Documentation
3.10. System Configuration
Controls which affect the whole board and which are a key part of configuring and running phpBB are located in the System section. Most of these settings require more attention from the administrator and are not so easy to configure, fortunately you will probably not be changing them too often. This includes keeping your installation up-to-date, managing the board's languages or editing the structure of phpBB's control panels.
3.10.1. Checking for updates
The phpBB 3.0.x branch is usually updated every couple of months as necessary. Bugfixes, new features and other changes are included in these updates. The minor version number gets incremented each time. It is strongly recommended to keep your phpBB installation up to date. Updating from older versions is more difficult and you will have a hard time finding solutions to possible conflicts. You can update with the Automatic Update Package, which is able to merge modifications from MODs with the updates or you can use one of the other packages provided.
You will be notified in your ACP if a new version is released, you will also have a link to the newest release announcement, which will brief you on the added features and the overall changelog.
Updating with the Automatic Update Package is very simple. First, you will go to the linked phpBB.com downloads page and download the appropriate file. You will extract the contents on your PC and upload them to the root directory of your board. The board will be offline for normal users for the moment. Then simply go to the install/ directory and select the Update tab, the updater will then give you further instructions.
3.10.2. Managing Search Robots
phpBB 3 introduced a new system for managing search indexer and bot accounts. It allows you to identify these automated bots by their IP or a part of their user-agent, which is a setting that normally identifies the browser of a user. After you add a bot and it is recognized, phpBB does not treat the session as anonymous, but uses the created bot account. Bots use permissions set by the predefined Bots group. Identifying bots is important so that phpBB can serve them content which is more appropriate for search engines - dead links to pages without content are omitted, e.g. posting pages, report post pages etc. Bots never receive a session ID in the URL, which should not appear in the search results. You can also assign a specific style and language to bots.
You can easily track if a specific search indexer visited your site recently by checking the Last Visit column on the botlist page.
Note
Bots do not use permissions from the Guest group, but permissions from the Bots group. For more about predefined groups, please read Section 3.6.1, “Group types”
Adding a bot
Bot name: This is the title of the bot that will be used on the forum. You will see it in the list of bots in the ACP and in the Who is Online lists.
Bot style: You can select the style served to the bot from the list of installed styles on the board.
Bot language: You can do the same with the language. The bot will use the language selected here.
Bot active: The bot session will be created only if a bot is active, if not, the data for a bot set in this form will not be used anywhere.
Agent match: You can match a bot by either its user-agent or its IP. You can specify a part of the user-agent to be looked for. For example, the Google search indexer has "Googlebot" in its user-agent, so you would enter it here to identify when Google crawls your board.
Bot IP address: This field is also used to identify the bot. If a bot cannot be recognized by the user-agent, you can specify what IP address should be used to identify it. Partial matches are allowed, that means you can include only the first two or three octets of the IP if the rest dynamically changes. You can also enter multiple IPs separated by a comma.
Note
If you enter both a user-agent and an IP address, both have to match to identify the bot.
3.10.3. Mass email
phpBB allows you to send an e-mail or message to every user on the board, which allows it in his board preferences. The message can serve as a newsletter, notification about changes on the board etc. You can choose whether to send the e-mail to all users, a specific group or a list of specific users. The e-mail is sent from the administrator's e-mail address and all recipients are included in a BCC - Blind Carbon Copy.
On some hosts, sending a mass e-mail can be a problem, since sometimes the hosting company limits the number of e-mails that can be sent out at once. phpBB includes only 50 recipients per e-mail and sends another one for the next batch to prevent this, however, if you still are not able to send a mass e-mail, consult the situation with your hosting provider.
Composing a mass e-mail
Send to group: Select the group you want to send the e-mail too. The Registered Users group contains all the users on the board.
Send to users: You can also specify a list of users. Entering any usernames in this field will override the first setting. Each username should be on a new line.
Subject: This is the subject of the message, which you are used to enter when sending an e-mail.
Your message: This field contains the message, you can only enter plaintext. BBCode or HTML will be encoded in HTML entities and shown as is without formatting the text when the user receives the e-mail.
Mail priority: This is the priority of the e-mail sent with the e-mail headers.
Send immediately: You can choose whether to send the e-mail immediately or pass the messages to the cache system and let them be sent gradually.
Note
Sending e-mails to all users on the board or a large group can be a lengthy process. Wait until the script confirms that the e-mails have been sent.
3.10.4. Language Packs
In phpBB, you can upload several language packs for your users to use. Every text string displayed by the system should be translated after you upload a new language pack. Using a different language pack does not change the contents of posts, as translating them is not possible due to the various content they can have and the limits of computer translation.
