a few more questions

git-svn-id: file:///svn/phpbb/branches/phpBB-2_0_0@3225 89ea8834-ac86-4346-8a33-228a782c2dd0

phpBB/docs/FAQ.html

@@ -32,6 +32,32 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 
 <ol>
 
+<li><b>I cannot install this it is too difficult! Will you do it?</b></li>
+
+<p>Simple answer, no we will not. We are not being difficult when we say this we are actually trying to help you. phpBB has a reputation for being easy to install, that reputation is we believe well deserved. It is a simple process of unarchiving a single file, uploading the resulting directory/files to their intended location and entering some data in a web based form. The sequence of events, what to type where, etc. is covered in detail in the accompanying <a href="INSTALL.html">INSTALL.html</a> documentation. If you cannot install phpBB 2.0.x the chances are you will be unable to administer or update it.</p>
+
+<p>There are people, companies (unrelated to your hosting provider), etc. that will install your forum, either for free or for a payment. We do not recommend you make use of these offers. Unless the service is provided by your hosting company you will have to divulge passwords and other sensitive details. If you did not know how to use an ATM would you give a passer-by your bank card and PIN and ask them to show you what to do? No, probably not! The same applies to your hosting account details!</p>
+
+<p>We think a better solution is for you to carefully read the enclosed documentation, read our tutorials forum at www.phpbb.com and if necessary ask for help on any thing you get stuck on. However, the decision is yours but please note we may not offer support if we believe you have had the board installed by a third party. In such cases you should direct your questions to that company or person/s.</p>
+
+<li><b>How do I install this board on Lycos/coolfreepages/other free host?</b></li>
+
+<p>The old addage "You get what you pay for" is particularly true for hosting services! However if you must use a free service (and recognise its limitations) you will find details on common pitfalls in our tutorials forum at <a href="http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/">http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/</a>.</p>
+
+<li><b>I am having problems with the admin at a certain board, help!</b></li>
+<li><b>A board has ripped off my graphics/software/etc., stop them!</b></li>
+<li><b>A board is dealing in warez/porn/etc., you need to prevent them doing this!</b></li>
+
+<p>We provide the software, we have absolutely nothing to do with any board that runs it (beyond phpbb.com of course!). The GPL grants the user an unlimited right of use subject to their adherence of that licence. Therefore we cannot prevent, dictate, control or otherwise limit the use of phpBB 2 software. So please do not contact us for such matters.</p>
+
+<p>If you have a problem with a given board please take it up with them, not us. We are not and cannot be held legally responsible for any third party use of this software (much like Microsoft et al cannot be held responsible for the use of Windows in illegal activities, etc.). Additionally we do <b>not</b> track the use of phpBB software in any way. So please do not ask us for details on a "given" board we will not be able to help you. If any law firms or lawyers out there send us writs, Cease and Desist orders, etc. for third party website use of this software we reserve the right to charge for time wasted dealing with such issues ...</p>
+
+<li><b>According to viewonline a user is doing/reading something they should not be able to!</b></li>
+
+<p>No, they probably are not. phpBB uses sessions to keep track of users as they move between pages. The session information tells us who this user is. Therefore in order to determine what a user can do on a page we first need the session details. Once this data is available we can check whether the user is permitted to do whatever it is they are trying to do. This can result in it appearing as if a user is reading a topic in a forum they should not be able to access. Or perhaps viewing private messages when they are only guests, etc. In practice the user is not doing these things, they are viewing a "You are not permitted to do this" type message. The session data has simply been updated before we were able to determine what the user could or could not do.</p>
+
+<p>Of course this only applies where permissions have been set correctly!</p>
+
 <li><b>I keep getting Mail sending errors when I (or my users) post/send PM's/etc.!</b></li>
 
 <p>This error will occur if phpBB cannot send mail. phpBB can send email two ways; using the PHP mail() function or directly via SMTP. Some hosting providers limit the mail() function to prevent its use in spamming, others may rename it or limit its functionality. In either case you may need to make use of SMTP. This requires that you have access to such a facility, e.g. your hosting provider may provide one (perhaps requiring specific written authorisation), etc. Note that if your provider requires authorisation we only support the simple AUTH method using plaintext username/password. We do not support secure sockets layer (SSL), POP3 send or any other method. Please see <a href="http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/" target="_blank">http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/</a> for additional help on this matter.</p>
@@ -68,7 +94,6 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 
 <p>If you are finding this to be problem the solution is to remove the <pre>charset={S_CONTENT_ENCODING}</pre> text from <b>all</b> the _header.tpl template files in all templates. The downside to this is a users browser will not automatically switch its charset to that selected by the user (however this is unlikely to be a big problem since users typically run their browser by default in the language they wish to use). Alternatively you can modify the $lang['ENCODING'] entry in the appropriate language file. Until PHP (and all browsers!) trully support UNICODE these problems will persist across all boards.</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>I cannot search for certain words!</b>
 
