Changes and instructions for freeForum-1.3beta3

New features

Thanks to a suggestion by C. Iancu from counterzone.ro, the new version of freeforum has a multilingual interface! At the moment, you can choose between English, French, and Romanian. Language files are easy to create (20 minutes), so do not hesitate to make your own and send it back to us!

The second feature suggested by C. Iancu was a login form to get rid of the .htaccess files. It is now implemented. When you install or upgrade freeforum, you will be asked for an admin name and password. Later on, just use those to login to the admin panel, directly from your forum.

Finally, we added a couple of simple icons, the pages look a little more lively.

Install

To install:

1. Create a folder for freeForum on your server (YOUR_FOLDER).
2. Modify config.php to your liking.
3. Transfer the content of the freeForum archive to YOUR_FOLDER
4. Make sure that the PHP scripts have write access to the 2 files in YOUR_FOLDER/Data/(this can be done with your ftp program).
5. Open the file YOUR_FOLDER/install.php in a web-browser.

Upgrade

1. Move the freeForum folder to FreeForumOld.
2. Transfer the content of the new freeForum archive to YOUR_FOLDER
3. Copy your old config.php into the new folder.
4. Copy you old Data/ipban.db.php into the new folder.
5. Make sure that the PHP scripts have write access to the 2 files in YOUR_FOLDER/Data/(this can be done with your ftp program).
6. Run YOUR_FOLDER/install.php.

Use

To accomodate the login functions and multilingual instructions, instructions for use have changed a little. First, it will depend on how many languages you want to provide.

For an interface in a single language only, do the following:

• At the very top of your page, include the following statements

  <?
session_start();
?>

  This statement is needed for session management and the login functions.
• copy the file style.css where your page resides and include it in your page:

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="./style.css" type="text/css">

• Where you want the forum, include the following lines in you php file

  <?
$languagefile = "eng.php";
include('PATHTOFREEFORUM/forum.php');
?>

  This will load an English interface. The list of language codes is as follow
  • English: eng.php
  • French: fr.php
  • Romaniam: rom.php

For a multilingual interface, you can model yourself on the file index.php from the main distribution. Here is the list

• At the very top of your page, include the following statements

  <?
session_start();
if (isset($_GET['lang'])) {
$_SESSION['lang'] = $_GET['lang'];
}
if (isset($_SESSION['lang'])) {
$lang = $_SESSION['lang'];
} else {
$lang = "eng";
}
if ($lang == "fr") {
$languagefile = "fr.php";
} else if ($lang == "rom") {
$languagefile = "rom.php";
} else {
$languagefile = "eng.php";
}
?>

  The first statement is needed for session management and login functions. The following are setting the language file.
• copy the file style.css where your page resides and include it in your page:

  <link rel="stylesheet" href="./style.css" type="text/css">

• Where you want the forum, include the following lines in you php file

  <?
echo "<div align=\"center\"> <A href=\"".$_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]."?lang=eng\">English</A> -- <A href=\"".$_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]."?lang=fr\">Francais</A> -- <A href=\"".$_SERVER["PHP_SELF"]."?lang=rom\">Romaneste</A> </div>\n";
include('PATHTOFREEFORUM/forum.php');
?>

  This will load the forum and a language switch.

Customisation

Same as before, play with the stylesheets and templates!