History: Release note v.5.31

Tetra WebBBS Documentation

Tetra-WebBBS 5.31 (2008-5)

Though Tetra-WebBBS 5.31 is only a minor upgrade to 5.30, it comes with a number of improvements, which should cause everybody to upgrade quickly.

New features

Users may edit their posts
Allowing posters to edit their posts has been requested for years. The new version offers this feature.
Of course admins can configure the time for which posts are editable after submission. See $AllowUserEditHours for details.

Maintenance mode
The admin scripts now allow for locking/unlocking all public access to the forums on one mouseclick. Users are notified the forums are running in maintenance mode for the time they are locked for public access. The new feature is available via the navbar on admin's message index display.
It enables admins to work on the forums without the risk of public calls interfering.
For testing purpose admins may bypass the lock on their public testscripts. See $BypassLock for details.

Force posts to become moderated
Ever since it was possible to run forums in "moderated" mode. Since 2002 user profiles inherit the setting for $Moderated from the main configuration when a profile is created. Admins can set individual profiles to "UNmoderated" to bypass the $Moderated setting of a forum.
Unfortunately sometimes boardadmins want to run a forum in a moderated mode even for those who's profiles are set to unmoderated.
The new variable $force_moderated enables boardadmins to configure a forum in this special way. When $force_moderated is set, all posts will be put on hold until they are approved by an administrator.

Configurable "sticky posts"
The new version allows for *any* link to be used as a sticky post! Sticky posts are configured via webbbs_custom.pl, where you find an example placeholder. CSS is ready to go for sticky posts. In fact you may link to any post of a forum, any static page on your website or any other destination. These links will always look like "sticky posts". Check webbbs_custom.pl for $cust{'sticky'} - that should be pretty intuitive.

New informational "quickinfo" calls
The old and rather simple ?quickinfo calls have been extended to a mighty tool for display of links to a forum's posts on whatsoever page. The new quickinfo calls are no longer limited to SSI, but may be called by JavaScript or within an IFRAME serving simple HTML. The output is highly configurable and will serve for various purpose. Too much to explain in this release note. More information will be available on documentation board, check the special functions page for details.

Changes

Display of pagination links on message index modernized
The pagination links at the bottom of message index pages have been refactored. The number of links displayed is now configurable, see $PaginationLength for details.

"Sign up to post" error message replaced by alert box
Trying to access the post message form on forums where profiles are required users will no longer be prompted with an error message informing them to sign up before posting if the scripts can't verify they are registered users.
Instead an alert box is shown on the post message page to inform the user that he/she must provide a valid name/password pair with their post.
This change is supposed to eliminate the problem where registered users with buggy browsers or disabled cookies can't get to the form. Furthermore boardadmins may now disable $AllowUserPrefs even though they do require profiles.
Even on boards which require profiles users are no longer forced to *set their preferencies to log in* but only need to provide valid name/password pairs on submitting a post.

Optimization for search engines
Several changes have been made in 5.30 already for optimizing access for search engines and esp. to lower server load on indexing. Unfortunately one issue was missed that may cause a duplicate content problem, which may keep pages from being indexed. This issue has been fixed. The "page=n" part is now omitted from all message links if search engines are recognized by the forum.
If you're curious about how search engines will see your forum, take a look at this article on docs board.

Fixes

Skip empty lines in naughtyword or banned IP listing
Loading moderated posts for approval should now work even if there are empty lines in either the naughtyword list or the banned IPs list. Highlightning of "naughty" content should now work flawlessly.

Fixed a bug on admin screens if $RequireProfileEmail is ON
The bug kept admins from accessing profile editscreens if $RequireProfileEmail was ON. Supposed to be squashed.