0.5.3 is a minor update which fixes this issue whereby some users got this error in their admin screens
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /public_html/wp-content/plugins/phpbb-recent-topics/display/admin-options.php on line 144
If you don’t have this issue upgrading is optional, download from the usual place!
UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please download the update from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-recent-topics/, and please comment on the new post, thanks.
 Screenshot phpbb_recent_topics admin page |
| Admin GUI |
Version 0.5 is the first enhancement update to php_recent_topics for a looooooonnnng while!
Actually it’s taken me soo long to finish that we’ve jumping straight into 0.5.2 0.5.3 which includes bug fixes from 0.4.1 & 0.4.2
There are four notable changes, two minor, two major 
Minor CHANGE 1: You should notice the admin page don’t look so rubbish, we’re now using the new CSS provided by the WordPress team!
Minor CHANGE 2: The SQL syntax now excludes SPAM from being shown up in the wigdet by only selecting “Approved” posts, thanks Ashish.
Major CHANGE 1: The admin page now has the option for excluding forums from being displayed by the widget, this was one of the most requested features but please be advised this change means there are New database permissions required for upgraders!
Before you did GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_topics TO wp_user@localhost; NOW DO THIS TOO….
GRANT SELECT ON phpbb_database.phpbb_forums TO wp_user@localhost;
Major CHANGE 2: The plugin now supports “Insecure” Database connectivity, getting the plugin to talk to the PHPBB DB seemed to be the biggest hurdle for most, so I’ve added a simpler way to keep my SPAM down. This approach is not recommended as the plug-in stores your PHPBB DB credentials IN CLEAR TEXT in the WordPress database. As a side effect from this is, now users can connect to a PHPBB database installed on a different server to WordPress – This suggestion actually came from someone called Nedim.. Thanks!
Some of the usual information now follows….
Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.5.2 from wordpress.org
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;
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
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…
<?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 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
The source for this plugin is in the wordpress subversion, you can download it directly from here; and when wordpress.org re-crawls my readme the latest version will also be available on wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
I hope you enjoy my plug-in!
The WordPress plugin trac is a really cool resource, one of my favourite features is the commit log.
Development progress of linickx plugins is always going to be slow because I have a day job but when I find the time to develop updates I try to commit them to the community as often as I can so users can stay in the loop…. The thing is users don’t necessarily know the log is there, so here’s a couple of links for you…
If you want test drive my development versions on your blog you can download them from wordpress.org here and here respectively, feel free to submit patches to fix bugs or implement features, I’m always open to suggestions and work is always accredited appropriately.
UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please see the new post, comments here are now closed.
A long time ago Sc0ttClark came to me and suggested that his cookie subdomains plug-in & my cookie path plug-in should be merged…. well I’ve finally done it!
There was a little delay in the release as the initial code only worked for top level .com, .net & .org style domains but a simple “manual” option in the admin screen now allows you to set the domain name, so longer domains like .co.uk can be supported!
All previous functionality is supported, just by enabling the plug-in the path is stripped out you only need to go into the admin page if you want to change the subdomain of the cookie.
The admin page now has a “News & Tutorials” feed (subscribe) my plan is to post articles on how to use root-cookie.
You can download the plugin from wordpress.org, and there is a discussion forum to get community support.
I’ve just found this great tutorial on my referrers: Single unified login for multiple WordPress 2.8 installs in subdirectories using cookies
I’d suggest reading it if you’re a root cookie user 
Those with a keen eye may have noticed that my tweets / status updates didn’t start with “is” until recently that’s because posts that appeared here on my blog would look stupid and out of context, who starts a post “is” ???
To solve the problem attached is a small plugin for Alex Kings Twitter Tools, it’s a simple WordPress filter which prepends posts which begin with “is” with the author name, example:
is testing his new WP plugin.
Nick is testing his new WP plugin.
If I get some positive feedback I might publish this in WP’s plugin directory.
Installation is easy, rename twitter-tools-is.txt to twitter-tools-is.php and save it in your wp-content/plugins directory, enable the plug-in the “normal” way and job done, no further configuration required!
UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please download the update from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/phpbb-recent-topics/, and please comment on the new post, thanks.
This update fixes 0.4.x branch of my plugin, specifically the “You are not allowed to access this page” error that WordPress 2.8.1 introduced. No other changes have been implemented, the SVN Trunk (0.5.x) is still to be updated.
UPDATE: 0.5.x works in WP.2.8.3, also 4got to tag this post – DOH!
The usual paste follows….
 |
| Admin GUI |
Download phpBB_Recent_Topics_0.4.2 from wordpress.org
What’s New?
What’s Old?
The Installation
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using the widget…
To output the list of topics in your theme sidebar using a template tag…
<?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
$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.
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/ 
Milw0rm is a great source of security exploits, subscribing to it’s feed is a good way of getting a heads up on where the next attack might come…. there are a lot of script kiddies that do nothing more than download milw0rm exploits and fire them randomly into the internet hoping to get a hit!
The thing is there are a lot of exploits found everyday and it can start to fill-up your RSS Feed Reader, so it’s a good idea to filter out things that are useful to you, as an expample I have created a simple Yahoo! Pipe which delivers only WordPress exploits found on Milw0rm!
PIPE URL: http://pipes.yahoo.com/linickx/milw0rmwordpress
FEED: URL: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=RDnArZNk3hGthFdiUpWufg&_render=rss
The pipe / feed is currently empty – returns no results – as there hasn’t been anything new published recently, but I’m sure that’ll change soon enough
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, this is the 1st in a planned short series of tutorials for my root cookie WordPress plugin.
