Screenshot phpbb_recent_topics admin page

Admin GUI

It’s that time again, enough things have happened in the support forum to warrant another version.

phpbb_recent_topics 0.6 owes a debt of gratitude to number3nl he has worked very hard to push in two main new features and his work was so good it only needed a couple of minor tweaks from myself.

New Features!

• The loooong awaited phpBB recent posts feature has been enabled, simply tick the box that says “Sort results by post date” and you’re away!
• Tooltips are here! Yup if you’re into that kind of thing enabling tool tips will show a snippet of the post content to your visitors prior to them clicking on any links.
• Admin UI Error Messages are here; the GUI will now inform you if you’re connected to phpBB.

Bug Fixes.

• The variables in display.php now match those of admin-display.php; hopefully this will make community contribution simpler.
• Uninstall.php has been added so removal of the plugin is more comprehensive.

A note to upgrader’s.

• If you’re using secure database connectivity you’ll need to GRANT access to the posts table….
  GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_posts TO wp_user@localhost;

Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.6 from wordpress.org

The usual stuff now follows….

The Installation

Before starting you need to get your database configuration sorted. So, are you going to connect to the PHPBB Database securely or Insecurely?

To connect Securely you need to GRANT access TO WordPress FROM phpbb.

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

AND

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_forums TO wp_user@localhost;

AND

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_posts TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

WordPress Installation

• Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
• Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
• Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Settings’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
  The following Settings are required:
  • * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
  • * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
  • * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
  • * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
  • * The Date Formatting, i.e. “d/M/y – g:i a” similar to the WordPress “General Settings”
• The use of Insecure connectivity is optional – See Below
• Tick the boxes of any Forums you don’t want this plugin to show posts from
• Hit ‘Update Options”
• To output the list of topics in a page or post…
  • * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…

  • * click “design” in the dashboard
  • * click “widgets”
  • * next to phpBB Recent Topics click “add”
  • * click “save changes”

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…

  • * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…

    <?php
    if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
    phpbb_topics();
    }
    ?>

What is Insecure MySQL Connectivity & How do I use it?
If you need to you can connect in a less secure manner, the connection details held in your PHPBB config.php can be loaded into WordPress. This is insecure becuase the phpbb3 credentials are store in clear text, this is bad cuase if someone somehow comprised WordPress they’d have full access to PHPBB.

To use, tick the “Enable Insecure Database Connection” box, and submit, when the page re-freshes you’ll have some more boxes to populate, from your phpbb config.php fill in


$dbuser = phpbb MySQL Database UserName
$dbpasswd = phpbb MySQL Database Password
$dbhost = phpbb MySQL Server


Click update, and you should be connected!

Support
I’ve always been honest about support, there isn’t any. Basically I write this for my own needs and then publish it for you to use for free. You’re more than welcome to post comments here and if you need support the community phpbb-recent-topics forum is available, I do read every post there but we all have busy lives and I make no promises on how quickly I’ll reply to you.

Finally Subversion
The source for this plugin is in the wordpress subversion, you can checkout the trunk directly from here, if you weren’t aware wp.org also auto-magically creates a nightly build of any developments here.

I hope you enjoy my plug-in!

To make like simpler I’ve found that I can track bugs using trac – bad pun!

Here are some links

• PHPBB Recent Topics
  • Get Support for phpbb_recent_topics Here
  • Submit Bugs & Patches for phpbb_recent_topics Here
• Root Cookie
  • Get Support for root-cookie Here
  • Submit Bugs & Patches for root-cookie Here

The difference between the two is simple: if you want help then click the support link if you want TO help then file a bug or submit a patch

This is a small update, it incorporates the patch submitted by toni to fix the widget, thanks toni

The old information still applies…

Admin GUI

If you’re happy with v0.4 and have it running fine then don’t bother, in fact edit phpbb_recent_topics.php so that WordPress stops complaining about finding a newer version.

Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.4.1 from wordpress.org

What’s New?

• The widget patch mentioned above!

What’s Old?

• Most importantly I have tested this plugin with phpBB3 and WP2.5 so I’ve updated the readme.txt to reflect this.
• I finally quashed the install bug where by phpbb-recent-topics was confused with phpbb_recent_topics.
• Sidebar Widget, yus for all you non-php people you have a widget to play with.
• Edit the Time & Date layout – leave blank to remove it completely

The Installation

• Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
• Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
• Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Settings’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
  The following Settings are required:
  • * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
  • * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
  • * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
  • * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
  • * The Date Formatting, i.e. “d/M/y – g:i a” similar to the WordPress “General Settings”
• Hit ‘Update Options”
• To output the list of topics in a page or post…
  • * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…

  • * click “design” in the dashboard
  • * click “widgets”
  • * next to phpBB Recent Topics click “add”
  • * click “save changes”

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…

  • * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…

    <?php
    if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
    phpbb_topics();
    }
    ?>

A bit about Database configuration.
If wordpress & phpBB share a DB already then set $PHPBBDB to DB_NAME and everything will be fine, else you’re going to need to GRANT the wordpress user read access to phpBB.

