Egghelp on iPhone and Android

spithash · Post by **spithash** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 3:46 am

Hello I have a question and a suggestion at the same time, why don't we have the tapatalk addon on phpbb to be listed in the tapatalk application? it's really annoying sometimes having to browse the forum using the iphone's browser and zooming in and out all the time... Despite that loading it from the phone's browser means that the entire page is loaded which means that you have to wait until the page is loaded.. But with an app like Tapatalk for example, it only loads certain stuff from the forum and displays it faster and 'mobile friendly' plus natively.

It would be awesome being able to access it via iPhone and Android natively.

Or maybe someone has already found a way to browse this forum natively on iPhone?

http://www.tapatalk.com/ Here is the app and it's very popular.

Thanks

Post by **nml375** » Sun Mar 04, 2012 11:07 am

Though Shayne would be the one to give the final answer on this, I'll pitch in with a remark or two..

Currently, the egghelp forum runs on a patched phpBB2 software. As far as I can tell, tapatalk only supports the 3.x versions of phpBB.
Quite some time ago, there were some talks about upgrading to 3.x, as the newer platform had better tools for handling spam robots and such. Currently, the captcha and filters do quite a good job keeping the spam out, so the need to upgrade is rather limited from this point of view. Doing an upgrade to 3.x would mean quite an effort to implement a similar template, filtering/mods, and verifying everything works on the new platform.

Personally, I would'nt mind having the mcp in phpBB3, but at the same time I'm well aware of the effort needed for an upgrade. In the end, it's a question whether the effort is worth the reward..

This said, I can agree that the forum is not always mobile-friendly. Especially the code-blocks can cause some serious performace issues on some devices/browsers (virtually unusable on WM6.1+OperaMini). Thankfully, my current Android device does not suffer from this.

Post by **slennox** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 10:33 pm

The forum is indeed way overdue for a phpBB3 upgrade. It's something I haven't got around to because of the required time commitment - the stock upgrade process isn't a problem, but the many little addons and customisations that follow to make the forum just right can be real time-suckers (e.g. during the initial phpBB3 test forum I set up, I think several hours were spent just trying to get the colour scheme right and failing to produce a result I was happy with). The other reason has been the lack of an impetus as phpBB2 does a pretty decent job, but things like improved compatibility with smaller devices certainly help justify an upgrade.

I'll look at setting up a concurrent phpBB3 forum gradually so I can split the work into shorter periods, before finally swithching the database over.

Deathspawn · Post by **Deathspawn** » Wed Jul 11, 2012 7:14 am

Have you checked out phpbb3styles.net ? All of their themes can be recolored, and there are even some that closely resemble this one:

http://demo.phpbb3styles.net/Spring+Element
http://demo.phpbb3styles.net/eTech+Green
http://demo.phpbb3styles.net/Avalon+Green
http://demo.phpbb3styles.net/Getaway+Green

Also could just recolor the subsilver2 theme:

http://www.colorizeit.com/styles/phpbb- ... ilver.html

And then the binary design can just be edited into the CSS.

I'd also suggest grabbing a couple other themes as they are relatively easy to install (upload to server, extract to styles directory, head to admin panel, styles, click install.), so that users can easily switch them up. Also suggest a dark theme for us night dwellers. (But there is userstyles.org until then.)

Also, for addons, I would suggest AutoMod as it makes adding mods a WHOLE lot easier. And you will likely need anti spam, http://www.lithiumstudios.org/forum/vie ... f=31&t=941 (featured on stopforumspam.com) is good for that.