Update to 3.0.7-PL1

I’m going to update the board to the latest version of phpBB, probably later tonight (if I can catch a good point where nobody is on, so as not to interfere with active posting). It looks like this version has RSS feed support built in. If so, that’ll be a big plus. I’m also going to investigate whether there might be a “theme” that supports tree-view browsing, which was brought up by a recent RAIF topic. Not sure such an animal exists, but if it does, I’ll see about setting it up.

Cool. Thank you Merk.

The update went quickly and smoothly. And I’ve enabled feeds. But… don’t know how to access the feeds yet. Presumably there’s some kind of feed-builder that lets you pick what you want and generate the URL to the feed for you, but for the life of me, I’m not seeing it.

Also, this version fixes the problem with GD-image CAPTCHA (although I personally find them too hard even for a human to solve), as well as question/answer (which is what I’ve currently enabled), and something I saw mentioned in the RAIF discussion called “reCaptcha.”

Thanks for the update, Mike. The feeds are working–yay!. Here’s the most recent one for your reference:

I guess if there aren’t any changes you want to make to the text feed, you don’t need to access the feed-builder :wink:

–Erik

Yay – thanks very much!

There don’t seem to be any links on the pages, but your web browser should pick up the links in the headers. Check the address bar for the feed symbol.

It offers feeds for “intfiction.org”, “News”, “All forums”, “New topics”, and “Active topics”, as well as whichever board and topic you happen to be looking at. Seems pretty comprehensive!

There are for me (using Google Reader).

I hadn’t noticed that yet. Very cool!

–Erik

Oh – right. I’m using an obsolete browser. That’s probably why I’m not seeing anything. Or else the links only appear in the alternate style (I’m using the original theme). I dunno. I’ll hunt a little more, and try in Firefox. :slight_smile:

(edit)
It looks like the “intfiction.org” one is the most useful, since it actually shows each new post made. The others show only the first post in new topics, or the list of boards, or other seemingly less useful lists. Now, I have this set to “20” posts. Is that too many? Too few? Or do RSS readers automatically grab the latest frequently, so stuff beyond the 20 in the latest “grab” is still visible? I’m still an RSS newbie I guess. :slight_smile:

In Firefox, there’s an icon for it in the address bar. The central feed’s URL is:

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/feed.php

There are others too. They get listed when you click on the feed icon in a browser that recognizes feeds.

On the forum itself, I mean. A lot of sites have a “subscribe with RSS” link somewhere on the page, as well as the meta-tags in the header, but it looks like phpBB just has the meta-tags.

I haven’t actually bothered to subscribe to any of the feeds, since I’ve already made visiting this forum part of my daily Internet routine. :slight_smile:

I guess the other lists would be more useful on high-traffic forums - you might just want to see the new topics and subscribe individually to the topics that interest you. Or something like that.

Google Reader automatically grabs updates at intervals, but I think most desktop RSS readers don’t. (It’s been ages since I used one, though, so I might be wrong. Google Reader is good enough for me.) Even Google Reader’s automatic updating doesn’t always catch everything, though.

I’m thinking a good rule of thumb might be: average number of posts per day + 10 (to allow for sudden increases). Seeing as I’m not using the board’s RSS features, though, I might be the wrong person to offer advice…

There are options to turn off some of the feeds. I just wasn’t sure what each was for, so I enabled them all. The settings can always be adjusted though, if those of you using the feeds can tell me which ones actually make sense, and can suggest appropriate size settings.

Not that it justifies me dragging my feet, but I’m so glad this new version has it built in. This was easier than installing a third-party module, and tons easier then trying to write my own script.

Thanks for the upgrade!

This is good. We were just discussing the forums at dinner, and saying that the lack of RSS was a big drawback. Thanks!

Yay RSS feeds!