New Free PHP forum

[Gayowulf]

http://lokwa.farcom.com/

Lowka BB Maybe you've heard of it. I haven't. It looks good.

[Chicken]

Seems these are some better links:
http://www.lokwa.com
http://forum.lokwa.com/

[Blank Verse]

that does look nice...any idea if there are any good hacks for it?

[Gayowulf]

Im not sure about hacks- I havent looked.

the board has an excellent admin panel. I like this board!

[Blank Verse]

Me too, I downloaded it.

[Blank Verse]

It's a nice size too, 324 KB...

[silverstarfish]

The feature list isn't very exciting and I'm not too crazy about the layout/design either. :p

[Gayowulf]

I have found that many features are not needed unless you are running a large board. Most people I talk to like to have the features for the sake of having features to list off.

I agree- the layout is a little different, but then again, different is good :) its a little like snitz

[cheatpark]

I just found out that it doesn't check for valid e-mail addresses. My forum I am making isn't even a beta yet but it still checks for valid e-mails.

[The Red Guy]

Originally posted by cheatpark
I just found out that it doesn't check for valid e-mail addresses. My forum I am making isn't even a beta yet but it still checks for valid e-mails. Valid emails aren't really nice as they do waste time in the registration process. It is a good and also a bad function.

[agiantdwarf]

Originally posted by The Red Guy
Valid emails aren't really nice as they do waste time in the registration process. It is a good and also a bad function.
Are you kidding me? It prevents people from signing up from one email and allows proper confirmation through e-mail. It waists time? You have to be joking, right?

[The Red Guy]

Originally posted by agiantdwarf

Are you kidding me? It prevents people from signing up from one email and allows proper confirmation through e-mail. It waists time? You have to be joking, right? No I'm not. I hate to receive the email before I can join. No verification is better. ;)

[DCI]

Anyone have some ACP screenshots? I wanna see.

[Chicken]

"A community for teens. Trash talking strictly allowed!!!"

On this type of forum it might work, but in general, for most types of forums, you *need* to have email confirmation and some buffer between new account registrations and time to post. Something to slow the bad ones down a bit...

[The Red Guy]

Originally posted by Chicken
Something to slow the bad ones down a bit... But it doesn't really slow down significantly. Just a bit. But the best would be it can be turned off/on via acp.

[Archbob]

This new forum is still in beta right now. I'd stick with phpbb2 until they get a good release out.

[zoobie]

Having to put your confirmation email really blows. Like was said above, maybe for teen sites where talking trash is encouraged...but not for mature sites.

As soon as we all sign up on forums and email is required for confirmation, we all wonder how much spam is gonna show up...making us hesitant to begin with...not a good thing. Then we have to open sometimes a big bulky email client...then wait for all messages to be d/l'ed...then sift thru the mails....then...copy our password...then return to the site...then finally make a post...then close our client. Jeez...

Yes, we all know we 'should' have a trash email addy for this type of stuff...I do..but do you?

On the other hand, if a note was posted in the sign-up page stating 'Instant sign-up...No Email Required'...it would definitely encourage sign-ups.

Thanks for reminding me to enable instant sign-ups :D

[The Red Guy]

Originally posted by zoobie
if a note was posted in the sign-up page stating 'Instant sign-up...No Email Required'...it would definitely encourage sign-upsI liked the registration process at Bruce's Thaportal.com . It was fast and simple.

[conkermaniac]

It is indeed a beautiful board, but I'm getting MySQL errors.

[The Red Guy]

Originally posted by conkermaniac
It is indeed a beautiful board, but I'm getting MySQL errors. I not getting any errors. Works fine for me.

[trenzterra]

Originally posted by The Red Guy
No I'm not. I hate to receive the email before I can join. No verification is better. ;) Me too. I hate verification.

[Chicken]

Originally posted by The Red Guy
But it doesn't really slow down significantly. Just a bit. But the best would be it can be turned off/on via acp.
It slows them down enough. I've personally battled someone on WHT who spent two hours spamming the forum. If we had instant sign up, he would have done much more damage. I was able to hold him off (and block crucial IP ranges and URLs he was using) and he eventually got bored and realized that in the time it takes him to post, I can remove all of his posts with one click.

Also how can you contact users who aren't doing somethign right or who you just want to contact without a valid email address?

[Dusty]

But of course, most of the time you're only validating a spam account that's never checked save to activate accounts and was registered under an alias.

If you actually want a real means of establishing identity you could just allow anyone to sign up, require them to give their street address, mail them a letter with an authorization code of some sort, and if that code isn't entered within X amount of days (i.e. the address was fake) their account is automatically disabled, their IP banned, a cookie placed (upon the next time they try to access their account), and their username and close variants of it forbidden. I don't know if that would be economically feasible with free sites, but it's a fairly good strategy for a business.

The same could be done over the telephone, but people seem to be more willing to give out their address than their phone number (I don't know why, but that's been my experience).

A delay can be put in place by other means than validating an email address. The script could simply have a built-in wait period-- you register on Monday, you can't use the account until Tuesday, etc.

[zoobie]

Originally posted by Chicken
Also how can you contact users who aren't doing somethign right?

Merely put a note in their post. :rolleyes:

[Chicken]

While I do this sometimes, often times things are handled off forum, and *need* to be handled off forum. I would never have this on a forum, nor would I recommend it. That doesn't mean you can't have it or like it (that's fine), I'm just speaking from 2+ years of moderating some decent sized forums. It just simply wouldn't work for those applications (Webhostingtalk, Freewebspace and Sitepointforums).