Which other phpBB modifications should I add to a website sale forum site?

[bliss]

I got the phpBB points mode, it works sort of like np$. I have the user trader rating mode applied to the forum, and the guess session mode. When I get home tonight I am going to do the seo urls v2, archives mode, and sitemap mode to it.

What other modfications should I add to a web items/website selling forum?

http://turnkeys.ws is the forum I am speaking about.

 

[B33R]

There's so many to add. My forum is running dozens, some from phpbb.com and phpbbhacks.com, some heavily modified and a few others I made.

I'd recommend the able2know SEO mod. That includes the rewritten URLs and some other SEO based modifications.
Other than that, there's so many to choose from..... Basically, I decided what I liked on NamePros/vB and found/wrote the phpbb equivalent.

Here's a list of some I'm running:

• autogroup (on registration) *modified
• autologin upon registration - logs user in, straight after registering
• ban reasons - tells people why they're banned, instead of the default phpbb "you've been banned" message
• last visited - shows last visit date in profile
• photo album
• easyCMS - articles
• quick reply
• smart login redirect - takes user back to the page they clicked "log in" from, rather than sending them to the index
• today/yesterday mod - dates are shown as Yesterday 18:51 rather than 12-28-2006 18:51
• topic on index - last topic names on index page (for each forum)
• easy subforums - 1 level deep subforums
• topic on simple subforums *modified - same as topic on index except it's on viewforum.php
• welcome panel on index *modified
• view post *modified - vb-style view single post, I replaced phpbb's view post
• message wrap - inserts a linebreak if the text is too wide (eg. someone writes a huge line of aaaaaa's)
• youtube bbcode *modified
• extra profile field *modified - for first names
• bin mod - all topics are moved to the bin rather than deleted
• inline banner ad *modified - shows an inline ad on forums I choose
• online/offline
• report posts
• separate announcements and stickies - splits announcements/sticky posts away from normal posts on viewforum.php
• viewing - vb-style users viewing forums (listed on index page)
• sitemap mod - custom made and unreleased (Example)
• SV's metatag mod - it's on phpbb.com, I modified it so the description metatag for each post (or forum) is the first X letters from the post (or forum description), same as Namepros, rather than having the same desc for every post/forum.
• WPM - welcome PM on registration
• Ban list - shows a ban list page to mods/admins *modified
• show search bot - shows Google/Yahoo/whatever in the online lists
• show guests/hidden users on viewforum.php

There's also numerous anti-spam mods which I won't name here, including a number of custom written ones. I should also point out that most of the mods are cosmetic or code changes, rather than database changes. This is to keep things easy when it's time to update to phpbb 3.

My forum's primarily modified to encourage people to post by making everything easier (quick reply, login after regging, login to the page you were viewing before), to keep spammers out by hiding anything that could be spammed (memberlist, profiles, etc.) and to improve things for search engines.

You can see them all running on my site UnitedFreeride.com. Some require logging in, some are for admins only and the majority won't be obvious mods.

 

[user-7256]

Have you done any research in the options of bulletin board systems?

For phpBB, be sure you install powerful anti-spam devices... captchas are good for this, among other things. B33R really covered it well, though.

 

[B33R]

For phpBB, be sure you install powerful anti-spam devices... captchas are good for this, among other things. B33R really covered it well, though.

There's a really good post on phpbb.com about anti-spam, here's a link.

Sorry I can't post any that I'm using but I already have enough problems with spammers without giving away my secrets!

Needless to say, relying on phpbb's built in visual confirmation (captcha) isn't enough any more. Bots are finding it really easy to break through it, it's just too basic. You can get mods that increase the difficulty of the captcha to a similar level of the new phpbb 3.0, but it's tough making it difficult enough for bots without making it too difficult for people. There's nothing like an impossible captcha to turn people away from your board.

You need to use a combination of mods from the anti-spam post at phpbb.com. I think I'm currently running about 8 mods from section 3 and still some spammers get through. It's really crazy seeing the lengths some people/bots will go to just to post spam. The amount of work going into preventing them is incredible too.

On the subject of captcha, here's an interesting page about beating captcha, written a couple of years ago.
Little has changed in the world of captcha, it's still about finding the right balance between blocking bots and not people.

And back on the subject of phpbb, anti-spam is definitely the number 1 priority now. With added features and usability a close second and third.

 

[alanpaladka]

I think it's very difficult to do this in phpBB.