Features

Each Forum.group gets its own dedicated phpBB Forum which we setup and administer for you. We handle the updates and setup of the forum so that your Moderator can concentrate of just running the forum - that is handling the membership and moderating the forum contents in a similar way to YahooGroups or Groups.io but with a wider set of features. On this page, we list the additional functions we offer to a standard phpBB forum. If you want to compare the funtionality with other services, click here.

phpBB is a major high quality Open Source forum system that is fully supported and continuously being updated and improved. It has an impressive range of features out of the box and is an ideal platform for those moving from Yahoo Groups to a forum system. Each group on our system gets their own dedicated phpBB forum plus a range of extra features we have selected to make the forum just perfect.

Included Forum Feature Extensions

Board Rules

Features:

Dedicated Rules page
Create an unlimited number of rules and rule categories (optional)
Multiple language support, create rule sets in each language
BBCodes supported in rules
Customisable anchors are displayed next to each rule, can be used for rule highlighting
Rules page link in the header (optional)
Require users acceptance of board rules prior to registration (optional)
ACP panel interface for rule management
BBCode editor with preview in ACP panel
Easily sort rules by moving them up/down in ACP panel
Notify users of board rules changes using the notification system

EMail Digests

Digests are emails sent to users periodically with summary of postings made on a phpBB forum for discrete time periods. Digests makes some phpBB forum users’ lives easier. They don’t have to explicitly visit the site to see what conversations are going on around there. They just read their digest and if there is some topic that seems of interest, they click on the topic link in their email program and start participating! They can unsubscribe at any time. By default, weekly digests are sent on Sundays. The users determines the hour they want to receive the digest. Whatever time they choose, they will always get the latest news so they can pick a time that suits their lifestyle.

Digests can be daily, weekly or monthly. Posts older than this will not be sent in a digest. In addition, if you want you can elect not to see posts since you last logged in, if you visited recently. You can even filter out your own posts.

If a user does not want summaries of every post, they can be selective. They can pick the forum or forums that interests them. By default they will get posts for all forums that they are allowed to access.

Digests can be sent as emails containing HTML or plain text. By default the user gets the entire post as text, but they can also select to see excerpts of each post or get a list of posts with links to each post.

Please note that each digest is unique, and may have different posts in it compared to another digest going out at the same hour. It may not be an appropriate digest solution for very large boards, very busy boards or for those who want to send bulk emails of all posts for a given time period, as it is designed for flexibility, not efficiency.

We recommend setting up a forum digest to be sent daily to your existing YahooGroup. That way, everyone is kept informed via the YahooGroup of new posts and they can then visit the forum to add replies and new posts.

Header Banner

Removes the content of the header replacing it with a banner of your choice that scales to the browser window. Undersized banners are centred on wide browser windows. The search (if enabled) can be placed on the header (top left/top right/bottom left/bottom right) moved to the NavBar or hidden.

You can hide the existing header background colour, radius the corners of the banner, as well as set its maximum size.
You can have a separate banner for mobile devices (<700px) if you wish
The banner is linked to the url that the site_logo is linked to

SEO Metadata

Add dynamically generated meta tags and microdata (Open Graph, Twitter Cards and JSON-LD) of your forums and topics to improve SEO of your board and show correct information when you share it though social networks, including (but not limited to) Facebook, Twitter and Vkontakte.

Features:

Dynamically generated Open Graph, Twitter Cards meta tags and JSON-LD microdata from your board data and current page
Set default image for Open Graph and JSON-LD
Set how description will be generated
ACP settings to enable/disable Open Graph, Twitter Cards and JSON-LD
Support for attachments, for topic image

Stop Forum Spam

Will query the stop forum spam database on registration and posting (for guests only) and deny the post and or registration to go through if found.

Features:

Will log an entry in the ACP if so set.
Extension sends usernames, emails and IP addresses to a third party server. Via HTTP when adding and querying.
Works with the Contact Admin Extension to disallow those trying to use the Contact Admin extension to submit.
Ability to report a users post to Stop Forum Spam database with API key from within viewing a topic (admins and mods only). Can't report mods or admins.
fix for username wild card issue (would return a false positive)

Additionsl Features Available with Premium Subscription

Activation Justification

How do you know whether or not the person who has just signed up for your board signed up just to spam it? Letting people justify their activation can help you decide exactly who should be activated and who shouldn't be.

