Configuring FlashBB
The config.php file that you should use depends on the Bulletin Board over which FlashBB is installed. If you open the config.php file in FlashBB's root folder, you'll see something like the following:
<?php require_once 'system.php'; require_once $cms. '/config.php'; ?>
$cms is a variable that is either 'phpbb', 'vbulletin', or 'vbulletin35', depending on the bulletin board over which FlashBB is installed (others may be added in future releases of FlashBB). Open the config.php file in the appropriate sub-folder with a good text editor, like Textpad. We'll use the phpbb/config.php file in this example, although the options are quite similar in the others config.php files.
Locate the following code (it's probably around the middle of the file):
<config version="1.1.5" host="" urlFAQ="http://www.tufat.com/flashbb.php" urlChat="http://www.tufat.com/" lng="english" utilities="search,members,groups,profile,themes,pmb,chat,faq,about" showLogin="on" hideLogin="on" showReg="on" alertAlpha="100" showVersion="on" >
This is a small piece of XML that controls some general interface options for FlashBB. Let's start at the top and proceed down...
version: The current FlashBB version. You should not change this unless your name is Darren G. Gates.
host: Ignore this. This is used only for debugging purposes. You should leave this as the empty string "".
urlFAQ: This is the URL that should be opened when the user clicks the FAQ icon in FlashBB. You can set this to any URL that you wish (for example, the FAQ of your own website, or phpBB's FAQ page, or leave it at TUFaT.com's URL). The FAQ icon can be removed completely by omitting the "faq" word from the utilities option below.
urlChat: This is the URL to your FlashChat installation, if available. You can change this to any URL that you wish, or example an IRC chat URL. The Chat icon can be removed completely by omitting the "chat" word from the utilities option below.
lng: The FlashBB interface language, like 'english'. For a list of available languages, check the "lng" folder in FlashBB. More languages are being added all the time. Strings for the interface languages are stored in UTF-8 encoded XML files. If you edit one or more of these files, be sure to re-save in UTF-8 format, or you'll get an interesting language loading error when you try to run FlashBB.
utilities: This is a comma-delimited string of words to control what icons should be displayed in the Utilities pane. You can remove any icon by editing this string, and re-order any icons by re-ordering the words in the string. And yes, you can remove the "About" icon if you really need to, but I encourage you to keep it to help support FlashBB.
showLogin: This parameter is obsolete. If present, please ignore it.
hideLogin: This parameter is obsolete. If present, please ignore it.
showReg: Set this to "on" to automatically display the registration page by default. This could help increase the number of registered users by giving newbies a quick way to register on your forum.
alertAlpha: The level of transparency ("alpha") for popup alert windows. Valid values are 0 to 100. Most users should keep this at 100, or a number close to 100.
showVersion: Set this to "on" to show the FlashBB version information at the top. If you set this to "off", then the header bar will only display "Welcome to", which is probably not what you want. In such a case. you should also edit the appropriate language XML file in the "lng" folder. For example, in /lng/english.xml, you'll find this line:
welcomeTo="Welcome to"
Change that to some text that you want to display at the top of FlashBB, like:
welcomeTo="Welcome to My Forum"
When you reload FlashBB, you would then see something like the screenshot shown below. Please note that you may need to clear your web browser cache before you see this change.
Now scroll down farther on the screen. You'll see a section with some XML configuration options for sounds, languages, and themes. This is fairly self-explanatory, so I won't discuss it much here. You can change the MP3 file path, and re-assign the sounds to various interface actions. Please note that you may need to clear your browser cache when making changes to the XML settings. Also, you should ensure that your MP3 files are 64-kbps encoded MP3 files to ensure compatibility with Flash.
<sounds>
<sound path="" name="btnRelease"/>
<sound path="sounds/start.mp3" name="wndMinimize"/>
<sound path="sounds/start.mp3" name="wndMaximize"/>
<sound path="sounds/pop.mp3" name="wndClose"/>
<sound path="sounds/start.mp3" name="wndHide"/>
<sound path="sounds/start.mp3" name="wndShow"/>
<sound path="sounds/air_swoosh.mp3" name="curtainHide"/>
<sound path="sounds/air_swoosh.mp3" name="curtainShow"/>
</sounds>
Most likely, you will not wish to change any other settings below this. You can change the theme colors for the "Flat" skin, and even add additional themes or remove themes. For example, if you wanted to restrict users to the "Windows XP" theme, then you could remove the two <look> tags for the Flat and Macintosh Aqua themes.
You may also wonder what that PHP code does; i.e., the code that has this in it -
$sql = "SELECT * FROM " .$table_prefix. "flash_user_config WHERE user_id=....
In addition to loading administrator-set configuration options, the config.php file loads user-specific configuration options. All users have the ability to customize their interface layout using FlashBB's powerful drag-and-drop mechanism. The layout for every user is saved in the "flash_user_config" table, and loaded upon login.