• Disenfranchised powered by smf. First steps in search engine optimization Simple Machines Forum: removing copyright and external links. Installing and configuring Anti-Spam Links

    Let's start right away with the main script code:

    #!/usr/bin/perl

    # which-forum.pl script
    # (c) 2010 Alexandr A Alexeev, http://site/

    use strict;

    # commented lines - for rigor
    # if the task is to collect engine statistics, leave it as is
    # if you make a list of forums - uncomment

    my $data ;
    $data .= $_while (<> ) ;

    # check how much was Powered by phpBB without a link in the footer
    print "phpbb \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?phpbb\.com\/?"[^>]*>phpBB/i or
    # $data =~ /viewforum\.php\?[^""]*f=\d+/i or
    $data =~ /phpBB\-SEO/i or
    $data =~ /) ;
    print "ipb \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?invision(?:board|power)\.com\/?[^"]*"[^>]*> [^<]*IP\.Board/i or
    $data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?invisionboard\.com\/?"[^>]*>Invision Power Board/i or
    $data =~ /

    /i or
    $data =~ /index\.php\?[^""]*showforum=\d+/i) ;
    print "vbulletin \n"
    if ($data =~ /Powered by:?[^<]+vBulletin[^<]+(?:Version)?/i or
    $data =~ /) ;
    print "smf \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?simplemachines\.org\/?"[^>]*>Powered by SMF/i or
    $data =~ /index\.php\?[^""]*board=\d+\.0/i) ;
    print "punbb \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:(?:www\.)?punbb\.org|punbb\.informer\.com)\/?"[^>]*> PunBB/i) ; #or
    # $data =~ /viewforum\.php\?[^""]*id=\d+/i);
    print "fluxbb \n"
    # if($data =~ /viewtopic\.php\?id=\d+/i or
    if ( $data =~ /]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)fluxbb\.org\/?"[^>]*>FluxBB/i) ;
    print "exbb \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?exbb\.org\/?"[^>]*>ExBB/i) ; # or
    # $data =~ /forums\.php\?[^""]*forum=\d+/i);
    print "yabb \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?yabbforum\.com\/?"[^>]*>YaBB/i or
    $data =~ /YaBB\.pl\?[^""]*num=\d+/i ) ;
    print "dleforum \n"
    if ($data =~ /\(Powered By DLE Forum\)<\/title>/i or
    $data =~ /]+href="[^"]+(?:http:\/\/(?:www\.)?dle\-files\.ru|act=copyright)[^"]*">DLE Forum<\/a>/i) ;
    print "ikonboard \n"
    if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?ikonboard\.com\/?[^"]*"[^>]*>Ikonboard/i or
    $data =~ /\n"
    if ($data =~ /\n"
    # if($data =~ /forums\.php\?fid=\d+/i or
    # $data =~ /topic\.php\?fid=\d+/i or
    if ($data =~ /]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?flashbb\.net\/?"[^>]*>FlashBB/i) ;
    print "stokesit \n"
    # if($data =~ /forum\.php\?f=\d+/i or
    if ($data =~ /]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?stokesit\.com\.au\/?"[^>]*>[^\/]*Stokes IT/i) ;
    print "podium \n"
    # if($data =~ /topic\.php\?t=\d+/i or
    if ($data =~ /]+href=[""]?http:\/\/(?:www\.)?sopebox\.com\/?[""]?[^>]*>Podium/i) ;
    print "usebb \n"
    # if($data =~ /forum\.php\?id=\d+/i or
    if ($data =~ /]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?usebb\.net\/?"[^>]*>UseBB/i) ;
    print "wrforum \n"
    # if($data =~ /index\.php\?fid=\d+/i or
    if ($data =~ /]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?wr\-script\.ru\/?"[^>]*>WR\-Forum/i) ;
    print "yetanotherforumnet \n"
    if ($data =~ /Yet Another Forum\.net/i or
    $data =~ /default\.aspx\?g=posts&t=\d+/i) ;

    You will find this and other scripts mentioned in the post in this archive.

    Script which-forum.pl examines the HTML page code to see if it contains signatures of the forum engine. We used a similar technique when defining WordPress and Joomla, but there are a couple of differences. Firstly, the script itself does not load the page code, but reads it from stdin or a file passed as an argument. This allows you to download the page once, for example, using wget, and then run it through several analyzers, if we have more than one. Secondly, in this script the presence of a signature is 100% a sign of the engine. Last time, the presence of a signature only added weight to the corresponding engine and the engine with the greatest weight “won”. I decided that in this case, such an approach would only unnecessarily complicate the code.

    To test the script, I did some research. I compiled a list of several thousand forums and ran each of them through my script, thereby determining the percentage of program responses and the popularity of various engines.