The extension is only active if user registration in the ACP is set to "By Admin".

Google Translator

Adds the Google Translator to the navbar of your forum. You can configure both the default board language and the translation language(s) in the ACP. The language codes must be separated by a comma "," without any spaces.

Media Embed Plug In

The Media Embed Plug In brings a modern feature to your board, allowing users to post links to media sites that appear directly in their posts as embedded videos and/or content. It supports over 50 popular sites including videos, music streams, tweets, products, articles and other embeddable content. Users can utilise the new [MEDIA] BBCode or simply post the URL in plain text. Older posts made before installation of this extension containing supported links will automatically display as embedded content too.

Supported media:

ABC News, Allocine, Amazon Product, Anchor, Audioboom, Audiomack, Bandcamp, BBC News, BitChute, Bleacher Report videos, Break, Brightcove, CBS News Video, Clyp, CNBC, CNN, CNNMoney, CodePen, CollegeHumor, Comedy Central, Coub, Dailymotion, Democracy Now!, Dotsub, dumpert, eBaum's World, 8tracks, ESPN, Facebook, Flickr, Fox News, FOX Sports, Funny or Die, Gamespot, GameTrailers, Getty Images, Gfycat, Gifs.com, GitHub Gist, Global News, GoFundMe, Google Drive, Google+, Google Sheets, Hudl , Hulu, IGN, IMDb, Imgur, Indiegogo, Instagram, Internet Archive, İzlesene, JW Platform, Kontinental Hockey League (КХЛ), Kickstarter, Libsyn, Liveleak, Livestream, Mail.Ru, Medium, Megaphone, Metacafe, Mixcloud, Mixer, MLB, Mod DB, MRCTV, MSNBC, National Geographic Channel, National Geographic Video, NBC News, NBC Sports, NHL Videos and Highlights, NPR, The New York Times Video, Odnoklassniki, Orfium, Pastebin, Pinterest, Podbean, Prezi, Reddit threads and comments, Rutube, SchoolTube, Scribd, Sendvid, SlideShare, snotr, SoundCloud, Sporcle, Sportsnet, Spotify, Spreaker, Steam store, Stitcher, Straw Poll, Streamable, Streamja, Team Coco, TED Talks, Telegram, The Atlantic Video, The Onion, TikTok, TMZ, Trailer Addict, Trending Views, Tumblr, 247Sports, Twitch, Twitter, Ustream, VBOX7, Veoh, Vevo, Video Detective, VideoPress, Vimeo, Vine, VK, Vocaroo, Vox, Washington Post Video, WorldStarHipHop, The Wall Street Journal Online, XboxClips, Gamer DVR, Youku, YouTube

Pages

Allows moderators to create custom static pages. With Pages you can add an unlimited number of new static pages to your board, such as an About Us page, News page, or even a simple forum Blog. The ACP's page editor allows you to create page content using BBCodes or HTML, making it possible to embed media from other sites and create truly unique pages.

Precise Similar Topics

Display a list of similar (related) topics at the bottom of the current topic's page. It matches keywords in the current topic's title with other topic titles in your board's forums and determines the most relevant and closely matched results. There are Admin Control Panel settings available to fine tune the display and performance of Precise Similar Topics.

Features:

Displays a list of the most similar/relevant topics at the bottom of the current topic page.
Similar topics are sorted in order by their relevance.
Adjust how many Similar Topics to display per page.
Adjust the age-span of topics to display (ie: display similar topics from the past year only).
Enable or disable similar topics in each forum.
Exclude specific forums from being searched for similar topics.
Specify which forums can share similar topics with other forums.
A query caching option reduces SQL overhead on large boards.
Permission settings for users and groups determine who can view similar topics.
Forum privacy is maintained, topics from unauthorized and password-protected forums will not be shown to users who should not see them.
Multi-lingual support for stop-words (common words that are ignored).
Multiple languages are supported. View the pre-installed localizations.
Compatible with most styles, more added with every release.