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is phpbb3 supported?
  • yes.
• Can I output 10 Topics in my Page, and 3 Topics in my Sidebar ?
  • Yes ! In the WordPress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’, set ‘The number of topics to show’ to 10, and then in your sidebar include…<?php
    if (function_exists(‘phpbb_topics’)) {
    phpbb_topics(3);
    }
    ?>
• Can I exclude a certain forum from the list ?
  • In this version, the only way to do that is to hack /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics/display/display.php, change

    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");

    to

    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");

    to exclude forum 1 from the list. I plan to setup a proper solution to this in the next version.

• Why is the date config under settings not in the widget configuration?
  • The date settings effect both the template tag and the widget

Support
I’ve always been honest about support, there isn’t any. Basically I write this for my own needs and then publish it for you to use for free. You’re more than welcome to post comments here and if you tag wordpress forum posts with “phpbb-recent-topics” I’ll reply to you there, but we all have busy lives and I make no promises on how quickly I’ll reply to you.

Link for posting in the correct phpbb-recent-topics forum

Finally Subversion
You also might be interested to know that I’ve been getting to grips with the wordpress plug-ins svn, so you can get work directly from here; and when wordpress.org re-crawls my readme the latest version will also be available on wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Thank you to all those who have downloaded and enjoyed my plug-in and all those who have taken to say something nice.

The problem with this error message Missing argument 1 for phpbb_topics() is that I don’t actually know how to fix it. If you look in the source code you’ll see that I’ve tried to trap “empty variables”…

if (is_null($LIMIT)) {
                $LIMIT = 5;
}

Now this approach seems to work on my server(s), and works for some people, but there are a number of people whom is doesn’t work for; unfortunately the majority of the WP community are no more technical than myself and I have never received any feedback on how to fix this.

I’m not a programmer, I’ve never claimed to be a PHP guru; as I don’t know how to fix this problem in the latest version of phpbb-recent-topics I tried to combat the problem by introducing a widget. The widget it aimed at people who don’t know php, it allows you to “drag” the list of recent topics into your sidebar, but for some reason people still prefer to edit their sidebar.php :confused:

I would to remind all readers that it quite clearly states on my announcement :

Support
I’ve always been honest about support, there isn’t any. Basically I write this for my own needs and then publish it for you to use for free. You’re more than welcome to post comments here and if you tag wordpress forum posts with “phpbb-recent-topics” I’ll reply to you there, but we all have busy lives and I make no promises on how quickly I’ll reply to you.

Currently the only solution I can offer to anyone suffering from this error message is to replace phpbb_topics() with phpbb_topics(”5″), if that doesn’t work then please accept my apologies.

If anyone would like to offer a patch for my plugin I would gladly include it and accredit appropriately.

Thanks for Reading!

Admin GUI

It’s been a year since the last release so perhaps this version should be called “about time!” v0.4 has primarily been released as a bugfix version, if you’re happy with v0.3 and have it running fine then don’t bother, in fact edit phpbb_recent_topics.php so that WordPress stops complaining about finding a newer version.

Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.4 from wordpress.org

What’s New?

• Most importantly I have tested this plugin with phpBB3 and WP2.5 so I’ve updated the readme.txt to reflect this.
• I finally quashed the install bug where by phpbb-recent-topics was confused with phpbb_recent_topics.
• Sidebar Widget, yus for all you non-php people you have a widget to play with.
• Edit the Time & Date layout – leave blank to remove it completely

What’s Old? – aka: Installation

• Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
• Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
• Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Settings’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
  The following Settings are required:
  • * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
  • * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
  • * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
  • * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
  • * The Date Formatting, i.e. “d/M/y – g:i a” similar to the WordPress “General Settings”
• Hit ‘Update Options”
• To output the list of topics in a page or post…
  • * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…

  • * click “design” in the dashboard
  • * click “widgets”
  • * next to phpBB Recent Topics click “add”
  • * click “save changes”

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…

  • * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…

    <?php
    if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
    phpbb_topics();
    }
    ?>

A bit about Database configuration.
If wordpress & phpBB share a DB already then set $PHPBBDB to DB_NAME and everything will be fine, else you’re going to need to GRANT the wordpress user read access to phpBB.

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is phpbb3 supported?
  • yes.
• Can I output 10 Topics in my Page, and 3 Topics in my Sidebar ?
  • Yes ! In the WordPress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’, set ‘The number of topics to show’ to 10, and then in your sidebar include…<?php
    if (function_exists(‘phpbb_topics’)) {
    phpbb_topics(3);
    }
    ?>
• Can I exclude a certain forum from the list ?
  • In this version, the only way to do that is to hack /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics/display/display.php, change

    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");

    to

    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");

    to exclude forum 1 from the list. I plan to setup a proper solution to this in the next version.

