Well, let's start giving little tips on optimizing and promoting sites (forums) on phpBB. In this case, we will perform a small hack that will help get rid of an external link like " Powered by phpBB ©...". In this publication we will look at 2 ways in which you can do this - a technique for phpBB 3.x.x.

Removing an external link Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group and Russian phpBB support

The first way to remove an external link that says Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. And so, the easiest way is to delete using the admin panel. We go to the administrative panel, go to the “Styles” menu item, on the left we see the panel where the block in the menu is located, we are interested in the “Style Components” block, and in it “Templates”. According to the standard, in the proposed window we will see the following: prosilver and subsilver2, although there could be others if you installed them. In general, that's not the point. From the proposed set, select the default one. Click on the "edit" button next to the template. Next, a window appears asking you to “Select a template file.” Next, select “Template file” - “overall_footer.html”. The HTML editor appears below. We find the following code: " Powered by phpBB 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group"and just delete it, although you can set your own link and caption."
(TRANSLATION_INFO) " (which is located below, can also be deleted) - this code is responsible for localization, for example an external link with the inscription "Russian phpBB support".

The second way to remove an external link that says Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. This method is similar, but we connect to the site via Pratacol ftp. Go to the following path styles/template_name/template/overall_footer.html. And we edit the same code that we edited above. If you change the code, do not forget to set the UTF encoding - this way, “crackers” (squares and other incomprehensible symbols) may appear in place of the anchors.

By selecting a specific topic to view, users are taken to a page with a list of messages in that topic.

Each individual message usually looks like this:

Typically, along the top and bottom of each page, a small menu will appear containing (depending on your forum settings) the following buttons:

• Answer- The most popular button with which users can leave new messages in a topic.
• Notify- Subscribe to receive notifications about new messages in this topic.
• Mark unread- You can mark the current topic as unread.
• Submit this topic- You can forward a link to the current topic to your friend/acquaintance by indicating his e-mail.
• Seal- Create a printed version of the page with the content of the current topic, for viewing before printing.

Typically, the list of messages in a topic is displayed in vertical order: old messages at the top, new ones at the bottom. But each user can set a different, horizontal order in his profile. Then new messages will be placed at the top. Each message in the list is divided into two sections. The left section contains brief information about the author of the message, and the right section contains the message itself.

• Author information
  • Author of the message- Nickname of the user (or guest) who left this message.
  • Signature above the avatar- Depending on the forum settings, users may have pre-created captions over their avatars or can set them themselves. Typically, this signature serves to individually “mark” users.
  • Main group- Most often, all users are in the Normal Users group, the name of which is not displayed. If the group is any other, its name will be displayed in this place. If the author of the message is a guest, a note about this will also be displayed here.
  • Group based on number of messages- Depending on the number of messages left, users are divided into different groups (Newbie, Guest, etc.). The name of this group may not be displayed if the user is a member of a special group or its display is disabled in the settings of the current theme.
  • Emblem- Usually the number of images in the emblem is set depending on the rank of the group (for example, beginners have 1 star, advanced users have three, veterans have five), or they use different images for different groups.
  • Number of messages- Displays the current number of messages of a specific user.
  • Icons for contacting the author- Display of various icons that help in one way or another to contact the author of the message: link to profile, link to website, ICQ number, e-mail, sending a personal message.
• Message block
  • Message icon- Individual icon selected by the author when creating/sending a message.
  • Message subject- The title of the message usually matches the title of the topic, but at the request of the author of the message it can be changed to any other.
  • Button panel- At the top of each message, in the right corner, a number of buttons are displayed that allow you to perform certain quick actions on the text of the message: quote, edit, delete, etc. (depending on the settings and installed mods). Most often, the “Quote” button is displayed; all other buttons are available only to the author of a specific message, as well as moderators and administrators.
  • date and time- The date and time the message was published is displayed directly below its subject. A warning about subsequent editing of the message will be displayed under its content and above the author's signature.
  • Text- Contents of the message (if there are no messages, then why a forum?)
  • Signature- If the user has specified his signature in his profile, it will be displayed here, under the text of the message.
  • Report to moderator- You can quickly report each specific message to the moderators (for example, complain if swear words are used in the message).
  • Recorded by- A mark indicating that the IP address of the computer used by the user or guest when sending the message is saved in the logs (in the database). For administrators (and for those who are allowed to do so), the IP itself is displayed next to this mark.