Language packs can be downloaded from the Downloads page on phpBB.com. To add a language pack, unzip the downloaded file and upload the contents to the language/ directory. The files should be contained in a directory named with the language's ISO code, the default British English pack is in the en/ directory for example. After you upload the files to the system, the pack should show in the Uninstalled language packs list. Click Install to add it to the board and make it available for users.
Note
To make a language pack the default language of the board, you need to change the Board Configuration.
If you are not comfortable with editing PHP files manually and you would like to change some text phpBB is displaying, you can use the in-built language pack editor which is accessible once you click the language pack title in the Installed language packs list. You can change the language pack details and the contents of individual language files on this page. In case you have more language packs installed and you select another language pack than the default one, you will see a list of untranslated variables if the packs are not synchronised. This is useful when you install MODs for one language and you cannot find what language strings you are missing in the other ones for example.
If you choose to edit a file using the ACP you have two options on how to update the translation on the board. First you can choose to Submit or Submit and download the file, which will store the file you are editing in the store/ directory and the file will be offered for download if you choose the second button. If you choose to save the file in the store directory, you will have to manually move it to the language pack directory. The second possibility, which is right under these two buttons is to move the file to the language pack directory by using FTP. You will be prompted for FTP login credentials and if possible the file be saved and updated immediately by the script.
3.10.5. PHP Information
This option will provide you with information about the version of PHP installed on your server, along with information on loaded modules and the configuration applicable to the current location. This information can be useful to phpBB team members in helping you to diagnose problems affecting your installation of phpBB. The information here can be security sensitive and it is recommended that you only grant access to this option to those users who need access to the information and do not disclose the information unless necessary.
Please note that some hosting providers may limit the information which is available to you on this page for security reasons.
3.10.6. Manage reasons for reporting and denying posts
phpBB has a feature that allows you to put new posts in queue, where the post waits until it is approved or denied by a moderator, this can be set with permissions or in the Post settings for users which do not have enough posts. If a moderator chooses to deny a post in the queue, he has an option to specify a reason for the denial. The predefined options from which he can choose are specified here. These reasons are also offered to users reporting a post on the board.
For more information about queue moderation, see Section 4.5.1, “Moderation queue”.
Figure 3.12. Report/denial reasons page
This is the page from which you can manage reasons shown when denying or reporting a post. Four default reasons present in a standard phpBB installation are shown. The fifth one is added manually and is not localised, this can be achieved by specifying an identifier in the Reason title containing only letters and underscores and then adding localised titles and reasons in the language file called mcp.php located in the language/ directory. The predefined reasons are at the bottom of the file, you need to add your reason in the same way as the others are saved. When you localise a reason, it is shown in the correct translation for each language pack used on the board.
3.10.7. Module Management
Modules are used the form the structure and content of the UCP, MCP and ACP. Individual modules can be optionally disabled and it is possible to reorganize them into a different structure. Modules for the User Control Panel and the Moderator Control panel have a Category » Module two-level structure, while the Administration modules have three levels: Category (tabs at the top) » Category (headers on the left-hand side) » Module (individual sections).
Very often, MODs that have controllable features add modules to the ACP to allow comfortable editing of various settings.
To create a module category, use the text field next to the Create new module button. Enter the category title, click the button and on the next page ensure that the Module type is Category, the module is enabled and that the Module parent is set correctly. After you create a category, you can browse to it through the list of modules and add a specific module that is saved in a file. Modules are saved in the appropriate directory (acp/, mcp/ or /ucp) contained in the includes/ directory.
Warning
By disabling the Module Management module, it is possible to cut yourself off from the ACP and other control panels. Be careful when you are editing modules.
Adding a module
Module language name: This should be set to the language constant that holds the module name in the different languages, which are used on the board. You can also specify a normal title here, if you do not have the module title translated.
Module type: You can add a category or a module. As stated above, categories hold another level of categories or modules, they are used to organize the control panels.
Parent: This setting defines under which category the module or category will be displayed.
Module enabled: If a module is disabled, it will not be accessible at all, you will have to enable it to use it.
Module displayed: If the module is enabled, but not displayed, you will be able to access it with a direct URL but it will not show in the menus. This setting is shown only if the Module type is set to Module.
Choose module: Individual module files contain the various control panels. Similar modules are grouped into one file and are called by specifying a mode. Here you select the file in which the specific module you want is located. This setting is shown only if the Module type is set to Module.
Choose module mode: Here you set the what mode should be used in the module file selected above. The final contents of the module are based on this setting. This setting is shown only if the Module type is set to Module.