    To get the list of forums, I used my Google parser. Queries like this were sent to the search engine

    site:forum.*.ru
    site:talk.*.ru
    site:board.*.ru
    site:smf.*.ru
    site:phpbb.*.ru
    ....

    and so on. You will find the complete query generator code in the file gen-forumsearch-urls.pl. In addition to zone.ru, .su .ua .kz and .by were also used. Last time, it was difficult to conduct such a study, since WordPress and Joomla sites do not have such signatures in the URL. Catalogs like cmsmagazine.ru/catalogue/ do not provide a sufficient sample size. What is 600 Drupal sites?

    I must admit, the results of the experiment disappointed me. Of the 12,590 sites studied, the engine was successfully identified on only 7,083, that is, only in 56% of cases. Maybe I didn't take into account some engine? Was it really true that half of the forums had Bitrix installed? Or should I have spent more time searching for signatures? In general, additional research is required here.

    Among the 56% of successfully identified engines, the most popular, as one would expect, were IPB (31%), phpBB (26.6%) and vBulletin (26.5%)

    They are followed by SMF (5.8%) and DLEForum (5.3%) with a large lag. My favorite punBB was only in 6th place (1.64%). I wouldn’t recommend putting much faith in these numbers (they say that every third forum on the RuNet runs on IPB), but certain conclusions can, of course, be drawn.

    For example, if you intend to make a site on a forum engine and plan to modify the forum, say, pay users $0.01 for each message with automatic withdrawal of funds once a week, then you should choose one of the three most popular engines. The more popular the forum, the greater the chances of finding a programmer who is well versed in it.

    If no significant changes are expected in the engine, then it may make sense to choose a less popular engine, for example SMF or punBB. This will reduce the number of hacker attacks on your forum and the amount of spam automatically sent on it.

    Scripts for searching/identifying forums can also find many practical applications. The first thing that came to my mind was to sort the identified forums by TIC and post on the first hundred posts with links to one of my sites. However, hundreds of forum dofollow links did not affect the TCI in any way (2 updates have passed), so it is better not to waste time here, unless you are not interested in transitions.

    It is clear that the mentioned use of scripts is far from the only one. I think you can easily figure out how else you can use them.

    Hello, Khabravites!

    Quite recently I was puzzled by the idea of ​​​​creating a forum. Nowadays, creating a forum does not cause much difficulty for users, since there are quite a large number of ready-made forum CMSs that greatly facilitate this task. But among their abundance, it can be very difficult to choose the truly necessary CMS. Therefore, I decided to write my own review, which, at least a little, will perhaps help the user make a choice in the direction of one engine or another.

    Free engines
    #1 - PunBB
    Beautiful and easy to use engine. Convenient and intuitive admin panel interface. The forum is very compact, has a small number of functions (with under boxes), but this can easily be corrected with add-ons. Convenient and easy to create themes. If you need a forum that is simple and easy to install, configure and use, this is the ideal choice.
    - Russian-speaking community
    There are many more different engines that I did not include in the review, because I think that they are not as in demand and popular as those mentioned above. Well, as for my subjective opinion, I would recommend PunBB or XenForo.

    Tags: create a forum, forum cms, forum engine

    This article is not subject to comment because its author is not yet a full member of the community. You will only be able to contact the author after he receives an invitation from someone in the community. Until this moment, his username will be hidden by an alias.

    Let's not forget good old forum software. Geeks use them for tech support. Businesses use them for collaboration. Here's our take on 70+ forum engines, hosts, and tools.

    Forum Engines (Free Software)

    Pocoo - Never heard of a Python-powered board? Neither did I, until I found Pocoo. It's WSGI compatible, and has an advanced plugin system.

    PunBB - With XHTML-compliant pages, simplicity, and speed, what's not to like?

    Quicksilver Forums (QSF) - Based on the now dead MercuryBoard, QSF has grown into a mature engine sporting features such as 3D permissions or skinning.

    RForum - Strong forum with mailing list integration, powered by Ruby.


    Simple Machines Forum (SMF) - Originally a fork of YaBB SE, SMF features WYSIWYG, powerful groups, and much more. Note: there is some dispute about whether SMF is free software or not, since you are not allowed to redistribute the forum/software itself without written permission.

    Snitz - Basic ASP forum.

    Tiny forum that stores its information in TXT files instead of a database.

    Unclassified NewsBoard Forum (UNB) - Easy to use forum engine with Jabber notification.

    UseBB - Lightweight, clear, and efficient board package.

    Vanilla - Terrific AJAXified forum with a really nice look you won't find anywhere else.

    Vikingboard - Minimalistic board engine for high performance.

    Viscacha - Board with integrated CMS and conversion from CuteCast, Vision Board, phpBB, and WBB.

    YaBB - Easy to install and easy to use, YaBB is more than yet another bulletin board.

    Yazd - Basic forum engine under the Apache license.

    Forum Engines (Commercial)


    AspNetForum - Clean and powerful ASP.NET forum engine. $85-$169.

    Burning Board - Easy to set up board that will import existing Invision Power Board, MyBB, phpBB, PunBB, Simple Machines Forum, or vBulletin forums. $139.99-$269.99.