While these are the most common message elements when viewing threads, users can hide some of them by editing their profiles.

Starting a New Topic

Browse to the board where you wish to post and click the New Topic button (positioned by default at both the top and the bottom of the board, as shown in the ), which should take you to the Start new topic screen. While this presents a number of options, the two most important are the Subject field and main Message field (not labeled as such, but obvious by its size). So enter your subject and start to type (or paste) your message into the main text area, noting that a message missing either a subject or a body will not be accepted for posting until it has both. If you"re happy with your plain text message, you can then post it by clicking the Post button and/or preview it first by clicking the Preview button, but there are many further available to make things that little bit more interesting.

• Some forums show the navigation tree at the top in a space-saving horizontal mode.
• Some forums may be configured to offer an additional Spell Check button alongside the Post and Preview options.

Starting a New Poll

A poll is basically a topic with an added question and voting options, started by clicking New Poll instead of New Topic. To post a poll it is necessary to fill out the Question field and at least two of the Option fields in addition to the Subject and Message fields required by a standard topic. Further options to configure how many choices the user may vote for, how long the poll should run, whether users can change their votes and what conditions must be fulfilled for the results to be displayed should be self-explanatory.

To offer more than five choices in a poll, simply click Add Option as many times as necessary.

Note that it may also be possible for some users in some forums to add a poll to an existing topic.

Posting an Event to the Calendar

Where this option has been configured (it"s not standard "out of the box"), you can post an event by selecting Calendar from the followed by Post Event from the calendar screen. What you see now is a Start new topic screen with additional fields for the event title, date and target board, which simply add your event to the calendar and create a link back to your post in that board.

Replying to a Topic or Poll

Replying to a topic or poll is basically the same as , but it"s not necessary to enter anything in the Subject field unless you wish to change what"s already there. To vote in a poll, you simply have to select your chosen option(s) and click Submit Vote.

If "Quick Reply" has been enabled, a simple reply field will also appear after the post(s) on a page, but you"ll have to type yours and manually if you choose to use it.

Quoting a Post

To reply to a post by quoting it, you can either click the Quote button for the relevant post and add your own message to the quoted text or click the Reply button followed by Insert Quote from the relevant post in the "Topic Summary" below, but note that:

• Both these options add a link to the original post showing the name of the poster and the date and time of the post, whereas the quote tag simply quotes the relevant post without this additional information.
• You can also retain or add the "author" attribute independently of the full Quote function, as demonstrated in the below.

Modifying or Deleting a Post

To modify a post, click the Modify button and make your changes. Note that most forums are likely to be configured to show the date and time of the last edit, but the administrator(s) may also allow a short period to elapse before this happens.

To delete a post, click the Delete button followed by OK from the Remove this message? box that appears. Some forums may also allow you to remove topics or polls that you start, but the buttons for these are usually at the bottom of the page.

Standard Posting Options

Notify me of replies

Check this to subscribe to email notification for the topic.

Return to this topic

Check this to return to the topic (instead of the message index) after posting (NB you can also set this behavior as a preference in your profile).

Don't use smileys

Check this to prevent certain in your post from being parsed and rendered as smileys.

Attachments

If enabled, this feature allows you to attach files to your posts in much the same way as most email clients, so you simply have to browse to the relevant file(s) on your computer before clicking Post. You can delete your attachment(s) or add more by , but please note that:

• The permitted file types and sizes are set by the forum administrator(s).
• Although most forums are likely to be configured to display attached images as part of the post, it"s not possible to preview attachments so you should always browse to and attach your files just before you finally post your message.

