Solved -- the incompatibility between FP discussions and FP extensions.

[Stan Hilliard]

I post this here because someone else might benefit from what I
learned. I made my legacy FP discussion web work with FP2002
extensions. Even though I have closed the discussion to new posts (by
removing disc1sam_post.htm), I wanted to have it on-line because it
contained a lot of good technical discussion. I have been using FP2000
extensions instead of the latest FP2002 because of the bug in FP2002
that is incompatible with FP discussions.

My active discussion is a new phpBB forum.

But recently I needed to use the newer FP2002 extensions in my main
web because FP2000 cannot handle my new user input form that saves
data to a file, sends me an email, and loads a confirmation form.

My ISP upgraded the FP extensions from 2000 to 2002. The discussion
web seemed OK until I recalculated hyperlinks. That hosed the contents
frame, which then did not contain the topic titles but contained only
text string: "|_disc1sam/_disc1sam/tocproto.htm|".

Here is the solution that worked for me.
There is no such folder as "_disc1sam/_disc1sam/" so I created one.
Then I copied all of the messages in "_disc1sam/" (files with names
like 000005d1.htm) to the new "_disc1sam/_disc1sam/"

It was as simple as that. And the discussion continues to work after
hyperlinks are recalculated.

This might not work with discussions that still accept new posts, as
they might not go into "_disc1sam/_disc1sam/" -- unless the FP2002
extensions know to do it. There are other problems with new posts with
FP2002 extensions. The messages will either not wrap long lines into
onscreen paragraphs, or multi paragraphs will combine all paragraphs
in a report into one long paragraph.

The Frontpage discussion running on FP2002 extensions is here:
http://samplingplans.com/forum/
It is on a windows server.

Stan Hilliard

 

[Dick]

Stan,

I am trying to set up a discussion forum on my church website. I have one
made with the FP Discussion wizard in FP 2003 that works, but I would much
perfer to use the free phpbb if I could just make it more difficult for
spamers to access it. I read in your message that your active discussion is
now a new phpBB forum, I thought perhaps you have found a way to do this that
might help me and others wanting to develope a phpbb.

Hope I am making myself clear. Thanks for an help you can offer. Dick

 

[Stan Hilliard]

Stan,

I am trying to set up a discussion forum on my church website. I have one
made with the FP Discussion wizard in FP 2003 that works, but I would much
perfer to use the free phpbb if I could just make it more difficult for
spamers to access it. I read in your message that your active discussion is
now a new phpBB forum, I thought perhaps you have found a way to do this that
might help me and others wanting to develope a phpbb.

Hope I am making myself clear. Thanks for an help you can offer.
Dick

Hi Dick, I am surprised that your FP Discussion works. Maybe you are
using something other that FP2002 extensions -- like FP2000 extensions
or Sharepoint Services.

Most of the spam that I was getting on my Frontpage discussion was put
there by Internet crawlers/robots. There is a good discussion of
preventing spam on phpBB forums here:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=427852

My phpBB forum is version 2. I added a "MOD" to my phpBB forum called
Textual Confirmation to stop robots. It works well for me.

"MOD Description: Textual Confirmation (TC) asks newly registering
user a question. If the answer is wrong, TC rejects the registration.
Also, TC notifies the forum admin and the community spam database. The
administrator can edit the questions and answers in the Administration
Panel."

Stan Hilliard