I’ve decided to start with the purpose I wrote the plugin, then I’ll move onto a couple of tutorial which answer some of the FAQs I get.
Scenario.
Before you start you need a working copy BLANK of WordPress, in a sub directory, with a url like domain.com/wordpress.
A BLANK copy is a fresh install, using the default theme and only my root-cookie plugin installed, remember after activating the plugin clear your browsers cookies.
Getting Started.
So you have a ready & waiting copy of WP, next create a directory called “my-scripts” or whatever you like, and in it create 1.php with the following contents:
<?php
print_r($_COOKIE);
?>
Browse to domain.com/my-scripts/1.php and you’ll get a blank white page with Array().
Next log into WordPress, and re-fresh 1.php and you should get something like….
Array ( [wordpress_xxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyy] => admin|1241455565|xxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyy [wordpress_logged_in_xxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyy] => admin|1241455565|xxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyy )
Done! You’ve just accessed WordPress’s cookies
Now when I first started I had a very basic script which hid my Google adverts when I’m logged in, it’s against Google’s policies to click on your own adverts so to avoid accidents I wanted to hide them.
The following script is NOT secure, it doesn’t check that you’ve logged into WordPress it simply checks that you a cookie set with the right username (which anyone can fake) but for my purpose this was fine, I had no issues with users faking cookies to get rid of the adverts*
<?php
if (isset($_COOKIE["wordpress_logged_in_fxxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"])) {
$cookie = $_COOKIE["wordpress_logged_in_xxxxxxxxxxxxxyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"];
$cookie_elements = explode('|', $cookie);
if ($cookie_elements[0] == "admin") {
echo "<h1>Hello admin!< </h1>";
}
}
?>
Replace admin with whatever username your using and job done! Next time Accessing two WordPress installs domain.com/blog1 domain.com/blog2 with root-cookie
*this will not work now, as I do something different.
Whilst playing with my bad-behavior callback function, I noticed something quite crucial; plug-ins load in alphabetical order!.
I noticed that every time a new version of BB is released / upgraded I had to re-paste my callback function into bad-behavior-wordpress.php – DOH!
To get around this I decided to create a new plug-in called linickx-bb-callback.php, but I noted that the counter wasn’t increasing. Changing the file name to aaa_linickx-bb-callback.php fixed the issue, sweeeeet!
UPDATE: This Plugin has been updated, please comment on the new post, thanks.
I’ve had an e-mail from Edward Laverick saying that my WordPress root Cookie plugin doesn’t work in WP2.7.
I have a few points to make….
As always….
The point of the plugin is to strip out the path from the cookie so that it can be referenced by other applications.
You can download the plugin from wordpress.org, and there is a discussion forum to get community support.
Cheers!
I’m looking to improve linickx.com; I’d like to include more of my online identity, I stumbled across yibble.org and the layout / look / feel is very close to what I’m looking to do. My current theme is tumblr inspired but has it’s limitations, for example if I tweet & blog on the same day my front page has “posts” with duplicate titles 
A self host tumblr or sweetcron are options except that I like WordPress and I can’t be doing with the hassle with maintaining multiple apps… this is why I stopped using gallery, gallery is a brilliant app I just don’t have the time to keep it and WP and “another” up to date and secure.
I’m going to start exploring WordPress + LifeStream alternatives. The WordPress LifeStream Plugin creates a page like this, which is close to what I want, except I like having my tweets / bookmarks / blogs all mixed up, it keeps linickx.com kinda “organic”. I’m considering a lifestream theme and am hoping that the lifestream blog will provide some inspiration…. the trick is going to be achieving the teh blog ar (not) dead look in a fashion that fits me!
If you know of a good solution… using WordPress, please let me know.
My WordPress/PHPBB plug-in is probably the most popular thing I’ve written and I’d like to point out a recent post on Weblog tools Collection… Here they mention possible collaboration between the WP & PHPBB developers, this can only be a good thing as I know from personal experience that it’s something the community at large want.
The Bad Behaviour plug-in for WordPress comes with a weekly counter in the admin dashboard, but do you want a wicked footer like mine?
106,386 dodgy geezas have been blocked by Bad Behaviour and 36,926 spams were eaten by Akismet.
Akismet comes with a counter you can use in themes/plugins…
$akcount = get_option('akismet_spam_count');
$akcount = number_format($akcount);
echo $akcount;
But with Bad Behaviour you have to do a little more work. To start with you need to get BB to record in the database each time it blocks someone, this is done by adding a function to ~/wp-content/plugins/bad-behavior/bad-behavior-wordpress.php , add the following code…..
// Bad Behavior callback functions.
function bb2_banned_callback() {
$counter = get_option('bad_behavior_spam_count');
$counter = $counter + 1;
update_option( 'bad_behavior_spam_count', $counter );
}
Now BB will store an incrementing number in the WP database for you to use in your theme..
$bbcount = get_option('bad_behavior_spam_count');
$bbcount = number_format($bbcount);
echo $bbcount;
Now you can track how many inter-twats your blocking!
I use twitter tools to post my twitter tweets to my blog; the thing is that twitter can sometimes slow down or break completely, this in turn kills wordpress.
To improve things I’ve changed how often I check twitter, you can do the same by editing the plugin file (wordpress/wp-content/plugins/twitter-tools/twitter-tools.php), see below for a code snippet…
function tweet_download_interval() {
#return 1800;
return 14400;
}
Enjoy!