References

SMF Bulletin Board Code

The buttons shown belong to the SMF default theme and may differ from forum to forum.

Tag Name	Button	Code	Output	Comments
Bold		[b]bold	bold	*
			*
			*
			*
Glow		glow		The three attributes (eg red, 2, 50) in the "glow" tag are color, strength and width respectively.
			The two attributes (eg red, left) in the "shadow" tag are color and direction respectively.
	move	move	Not valid XHTML, but can also be used for images!
	Simple Machines Forum	Simple Machines Forum	Preserves critical text formatting, rendered in a monospace font.
	left align		*
	centered		*
	right align		*
Right-to-Left	*	right to left!		Typical usage would be to post Arabic or Hebrew in an English document.
Left-to-Right	*	left to right!		Typical usage would be to post English in an Arabic or Hebrew document.
			*
	font size		*
	font face		Only fonts installed on the user's computer will be displayed, so use with caution!
Font Color	Change Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon Lime Green	red	red	Select the color from the drop-down.
	http://somesite/somefile.swf	http://somesite/somefile.swf	Please note that, if embedded Flash has been disabled by the forum administrator(s), the Flash file will appear as a straight hyperlink as shown here. The two attributes in the "flash" tag (where relevant) are width and height respectively.
		http://somesite/image.gif		Type the width and height attributes to resize the image.
		http://somesite/image.gif
		http://somesite/	http://somesite/	NB the "url" tag opens in a new window, but you can type "iurl" tags to open in the same window.
		descriptive link	descriptive link
	someone@somesite	someone@somesite	*
		ftp://somesite/somefile	ftp://somesite/somefile	*
		descriptive link	descriptive link
		*	No meaningful output from the "table" tags alone.
		*	No meaningful output from the "table" and "tr" tags alone.
		content	content	Note the correct nesting of the tags, so the "table" tags contain the "tr" tags, which each contain an equal number of "td" tags!
		SMF Bulletin Board Code	SMF Bulletin Board Code
	superscript		*
	subscript		*
	teletype		Monospace font.

Long time no love for seobayers so iam writing this tutorial for you guys:

One of the biggest mysteries about xrumer has been creating profiles and me myself being a noob , but a smart one:P, always try to find ways for creating thins easier. Recently i was doing a test and found a good way of generating profile links easily. Before we start i will post results:

Tools- Hrefer 3.3, Xrumer 7.5, Scrapebox, Adword tool for keyword, Keyword studio pro and a linklist merger

Linklist generated- 250k (unique domains)
Profiles generated- 60k (unique domains) - a lot in just 20 days.

Step 1
Generate keywords which people actually try to rank for. This is the most crucial step in profile building. I saw a huge list being shared on another forum which had over 300k words. I say what is the use for searching keywords like "aaaaa", "abra ka dabra" etc. Who will rank for these? So i used common sense and generated keywords which people actually use for ranking.

Usage -
1) Note down atleast 100 keywords from google search (not adwords) which are broad and have massive competition like credit card, insurance etc.

2) One-by-one load these keywords into keyword studio pro (i used crack version:P) and generate similar keywords. Note that these words are better than scrapebox wonderwheel scraper.

3) Load all these keywords into scrapebox and generate keywords upto 3 levels. De-dup them etc. and save them. Then in the end make a huge list of all the keywords generated from original 100 words.

Step 2
Load them into hrefer but before you begin do this:

1) Edit additive words and just use these:

"powered by smf"
"powered by vbulletin"
"powered by phpbb"
"powered by ip.board"

Etc. etc. etc. but only forum software names. I did this so i don"t know which are most useful.

2) Edit search engine filter and place this:

Member.php?action=
profile.php?viewprofile=

Etc. etc. basically all those filters which have view profile in their url.

The logic is to get maximum of those profiles which have been made for the purpose of visible backlinks. (Iam having trouble loggin into my dedi so will post the complete list later)

3) Start scraping and wait for it to complete.

