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Free Services and mindless people.

DarkBlood

DarkBlood

NLC
NLC
First off, no offense to those mindless people. But as you can see, no-one actually takes time to read my own posts about free forums and all that junk. If you would just read kind of stuff, you'll know why I'm posting this read-only thread.

Next, let us re-cap what we know about the free forum world out there with the below listing(s)...

Free but not reliable...

-- Conforums, SuddenLaunch, ForumCo, clicdev (variant), InvisionFree (variant).
-- The items listed above are there because they do not give you access to the files in your directory... because of this you aren't allowed to fix PHP errors that you would normally fix through FTP (on Conforums, SuddenLaunch, and ForumCO... please ignore this statement here). On top of that, to add a skin or modification... you gotta talk to the admin, AND if the admin agrees... the modification will be installed on ALL OF THE FORUMS! Not just yours.

So what's better? Seeing your modifications on all the other hosted forums so we can point and laugh? Or is having FTP better? Because if you go by my rules, then FTP is surely the best no questions asked.

So you forum hosters out there... if you can read this; then I WILL NOT accept your free hosting offer until you either give me FTP, or I decide that your free service is in the right.

Feel free to join me in my forum offer fasting here if you wish... I do care about that much. ALSO, would you free webhosters STOP PM'ing me for getting me on your servers? I already have a damn good host... and that's as close as I'll get to un-metered space for now, T35.com

Godspeed to everyone in the search for a free forum service.
 
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It should be sticky and read by everyone and start a conversation here, not letting it has 0 replies...

You are right DarkRose but if someone wants to create a good and powerful forum to get traffic, he won't go to free forum hosting providers because of their many limitations. I personally believe that giving some money to get rid of ads, you can give them to a paid host and raise a better forum, 100% customizable and administered by you.

Free forum providers try to make money from ads, and not giving out much features to get most by giving the least (its simply business).
Hope that some will take care of customers and offer them , even a ristricted access to FTP in order to customize forums, add mods and other stuff in order to make them look unique...

I know its security-risk but anything new is risky...
 
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heh Seldimis, it is true that totally free service is hard to come by.
There might be people out there that will do stuff for free, w/o asking anything in return, but there are those that will do it for free, but with restrictions and rules.
imo, its just the way how they feel they should run their service, one can suggest how to improve the service, but one can't force them to improve it... it is, after all a free service.
 
hes Billy but free service doesn't meen low-quality service. Many people makes these too meaning equal but they are not !

(I meant DarkBlood in previous post :D)
 
I understand what you feel, DarkBlood. I like to have full access to forum files as well.

But on the other hand, I know quite a lot of people, who simple wouldn't care about it. They don't know anything about PHP or MySQL, and they have no intention of learning it. They simply want to have their own forum and that's all. For all these people, free forum hosting is a perfect solution and that's why I think it's not such a bad idea. Even without FTP access.
 
Thanks you guys... but I'm still not changing my mind about not getting a forum host until I deem it right enough; or my time to admin one has come.
 
Yes knives but the beginer who will get one forum won't mind in FTP Access. But when he sees other forums with a lot of mods and skins, he will be impressed and ask whenever possible to do it for his own (see the dissapointment when he reads that he can't)

I have personal experience with some of my website visitors, that's why I am telling you these :)
 
Seldimis, you're absolutely right.

For beginners free forum hosting should be enough, but IF they want to make a step forward, they need FTP access. And that's a right time to start looking for normal hosting.

On the other hand, denying FTP access must be pretty comfortable for admins. It's much harder to abuse free service if you can't upload your own scripts - so it's not that I don't understand their decision. It doesn't of course change the fact, that I can't imagine myself using that kind of service. Whenever I install new CMS or forum I get hundreds ideas what I need to change.
 
They could create a script like WYSIWYG Editor for .tpl files and .php files as users to add mods (can't abuse server much)
 
Actually, that's a very good idea.

New Invision Power Board has something like this. It's not WYSIWYG, but you can still edit templates using only admin's control panel. You don't have full control, but it's better than nothing.
 
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What i do with my forum hosting, is that i have restricted FTP access to only the skins folder. So, they can change or add templates or styles, but cannot add mods or upload scripts. It is a security issue and that is why I do it that way. I also then have an upgrade to Full FTP access for $10 per year.
 
knives said:
Actually, that's a very good idea.

New Invision Power Board has something like this. It's not WYSIWYG, but you can still edit templates using only admin's control panel. You don't have full control, but it's better than nothing.
Click to expand...

Actually you're talking about editing the HTML templates for IPB... this edits a table in the mysql database, NOT the actual skin_*.php files themselves.
 
DarkBlood said:
Actually you're talking about editing the HTML templates for IPB... this edits a table in the mysql database, NOT the actual skin_*.php files themselves.
Click to expand...
I never said you can edit files:
knives said:
It's not WYSIWYG, but you can still edit templates using only admin's control panel. You don't have full control, but it's better than nothing.
Click to expand...
I know it's not a perfect solution (you can't fix PHP code for example), but still you can change your forum's look almost entirely.

Hmm, now that I think about changing files using you web browser, I have some doubts. To be able to do that, permissions to all these *.tpl and *.php files should be probably set to 777. I'm not expert in security matters, but when so many files are set to 777... it's just doesn't seem right. I wouldn't be surprised if giving FTP access was safer than that :)
 
knives said:
I never said you can edit files...

I know it's not a perfect solution (you can't fix PHP code for example), but still you can change your forum's look almost entirely.

Hmm, now that I think about changing files using you web browser, I have some doubts. To be able to do that, permissions to all these *.tpl and *.php files should be probably set to 777. I'm not expert in security matters, but when so many files are set to 777... it's just doesn't seem right. I wouldn't be surprised if giving FTP access was safer than that :)
Click to expand...

However, even with CHMOD set to 755, your .php files can edit other .php files in your web account... that's why the minimum CHMOD for message board software(s) is 755. You can determine CHMOD settings by looking below or by refrencing to the 9 squares that you chmod with.

Basically... o = owner, g = group, and u = user; the three letters above are... r = read, w = write, x = execute.

so, if you have 755...

In numbers...

the first 7 is owner,
the first 5 is group,
the 2nd 5 is user.

So basically, any files on the server use owner permissions. Anything done by other FTP people using alternate FTP accounts other than yours use the user attribute, and so forth.
 
DarkBlood said:
However, even with CHMOD set to 755, your .php files can edit other .php files in your web account...
Click to expand...
That's a little bit confusing for me.

I understand your explanation of these numbers, but I wonder, why so many forums and portal systems insist during installation to change permissions of some files to 777?
 
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