Following the launch of 7.6.0 I am very excited. I have had to make some changes to the header I made around 12 years ago, but from now on we're VERY mobile friendly! Woow!
I must say over the last years I have always been changing some stuff in the templates and scripts which I have to do over and over again. I will list them below.
I'm glad that you're enjoying the hard work that went into overhauling UBB.threads.
1/ iso instead of utf-8
I've dragged this board forward since 2001. The initial installation has been left unchanged so everything is still iso encoded. Every time, I have to manually edit the generic language file to reflect this. I also have to add a htaccess / php instruction to treat php output as iso. It would be so nice to take this into account.
If you
do not upload the languages folder, it will attempt to patch your existing one; a problem here being if there where major updates such as v7.6.0; we recommend that if you've edited the standard language files to patch the new ones with those same changes (with a tool such as Beyond Compare).
2/ post icons
It might sound boring, but we only have one post icon. I have to manually remove all post icons (it would be nice to put this in packs!) and manually edit out the 'no icon' in the html.inc.php file. Still leaves me with a selection possibility of one single item. Would be nice to detect this.
If you intend on changing the default images, make customization in a customization folder (copy the default folder and change those images). Changes to the default images happen, they've happened all through the life cycle of UBB.threads.
3/ image posting
We have our own custom tag to include images (triggering a popup). Even when I disallow img tag in posts, the image button is still there in the text editor. It would be nice to take the setting into account so the image button no longer appears.
The official support stance for UBB.threads is that modifications to the code cannot be supported; the default behavior is to use the internal system; if you want the icon to no longer show and don't want to use the new attachments system, you'll have to apply your modification again, and remove the post icon in the standard text editor template. Again, modifications to the base system is unsupported.
4/ admin iso
even though the generic language file is set to iso, the control panel requires an extra line of header code in the admin.inc.php file to show the correct characters
This line is already in your admin header. $charset is taken from your forum's set CHARSET setting.
<meta charset="$charset">
So if you have "utf-8" set for your forum, that will also be used in your control panel
If you have "iso-8859-1" set for your forum, that will also be used on your control panel
5/ avatar size
There is an inline style to pull the width to 150px wide in the profile pages (also followers / friends). I always change this so it doesn't stretch smaller images. Also the inline sizes skew the image due to not taking into account proportions.
This is covered
here.
6/ Topic tooltip preview
Irrelevant in mobile, because you can't 'hover'. Should be turned off there. Now it just pops up when you click the link, which is a bit silly.
long-pressing on mobile, will display the information you'd normally see when you hover your mouse pointer over an area. long-press on mobile = hover on desktop.
7/ RSS charset
Yeah I keep coming back to this. The RSS charset is defined as UTF-8, breaking RSS feeds if the database is iso. Manual edit required here as well. Should also take into account the generic setting.
There is no character set in rss, it should have never been defined in the code, we remove any mention of that in v7.6.0.
8/ Title editing on replies
I don't like that people can change the title in a reply. It's been the cause of much confusion. I know there is a function to retitle all replies, but that's post-fact fixing. I always edit the files so people can't set a new title. I also do this in the edit screen, even though a result of that is that the original title can also not be edited. I don't care too much about that, but the thinking is not 100%.
You're an admin, you have every right to open up the post_side.tpl file and hide/remove the subject line, but that behavior is not supported in UBB.threads
9/ Font and size selection
We don't have font family / size selection. I've emptied the boxes in the control panel. However, I also always have to edit the text editor template to remove the (then empty) buttons for this.
Again, if you don't want this shown youc an edite them out of the standard_text_editor template.
10/ Favorite topic
My members hate it when the 'follow this topic' is checked as standard when posting a new post or a full screen reply. I always have to edit that out in the newpost and newreply templates.
This behavior was added to engage posters, so that when a question is asked they can easily access the topic; as you've already done you can change the behavior in the template.
11/ Moving to a new domain
I would also suggest to create a 'move' script, which for example searches the database for the old URL in posts / ... and replaces it with the new URL. We have recently done a move and this has demanded a lot of .htaccess work to fix several issues (not just related to the forum), to make sure old (even internal) links and images (avatars,...) to work again.
Not needed or recommended, you should ONLY backup your database from the command line, as attempting to do so on a marginally sized board will hit time limits on the server, and leave you assuming you have a proper backup. There is a guide on
UBBWiki Migration Guide, changes to the database would require a developers eye, as you could easily hose your installation.
12/ Graemlins etc.
I've always stuck with the Graemlins that were created at the very beginning. My users also like them. They're clean and timeless. Every upgrade, I have to restore them from a backup.
So create a custom folder for your additional content, so that they don't get overwritten when we do updates to the ones that are released with the upgrade package. The style system will read additional folders and allow you to chose them on the first section.
It would be nice to turn the above into settings / options / ... in the control panel. Or image packs for avatars, forum images,...
Changes come in time, we spent 2 full years on this release (which was way longer than our Fathers Day 2015 internal date); we didn't even get half of what we wanted into v7.6.0, but after two years in development we had to draw a line.