Step 3- Another very important step.

Usually you all just load the links in xrumer and blast away but no you should analyze the database also to remove dead ones. So click on tools -> database analysis

1) Type the same "powered by" stuff into the box on left hand side.

2) Choose your linklist and select search content and 50 threads and go. This will remove all 404 forums and blogs etc.

Now we run xrumer with this linklist.

1) Load the database and setup your project.

2) Goto advanced options -> select register only, goto speed<--->success and move all the way to success and select recaptcha with 40-50 atempts.

3) Start and let it complete.

While the posting is done i usually move to the next keyword building step.

When all your profiles are created, load them into linklist merger and create a big file from it. Now remove dups and all and you have a good profile link package.

So the jist is - keywords which people search - only few additive words and filters - right settings etc.

You will notice that from your final linklist with medium success and recpatcha off and 20-25 atempts for captcha you will get approx 30k+ profiles. I get 60k with recaptcha and half-success

Happy profile creation....

Let's start right away with the main script code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# which-forum.pl script
# (c) 2010 Alexandr A Alexeev, http://site/

use strict;

# commented lines - for rigor
# if the task is to collect engine statistics, leave it as is
# if you make a list of forums - uncomment

my $data ;
$data .= $_while (<> ) ;

# check how much was Powered by phpBB without a link in the footer
print "phpbb \n"
if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?phpbb\.com\/?"[^>]*>phpBB/i or
# $data =~ /viewforum\.php\?[^""]*f=\d+/i or
$data =~ /phpBB\-SEO/i or
$data =~ /) ;
print "ipb \n"
if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?invision(?:board|power)\.com\/?[^"]*"[^>]*> [^<]*IP\.Board/i or
$data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?invisionboard\.com\/?"[^>]*>Invision Power Board/i or
$data =~ /

/i or
$data =~ /index\.php\?[^""]*showforum=\d+/i) ;
print "vbulletin \n"
if ($data =~ /Powered by:?[^<]+vBulletin[^<]+(?:Version)?/i or
$data =~ /) ;
print "smf \n"
if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?simplemachines\.org\/?"[^>]*>Powered by SMF/i or
$data =~ /index\.php\?[^""]*board=\d+\.0/i) ;
print "punbb \n"
if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:(?:www\.)?punbb\.org|punbb\.informer\.com)\/?"[^>]*> PunBB/i) ;
#or
# $data =~ /viewforum\.php\?[^""]*id=\d+/i); \n"
print "fluxbb
# if($data =~ /viewtopic\.php\?id=\d+/i or /if ( $data =~) ;
]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)fluxbb\.org\/?"[^>]*>FluxBB/i \n"
if ($data =~ /print "exbb]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?exbb\.org\/?"[^>]*>ExBB/i
) ;
# or \n"
if ($data =~ /# $data =~ /forums\.php\?[^""]*forum=\d+/i); or
print "yabb
]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?yabbforum\.com\/?"[^>]*>YaBB/i \n"
if ($data =~ $data =~ /YaBB\.pl\?[^""]*num=\d+/i ) ;<\/title>/i or
$data =~ /print "dleforum<\/a>/i) ;
/\(Powered By DLE Forum\) \n"
if ($data =~ /]+href="[^"]+(?:http:\/\/(?:www\.)?dle\-files\.ru|act=copyright)[^"]*">DLE Forum or
$data =~ /]+href="[^"]*http:\/\/(?:www\.)?ikonboard\.com\/?[^"]*"[^>]*>Ikonboard/i \n"
if ($data =~ /]*>ExBB/i
$data =~ /ikonboard\.cgi/i ) ;
print "bbpress
# $data =~ /topic\.php\?id=\d+/i or \n"
# $data =~ /forum\.php\?id=\d+/i);
print "flashbb
if ($data =~ /# if($data =~ /forums\.php\?fid=\d+/i or) ;
# $data =~ /topic\.php\?fid=\d+/i or \n"
]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?flashbb\.net\/?"[^>]*>FlashBB/i
if ($data =~ /print "stokesit) ;
# if($data =~ /forum\.php\?f=\d+/i or \n"
]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?stokesit\.com\.au\/?"[^>]*>[^\/]*Stokes IT/i
if ($data =~ /print "podium) ;
# if($data =~ /topic\.php\?t=\d+/i or \n"
]+href=[""]?http:\/\/(?:www\.)?sopebox\.com\/?[""]?[^>]*>Podium/i
if ($data =~ /print "usebb) ;
# if($data =~ /forum\.php\?id=\d+/i or \n"
]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?usebb\.net\/?"[^>]*>UseBB/i
if ($data =~ /print "wrforum) ;
# if($data =~ /index\.php\?fid=\d+/i or \n"
]+href="http:\/\/(?:www\.)?wr\-script\.ru\/?"[^>]*>WR\-Forum/i
$data =~ print "yetanotherforumnet) ;

