PhpBB Tips
Managing a phpBB-driven forum with a rising number of members can become challenging when you are unfamiliar with the technology. Begin successful forum management with a few essential strategies that contribute to managing users and creating effective site polices for member conduct. PhpBB has useful features for maintaining peace within the forum, so the settings you choose contribute to building a reputable, harmonious online community.
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Display Community Rules
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Forum owners and administrators are responsible for creating a hospitable environment where unnecessary peer alienation does not occur. Community rules are therefore a critical foundation for peaceful, useful forums. The phpBB forum platform enables you to feature participation rules that define your expectations of the online community. You will need to create a few files to feature a rule page on your forum, but the effort is worthwhile. Such a rule page requires building a "rules.php," "rules.html," and a "rules.css" file.
Choose Moderators Wisely
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The administrative area of PhpBB contains banning features that can be used to exclude members from your online forum. Use discretion as you set a moderator's member banning permissions and choose your moderators wisely. A power-hungry moderator, for example, can damage the forum's ecosystem and make your phpBB forum the butt of jokes in other topic-related community forums. Set PhpBB's permission controls to allow moderator and member interactions and reserve the right to ban for yourself until its clear that a moderator can be trusted with banning permissions.
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Cultivate Community
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Setting user permissions to allow forum participant private messaging makes it possible for you to require that moderators send personal warning letters to those who come close to violating forum rules. Such private encounters with moderators eliminates a moderator's need to make public posts to troublesome posters. Your moderators are important players in maintaining the forum's sense of community; therefore, PhpBB enables moderators to keep logs and track the number of warnings issued as well within a moderator control panel.
Handling Bans
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If you must ban a participant from a forum, phpBB features customizable settings that enable you to share the reason for the banning and control the duration of the ban. Document the reason for the ban for your own records within the "Reason For Ban" section . If the ban is a temporary one, give guidelines to avoid future banning within the "Reason Shown to the Banned" section of phpBB's administrative controls -- and if you've granted banning permissions to one or more moderators, advise them to issue specific reasons for bans when they occur.
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