• Why is the date config under settings not in the widget configuration?
  • The date settings effect both the template tag and the widget

Support
I’ve always been honest about support, there isn’t any. Basically I write this for my own needs and then publish it for you to use for free. You’re more than welcome to post comments here and if you tag wordpress forum posts with “phpbb-recent-topics” I’ll reply to you there, but we all have busy lives and I make no promises on how quickly I’ll reply to you.

EDIT: Found a link for posting in the correct phpbb-recent-topics forum

Finally Subversion
You also might be interested to know that I’ve been getting to grips with the wordpress plug-ins svn, so you can get work directly from here; and when wordpress.org re-crawls my readme the latest version will also be available on wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Admin GUI

Another day, another plug-in update…..Version 0.2 never saw the light of day, after fixing my compatibility issue I moved straight into setting up the admin interface. So here we have it, a proper implementation

Download phpBB Recent Topics

Installation

• Unzip phpbb_recent_topics.tgz in your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory. (You’ll have a new directory, with this plugin in /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics)
• Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
• Configure the plugin, you need to tell wordpress about phpbb, this is done in the wordpress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’
  The following Settings are required:
  • * The name of your phpBB database (e.g phpbb)
  • * The name of the table where topics are held (the default is phpbb_topics )
  • * The full url of your forum for links (e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/forum)
  • * The number of topics to show. (If left blank you get 5)
• Hit ‘Update Options”
• To output the list of topics in a page or post…
  • * create a new page/post, type {phpbb_recent_topics} , hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Create new page’

  To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar…

  • * edit sidebar.php and inside <div id=”sidebar”> type…

    <?php
    if (function_exists('phpbb_topics')) {
    phpbb_topics();
    }
    ?>

A bit about Database configuration.
If wordpress & phpBB share a DB already then set $PHPBBDB to DB_NAME and everything will be fine, else you’re going to need to GRANT the wordpress user read access to phpBB.

How to GRANT wordpress read only access to phpBB ?
If you don’t know it already you need to find your wordpress mysql user id, it’ll be in wp-config.php

define('DB_USER', 'wp_user');     // Your MySQL username

and you should have already found your phpbb database & table for the above.
You need to type the following syntax into your mysql database

GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost;

this can be achieved by logging into phpmyadmin as your phpbb user, selecting SQL and pasting the correct GRANT into the text box.

Upgrading from Version 0.1
Upgrading is optional. This version has two major changes: The first basically fixes the compatibility issue I have running two php ob_start processes in wordpress; the second is the introduction of a “proper” admin interface (rather than hacking the php file).
To upgrade, make a note of the following settings:

$PHPBBDB = "phpbb"; //phpBB db name
$TOPIC_TABLE = "phpbb_topics"; //phpbb topics table
$SITEURL = "http://www.mydomain.com/forum"; //Forum URL

Deactivate version 0.1, and follow the Installation instructions above

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can I output 10 Topics in my Page, and 3 Topics in my Sidebar ?
  • Yes ! In the WordPress menu ‘Options’ -> ‘phpBB Recent Topics’, set ‘The number of topics to show’ to 10, and then in your sidebar include…<?php
    if (function_exists(‘phpbb_topics’)) {
    phpbb_topics(3);
    }
    ?>
• Can I exclude a certain forum from the list ?
  • In this version, the only way to do that is to hack /wp-content/plugins/phpbb_recent_topics/display/display.php, change

    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");

    to

    $results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $LIMIT");

    to exclude forum 1 from the list. I plan to setup a proper solution to this in the next version.

Finally Subversion
You also might be interested to know that I’ve been getting to grips with the wordpress plug-ins svn, so you can get work directly from here; and when wordpress.org re-crawls my readme the latest version will also be available on wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Anyway in lieu of working on an admin interface for setting up the phpbb connection I’m solving this, if anyone is having a similar issue please let me know.

Oh, and this might be of interest…

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Nick
Date: 12-Mar-2007 11:38
Subject: Re: Recent phpBB Topics on WordPress Plugin
To: Paul Stokes

Hi Paul,

You can do this by playing with the SQL statement in the plugin, for example

SELECT * FROM $TOPIC_TABLE WHERE forum_id != 1 ORDER BY topic_time DESC LIMIT $limit

would exclude topics from forum 1

hope that helps,
Nick

On 11/03/07, Paul Stokes wrote:

Hello,

First I must say what a great plug-in you have here!
Is there a way to keep the hidden forums topic hidden?
Thanks
-Paul