brainex]

A standard feature of phpBB Olympus?🙄

[VEG]

Well, last time I used standard phpBB 3.0 in 2008, so I'm not 100% sure. I see this feature in phpBBex and I don't remember that I implemented it (but I remember that I added a setting to choose default sorting for every forum section), I see it in a few other live forums that are based on phpBB 3.0, so I guess that sorting by subject is a standard phpBB 3.0 feature. I'm not curious enough to install original phpBB 3.0 to check this.

Добавлено спустя 6 минут 34 секунды:
Looked into code of standard phpBB 3.0.14, and it seems like sorting by subject is there already.

Seems like that mod just adds a link to sort by subject in addition to the standard sorting combo box, and an ability to filter topics by first character of subject.

[brainex]

Sort topic alphabetically

[VEG]

When you choose "by subject", it sorts topics alphabetically by subject.

[brainex]

and an ability to filter topics by first character of subject.

This would be Ameeck's (Vondra) MOD, and it was never native to phpBB Olympus or non-Olympus.

Sorting all topics alphabetically what's the point?
Perhaps to those who have developed an obsessive-compulsive mania for order?
Certainly Ameeck could have chosen a more explicit name for the MOD.

[brainex]

I'm thoroughly testing phpBBex with PHP 8.2.3, so far I haven't found any malfunctions.
Kudos to VEG!