You will find this and other scripts mentioned in the post in this archive.

Script which-forum.pl examines the HTML page code to see if it contains signatures of the forum engine. We used a similar technique when defining WordPress and Joomla, but there are a couple of differences. Firstly, the script itself does not load the page code, but reads it from stdin or a file passed as an argument. This allows you to download the page once, for example, using wget, and then run it through several analyzers, if we have more than one. Secondly, in this script the presence of a signature is 100% a sign of the engine. Last time, the presence of a signature only added weight to the corresponding engine and the engine with the greatest weight “won”. I decided that in this case, such an approach would only unnecessarily complicate the code.

To test the script, I did some research. I compiled a list of several thousand forums and ran each of them through my script, thereby determining the percentage of program responses and the popularity of various engines.

To get the list of forums, I used my Google parser. Queries like this were sent to the search engine

site:forum.*.ru
site:talk.*.ru
site:board.*.ru
site:smf.*.ru
site:phpbb.*.ru
....

and so on. You will find the complete query generator code in the file gen-forumsearch-urls.pl. In addition to zone.ru, .su .ua .kz and .by were also used. Last time, it was difficult to conduct such a study, since WordPress and Joomla sites do not have such signatures in the URL. Catalogs like cmsmagazine.ru/catalogue/ do not provide a sufficient sample size. What is 600 Drupal sites?

I must admit, the results of the experiment disappointed me. Of the 12,590 sites studied, the engine was successfully identified on only 7,083, that is, only in 56% of cases. Maybe I didn't take into account some engine? Was it really true that half of the forums had Bitrix installed? Or should I have spent more time searching for signatures? In general, additional research is required here.

Among the 56% of successfully identified engines, the most popular, as expected, were IPB (31%), phpBB (26.6%) and vBulletin (26.5%)

They are followed with a large lag by SMF (5.8%) and DLEForum (5.3%). My favorite punBB was only in 6th place (1.64%). I wouldn’t recommend putting much faith in these numbers (they say that every third forum on the RuNet runs on IPB), but certain conclusions can, of course, be drawn.

For example, if you intend to make a site on a forum engine and plan to modify the forum, say, pay users $0.01 for each message with automatic withdrawal of funds once a week, then you should choose one of the three most popular engines. The more popular the forum, the greater the chances of finding a programmer who is well versed in it.

If no significant changes are expected in the engine, then it may make sense to choose a less popular engine, for example SMF or punBB. This will reduce the number of hacker attacks on your forum and the amount of spam automatically sent on it.

Scripts for searching/identifying forums can also find many practical applications. The first thing that came to my mind was to sort the identified forums by TIC and post on the first hundred posts with links to one of my sites. However, hundreds of forum dofollow links did not affect the TCI in any way (2 updates have passed), so it is better not to waste time here, unless you are not interested in transitions.

It is clear that the mentioned use of scripts is far from the only one. I think you can easily figure out how else you can use them.

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