Documentation
3.9. Board Maintenance
Running a phpBB 3.0 board is a very important job that is up to the administrator(s). Maintaining the board to make sure it runs as cleanly and properly as possible is the administrator's job.
is a section in the ACP that allows you to keep track of internal phpBB information, such as logs, as well as maintaining your database (which holds your phpBB-related data), such as backing up and restoring data.
3.9.1. Forum Logs
The Forum Log section of the ACP provides an overview of what has been happening on the board. This is important for you, the administrator, to keep track of. There are four types of logs:
- Admin Log
This log records all actions carried out within the administration panel itself.
- Moderator Log
This logs records the actions performed by moderators of your board. Whenever a topic is moved or locked it will be recorded here, allowing you to see who carried out a particular action.
- User Log
This log records all important actions carried out either by users or on users. All email and password changes are recorded within this log.
- Error Log
This log shows you any errors that were caused by actions done by the board itself, such as errors sending emails. If you are having problems with a particular feature not working, this log is a good place to start. If enabled, addtional debugging information may be written to this log.
Click on one of the log links located in the left-hand Forum Logs section.
If you have appropriate permissions, you are able to remove any or all log entries from the above sections. To remove log entries, go to the appropriate log entries section, check the log entries' checkboxes, and then click on the Delete marked checkbox to delete the log entries.
3.9.2. Database backup and restore
phpBB uses a database to store all the data used on the board, including users, posts, topics etc. Backing up the database can be useful as a protective measure in case of any accidents which could cause data loss or damage to the database. If any accident like this would occur, you would have a possibility to restore the database to a previous state from the backup. You can use the backup tool to move your board to another host - you will make a backup on your current server and restore it on the new one to keep all data.
Database backup
Backup type: You can backup the whole database or you can either backup the structure or data. The structure only contains the hiearchy in which the data is stored, on the other side, if you only backup the data, you will need a pre-prepared structure when restoring/importing data.
File type: Depending on your server setup, you can save the backup in several formats. The Text option saves the backup in plain text, other options compress the file to decrease the filesize of the dump.
Action: You have three options: you can both Store and download the file, saving it in the store directory and downloading it to your PC, or you can choose to download or store the file.
Table select: You can either Select all tables or you can select individual tables to backup. When backing up a large database, you can exclude the search tables (do not forget to restore their structure) and recreate the search index on the new server.
Tip
Use the CTRL and Shift keys together with your mouse to select individual tables.
Database restore
File select: You will be offered a list of database backups which are saved in the store folder. Select the one you want to restore and click Start restore. The restoration might take some time and it will overwrite any existing data on the board.
Figure 3.11. List of backups available
In this list, located on the Restore page, you can find a list of backups made through the phpBB ACP which can be selected and restored.
3.9.3. Search Indexing
phpBB 3.0 provides you with a powerful search system which can be used to search throughout your board. The main controls for the search features are located in the Search settings section. Here you can manage the search index, which is used to hold the data necessary for quick and precise search results, it's something like an giant table of contents. By default, two search backends are available - fulltext native, which is included in the phpBB code and works on all DBMSs, and fulltext mysql, which uses the built-in MySQL fulltext searching feature. The first one offers more flexible configuration, while the second one doesn't take too much space in the database and the index is created much faster.
Note
Creating a search index can take a very long time, a new window will pop up and refresh itself while creating the necessary search table entries. Please be patient, the process can take several hours on large boards.
The fulltext native backend works like this: it uses two tables, one containing the words, which are used on the board and which have a numeric ID assigned and a second table, which links post IDs to word IDs. This system is very fast when you need to search a specific word(s) in the whole database, the following statistics, which are offered on the Search Index page, describe how many words and relations the system holds:
- Total number of indexed words
This setting is quite self-explanatory, it is the number of different words that have ever been posted to your board. Only words that match the criteria for indexing, set in the Search settings, are considered.
- Total number of word to post relations indexed
As described above, the second search table holds a list of relations between the posts and words. For example if someone would post "airplane" in two different posts, the system would add the word once and it would add to relations, one to each post.
- Total number of indexed posts (fulltext mysql)
This statistic is shown for the mysql fulltext backend, where the search is done by a internal mechanism of the Database system. It tells you how many posts on the board were indexed.