PHPbbBook

Documentation

About:

PHPbbBook is a simple guestbook with multiple themes, avatars and languages.
PHPbbBook is released under the GPL.
The data is stored in a flat textfile.
A captcha can be enabled or disabled and is also usable by people with disabilities.
Administrators get to see IP addresses from spammers, delete messages and reply within the message.

Requirements

Web server (apache)
PHP4
PHP4-gd (optional; needed for captcha support)
flite (optional; only needed to use speech with captcha)

History:

PHPbbBook was conceived after looking at a lot of guestbooks that were either too complex, or too constrained in their working.
PHPbbBook is a fork of vlbook (http://vlbook.com). The reasons for the fork were many, but mainly that vlbook was about using html code in your message at the cost of security. PHPbbBook is radically different in handling your messages. The only code that it uses is bbcode, so it is a lot more difficult to use html exploits. Admin logins expire after 30 mins for security reasons. The code is almost 100% w3c compatible (there are a few slipups here and there). The code is also fairly optimised for use by disabled people. (if you do find issues, please contact me). Compatability with vlbook is mostly intact, so avatars, language packs and themes are interchangable in most cases.

Bugs/errors?

Please contact me if you find any bugs or security leaks in this guestbook.

Installation:

Simply open the install.php file in your browser and follow the instructions.

Themes:

Theming is simple. You can add your own by changing the css file and the templlate.html file in /themes/. If you have a radical theme and you want to see it as an addon for PHPbbBook, send it to me.

Language:

Language support is modular. If you have a new language or spot errors in the existing files, edit the correct file in /lang/ and send me your version to add it to the next release.

Avatars:

Avatar packs are simply a series of .gif images in the /avatar/ folder. If you want to make a new avatar theme, copy the settings file, change the numbers in it according to your theme, and name all images to <themename>##.gif. Send me the folder if you want to see your avatar theme as addon pack.

Contact info:

Leave a message in the support guestbook at phpbbbook.passys.nl, or send me an e-mail at: hjheins@gmail.com