Can't post for some reason

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I tried to make a new post in PPR, but it says "Error in posting"
On preview it says "Couldn't obtain smilies data" (I used no smileys as far as I can see, though some combinations of ) and letters might become a smiley)
When I disable smileys in the post and preview it says this:"Couldn't obtain category list."
Not sure if it has to do with my post. Not sure this post will go through either.

edit: This post seems to work

edit2: I found out it was because one of the picture links. When I left that picture out it was fine.

Yes, that's a long-standing bug affecting some posts containing an image.
A preview can succeed after a few retries and posting quickly after that usually works fine too - but typically, the "smilies" error means it's not going to work with that particular image.
The reason why this happens is apparently unknown - it's just an annoying quirk of this aged forum software.

Is the software old ?

The phpBB copyright notice seems to have been stripped out from the bottom of the page, so it's impossible for me to tell what version Alex is presently choosing to use. For the record, that's a bit of a dodgy thing for him to have chosen to do.

I wouldn't even know he was using phpBB if the forum wasn't throwing out phpBB-specific error messages.

The latest stable-release version is phpBB v. 3.0.1.1 , which was released on 25th August 2012.
If the version used for WP forum is older than that, then it's the equivalent of an old-age pensioner.

The forum SHOULD have a line of text at the bottom page, along the lines of :

The date after the copyright symbol indicates how old the software is (thus which version will be running) but since Alex has chosen to remove that legal information (replacing it with his own copyright information instead, which I don't approve of at all) .... there's no way to tell just how old this version of phpBB is.

For the record, this is a heavily modified version of phpBB 2.0.6 - It was modified to fit into Nuke, then again by Alex and the other devs.

It's been modified so much it's not really phpBB anymore.

Of course it's phpBB.

However much it's modified (which the people who made it kindly allow) it's still a phpBB board ; and the people who wrote the fundamental code deserve to have the work they put into making it acknowledged.

It actually doesn't look the least bit "heavily modified", though .... it looks much like a basic phpBB board ; just with the legal information removed and Alex's fake copyright info. in its place.

Now if Alex and co. had written the forum code from scratch.... that would be another matter, and (having made all that effort themselves) they could put their own copyright information at the bottom.

Perhaps if Alex bothered to do that, he might have more respect for the people who provide him with free forum software.... and give them appropriate acknowledgement.

The people who made phpBB provide the software for free (all they ask for is proper acknowledgement of their work) and they're even kind enough to give free support to help fix glitches..... but if they catch him running a phpBB board with fake legal information then well, they aren't likely to be too happy about that... to say the least.

Incidentally, phpBB v. 2.0.6 is TEN YEARS old.
If Alex seriously hasn't bothered to upgrade it since then, well... that's beyond lazy, and it's no wonder that it's full of glitches and in a bad way.
It's the equivalent of a 500 year old person, in forum years !

The GPL license that phpBB chose to offer its software under allows for there to be no notice on the pages of the site. If they wanted a notice on the pages of the site, they'd have used a license that requires a notice to appear.

we're currently in the midst of upgrading the site

You might start by ditching Cloudflare, it seems to be causing more problems than it's fixing.

I disagree - I use Cloudflare myself, and I haven't had any problems

Tweaking of some settings may be in order, however.



Do not use XenForo.

Actually, for anybody who cares (which Alex apparently does not) ....

The phpBB GPL actually says that (paraphrased, as I'm quoting one of the phpBB team) -



If anybody here chooses to right-click on a forum page and choose "View Source", then it's plain to see from the HTML code that Alex here has indeed removed the copyright header line... replacing it with his own (in an effort to make it look like he owns the software copyright) ... which is (as the phpBB team can confirm) illegal.

At any rate, I'm done with posting at WP.

Do as you wish, but you shouldn't really pretend that you're legally abiding ; when I'm sure that you know full well the phpBB GPL doesn't support your copyright approach.

You might want to try asking the phpBB crew whether that's legal, if you don't believe me I do know my s**t.

phpBB2 is EOL anyway... And I believe you are referring to the Meta Tags, these:

They are PHP-Nuke tags, not phpBB tags, so that is irrelavent.

You can make all of the excuses you like, but....
It's obvious that you have never asked the phpBB team about this.
I did , because I wanted to establish whether my understanding of phpBB was correct.

The phpBB team have recently examined the WP forum, and have confirmed what I have been saying about the legality issues relating to copyright. WP forum is in violation of international copyright law, for the reasons which I mentioned ; and the phpBB team would be able to confirm that if you ever ask them about it.

Of course, if you're all sure that Alex isn't doing anything wrong then that should be no problem.