    FuseTalk - Powerful forum software used by big-names such as Adobe, Boeing, NASA, NBC, US Airforce, McAfee and Lonely Planet. But the names will cost you. $649-$4599.

    FusionBB - Calendar, photo gallery, PayPal, article templates, and much more are available with this great piece of software. $425 flat fee or $149 flat fee and $39/year.

    Ideal BB - ASP/COM board with a nice revision feature. $299-$2099.

    Invision Power Board (IPB) - One of the most popular commercial boards of all time. $149.99-$299.99.

    Jive Forums - Powerful board used by companies such as EA and ESPN. Unfortunately, very expensive. $14950 flat fee, $1950/1000 users, $4950/5000 users, or $9950/20000 users.

    MyProBB - Powerful anti-spam features makes this one a keeper. It's cheap, too. $25/year.

    UBB.threads - $725 flat fee or $229 flat fee and $125/year.

    vBulletin - Extremely popular board with tons of features. $160 flat fee or $85/year.

    WowBB - WYSIWYG, internationalization, and much more available with this PHP board. $99 flat fee or $55/year.

    Forum Hosts


    Blursoft MetaForum - Has a ton of AJAX features, but manages to stay search friendly. And yes, the back button does work. Free.

    Conforums - Unlimited categories, boards, and posts with HTML and JavaScript customization. Free.

    CuteCast - Basic forum hosting. Free.

    GoBoardz - Nice forum with photo sharing and a nice interface. Free.

    Hyperboards - A big hosting provider with global login (one Hyperboards account logs you into every Hyperboards forum), skins, pages, and unlimited posts and boards. Free.

    Invision Power Board (IPB) - One of the most popular commercial boards of all time. $10-$75/month.

    ProBoards - A well known host powered by YaBB. Free.

    Sudden Launch - Forum host with unlimited posts, replies, and boards. Free.

    WowBB - WYSIWYG, internationalization, and much more available with this PHP board. $99 flat fee and $3.95/month or $7.95/month.

    Forum Integration


    bbPress and Wordpress integration - Official howto on integrating the two sister projects.

    Joomla component that adds a powerful forum.

    Integrating Vanilla and Wordpress - Official guide to integrating the two popular CMSs.

    IpbWiki - Connects Invision Power Boards and MediaWiki.

    Joomla!Vanilla - Bridge between the Joomla CMS and Vanilla.

    Forum Tools


    BBCodeXtra Firefox Extension - Context menu to insert BBCode or (X)HTML. Freeware.

    Everyone knows that I simply cannot live without Joomla, but, in my opinion, there is no good forum for components. That's why I work with forum engines. One of the new ones that I just recently started using is Let's start a new SMF category with hopefully useful stuff. We start small, and as beginners it’s very useful.

    First steps in search engine optimization Simple Machines Forum: removing copyright and external links

    Let me make a reservation right away that I only work with smf 2 and this article will relate specifically to this version of the free forum engine.

    And so, regular readers know how much I don’t like to put “10” external links to the official websites of engines, including forum ones. That is why, first of all, we remove the copyright and as many as 4, attention 4 external links of the form " SMF 2.0.2 | Simple Machines | SMF © 2011 | XHTML"! To do this, connect to the site via FTP forum/Themes/ name of your theme/ and edit the file index.template.php. Naturally, at the very bottom there is a code (about line 330) that displays external links that we don’t like so much. Therefore we delete: "

  • ", theme_copyright(), "
    • " And "
  • ", $txt["xhtml"], "
    • ". It's all so simple and easy. In the coming publications, expect new materials on promoting and optimizing forums on SMF/

    Well, let's start giving little tips on optimizing and promoting sites (forums) on phpBB. In this case, we will perform a small hack that will help get rid of an external link like " Powered by phpBB ©...". In this publication we will look at 2 ways in which you can do this - a technique for phpBB 3.x.x.

    Removing an external link Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group and Russian phpBB support

    The first way to remove an external link that says Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. And so, the easiest way is to delete using the admin panel. We go to the administrative panel, go to the “Styles” menu item, on the left we see the panel where the block in the menu is located, we are interested in the “Style Components” block, and in it “Templates”. According to the standard, in the proposed window we will see the following: prosilver and subsilver2, although there could be others if you installed them. In general, that's not the point. From the proposed set, select the default one. Click on the "edit" button next to the template. Next, a window appears asking you to “Select a template file.” Next, select “Template file” - “overall_footer.html”. The HTML editor appears below. We find the following code: " Powered by phpBB 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group"and just delete it, although you can set your own link and caption."
    (TRANSLATION_INFO)     " (which is located below, can also be deleted) - this code is responsible for localization, for example an external link with the inscription "Russian phpBB support".

    The second way to remove an external link that says Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. This method is similar, but we connect to the site via Pratacol ftp. Go to the following path styles/template_name/template/overall_footer.html. And we edit the same code that we edited above. If you change the code, do not forget to set the UTF encoding - this way, “crackers” (squares and other incomprehensible symbols) may appear in place of the anchors.

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