New Year - New version!

There is a lot of new & updated stuff collected since the latest release. We're continuing to polish our code and all the small mistakes, also as expand some existing features. They are:

1. The big functional update: search users section in admin panel. Now it is possible to delete users with 0 posts from ANY type of search in "checkbox" way (many users at once). Also there is a new option, which shows all disabled users (who have activity status 0). We found too much waste to introduce new language pack variable, so this menu will state as "Member: [No]" - we hope it's quite clear. Hope new features will allow to clean up your users database quickly (if you need it at all).

2. Other big functional update: now we store information about last poster's username in topics table. That means, default version (if $textLd option is not enabled) will load up much faster on the first page (with only 2 mySQL requests!). Intermediate topics listing pages will also load faster (also, default version requires only 2 mySQL requests). This change is specially significant for large databases and communities.

3. One more big update regarding email notification changes: if user is subscribed to some topic, he will get next new replies notification ONLY after he clicks the URL in the email body and reads the thread; or if he reads the thread as logged member on forums. That way it's possible to prevent from "dead" subscribers and users, who are not visiting the forums, and save up a lot of resources. Changes regarding this feature affect upgrade of database also.

4. Good anti-spam update: posting URLs is separated for registered members and guests; only registered members who posted more than 5 messages, are allowed to use URL/IMG BB codes (incl. smilies, if installed). Guests and new members still are able to post URLs (incl. those who are pointing to images); however, they will be shortened and only textual URL will be displayed (with no highlight and link). Until URLs are not clickable, they lose the main sense of spam and flood. We hope this little change will make your forums maintenance easier.

5. Little addition: when topic is locked, users are not able to do the following:
- Delete topic (even if it's allowed in options)
- Edit any message in this topic (even if they are still not expired by time)
- Delete any messages in this topic
These rules do not affect admins and moderators.


For upgrading your copy of the software, you will need to:
- upgrade the database with provided SQL commands (via phpMyAdmin or other mySQL tool)
- upgrade the database running convdb.php tool ("Database upgrading script" from our Downloads section)
- backing up and overwriting core script .php files
- optionally update some HTML templates from /templates/ folder

Please, read instructions below the Update History on how to proceed with the upgrade. Upgrade is highly recommended for current users despite it doesn't include any vulnerability fixes (since they weren't discovered since the release version 2.0.2a).

Amongst new generic release, there are also some changes in the following addons:

- "Moving Replies"
- "Merge Topics"
- "Checker"

File upload addon and Member Pictures addon were also updated by the same time; however, they do not include anything related to the new release. Updates of these addons only include some little improvements of the code.

Ok well I want to update my old mini bb to the new version, but I hope you can turn off a lot of these new features because I don't like the sound of them. If I wanted a BBS that did all this poster ranking and see who isn't posting enough etc and so on I would download phpBB or other giant bloatware bbs and install. Please keep minibb mini!

Thanks, Paul/miniBB Team, for the New Year release (v2.0.3) - I've just upgraded my forums. :-)

Paul wrote: 2. Other big functional update: ... default version (if $textLd option is not enabled) will load up much faster on the first page

Please excuse my ignorance, but what/where is the $textLd option?

Talbot wrote: I hope you can turn off a lot of these new features because I don't like the sound of them.

MiniBB is still mini - thank goodness! -: the bells and whistles are not available by default - they are available as optional addons/plugins (separate downloads and installations).

Cheers,
mb

Please excuse my ignorance, but what/where is the $textLd option?
//$textLd=1; Available from 2.0 RC4, setting $textLd=1; or $textLd=2; you will get {$lastPostText} variable available in latest discussions section on the first page (templates/main_last_discuss_cell.html). If set to 2, all HTML formatting is removed from the post text, and you can use it in <acronym> tag, for example. If set to 1, post text is left as it is.

Ok well I want to update my old mini bb to the new version, but I hope you can turn off a lot of these new features
I think the question is how old your old version is - upgrading from version 2 to 2.0.3 doesn't bring so many big differences I think...

Ah, thank you, tom322 - I should have checked the Manual first instead of trying to locate the setting in setup_options.php! ($textLd does not seem to be included in the default setup_options.php.)
- mb

Please keep minibb mini!
I hope it's still kept mini. What is introduced, only improves existing features, not introduces the new. Our current core allows to extend the board dramatically, using additional plugins, so default core won't be affected (I hope) by new features anymore. Why have you decided there are bells & whistles? There is no ranking feature built-in by default at all...

$textLd does not seem to be included in the default setup_options.php
Yes, it is not included (so it is not enabled by default, and the new update brings this exactly... the increase in speed, when it's not enabled), as much as some other stuff.

Ok fair enough well I hadn't been keeping up with stuff lately, I upgraded last night from 1.7x and the new forums are just great.

thanks for the great work,

T

I have made small hot additions to the existing release:

1) bb_func_usernfo.php - changed function parseUserInfo_user_email() so now if user allows to show his email publicly in the Preferences, it still will be shown ONLY to logged members. This most likely will prevent spam bots from indexing even publicly shown emails.

2) bb_admin.php file - small fix regarding adding a forum when forum icon is not specified.

These changes are not critical at all, however, you're welcome to upadate these files if needed.

Hi, I definitely think [4] should be made an option in the next version and not hardwired in as it currently is. It's no very nice for newbies to have their URLs disabled and it means the mod or admin has to activate them by editing their post later. People post many links to my forum for example.

As well if you are using CAPTCHA paid plug in then you don't need URL disabling as well, and anyway spam bots are not going know or care if their URLs are active or not afterwards, and so this is no deterent to automated spam.

I'm guessing right now as temp fix end user can just delete these conditions altogether from bb_codes.php and bb_func_txt.php:

isset($GLOBALS['user_num_posts']) and $GLOBALS['user_num_posts']>5

Talbot
I feel otherwise. I think it's not very nice that newbies come to your site and post their URLs instead of providing useful content to other users. I think while 20% of them may be legitimate, the other 80% are regular spammers and this is just a way to stop them a little (I personally set it to min. 10 posts). And I'm not afraid automated spam - I'm afraid of people from China, Nigeria, etc. who are hired by companies to drop links on forums. It's becoming more and more important if your forum gets busy.

But I think you can completely disable this by doing this custom change (I wouldn't delete the condition completely):

isset($GLOBALS['user_num_posts']) and $GLOBALS['user_num_posts']>0

I think bad links via human posted spam are something to be deleted not deactivated, that doesn't stop the person posting in the first place either, so you still have the link to the spam which could be copied and pasted and cluttering up your forum.

I don't think this is a correct solution like this. I think this needs to be an option in setup_options.php for the admin to decide.

I'm guessing (though I could be wrong) that you would still need to remove both those conditions to allow guests to post active URLS, otherwise $user_num_posts variable is not going to exist (!isset) for guest posting for the first time...

that doesn't stop the person posting in the first place either,
I think it stops at least half of the spammers (since inactive links as text don't bring any value for search engine placement like pagerank)...

The spammer doesn't drop links in the hopes some random browsing persons buy something from his website; he does it for the search engine ranking benefit only...

I think you may try my suggestion above and see the result.

I think this needs to be an option in setup_options.php for the admin to decide

Yes I feel the same after the latest release, so I will implement this in the next release.

Until now as you proposed you could just to disable the mentioned condition to eliminate this.