 <p>phpBB 2 uses a Fulltext search system, this has both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that on large or busy forums it has far less impact on server load than <i>standard</i> search methods as used by many alternative forums (including phpBB 1.x). The disadvantage is that to reduce the size of the database (every post is examined and unique words stored in a table) we have to limit the size and type of words we store. By default words must contain at least three characters but no more than 25, they must be either alpha or combinations of alpha and numerals (numbers alone are not stored). In addition all non-alphanumeric characters are removed, eg. _, +, -, etc. This is standard practice for fulltext search solutions.</p>
@@ -77,14 +102,12 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 
 <p>Please note that support for multibyte character sets remains very limited in PHP4 and therefore Japanese, Chinese, etc. may have difficulty getting the fulltext search working correctly at all.</p>
 
-
 <li><b>My screen is filled with errors when I try to view the forum!</b>
 
 <p>Are they errors? Are you sure they are not warnings? They probably are ... What you're seeing is PHP warn you about unset variables. Great care has been taken with phpBB 2.0 to ensure it is secure. Unset variables while being a potential security risk really shouldn't be in 2.0. Unfortunately some hosting providers have decided that any unset variables equal security problems and force PHP to output these warnings even though phpBB 2.0 is set to ignore them.</p>
 
 <p>We have worked some way toward checking and/or setting all variables before use but this will take time to complete (if it can be). Therefore I am afraid for the time being you will have to manually modify the code or ask your hosting provider to be more realistic with their setup.</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>How do I use the avatar settings?</b>
 
 <p>There are three types of avatar; upload, remote and local.</p>
@@ -94,7 +117,6 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 <li>Local avatars allow you to upload your own avatars to a set directory, users can then pick from this avatar gallery. The default location for this is images/avatars/gallery. PLEASE NOTE that avatars are categorised according to sub-folders in this location! ie. you <b>MUST</b> place your avatars in subdirectories, eg. images/avatars/gallery/cartoons, images/avatars/gallery/real-life, etc.</li>
 </ul></p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>No matter what I set the uploadable avatars to I cannot upload one from my computer!</b>
 
 <p>There are two possibilities here, the first is you have not created the directory you specified as the storage location for avatars, ie. as specified in the Admin->General Configuration->Avatars section. If the directory does not exist uploadeable avatars are automatically disabled. You should create the required directory (ensuring it has global write access or other appropriate permissions to allow the webserver to write files to it).</p>
@@ -105,26 +127,25 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 
 <p>Chances are you have not followed our instructions above. phpBB 2 categorises gallery avatars and it does this by reading through folders contained in the location you specified as being the gallery path. For example, if you set the gallery path to "images/avatars/gallery" phpBB 2 will expect to find a series of folders within that path, eg. "images/avatars/gallery/moviestars", "images/avatars/gallery/cartoons", "images/avatars/gallery/misc", etc. Placing images directly in "images/avatars/gallery/" will result in nothing being listed in your gallery.</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>How do I set forum permissions?</b>
 
 <p>You set forum permissions from the administration control panel -> Forums -> Permissions. This system has two modes of operation; Simple and Advanced. Simple uses a set of pre-defined authorisation levels, these set each type of authorisation setting to a specific level. Advanced settings allow you to specify individual levels for each operation in each forum. Experiment!</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>How do I set user and group permissions?</b>
 
 <p>These are set from Admin -> Users (Groups) -> Permissions. The system may appear strange but it's very powerful. When you look up a user or group it will give you basic information (at the top of the page) followed by the available forum listing and current settings for this user. You can assign moderator status to users and groups and if you have PRIVATE forums (or forums with any of their individual operations set to PRIVATE) you can also assign access.</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>How do I set a user (group) as moderator?</b>
 
 <p>See above</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>Why are there no entries in the user (group) permission "Allow Access" column?</b>
 
 <p>You can only allow (or deny) users access to PRIVATE forums, or forums which have one or more operations set to PRIVATE</p></li>
 
+<li><b>How come I cannot set "Vote" to ALL?</b></li>
+
+<p>phpBB does not by default allow guest voting. This was done to prevent guest users (who cannot be reliably tracked) from voting time and time again in the same poll. There is a Mod available if you really need this feature, please see our Mod forums at <a href="http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/">http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/</a>.</p>
 
 <li><b>I (or my users) cannot stay logged in to the forum!</b>
 
@@ -132,17 +153,14 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 
 <p>If you still have problems try setting the cookie domain to your full domain name, eg. www.mysystem.tld, www.something.mydomain.tld. You <b>must</b> ensure the domain name contains at least two dots or browsers will be unlikely to recognise the cookie, eg. .mydomain.com, mydomain.com. Do <b>not</b> add http:// or anything else to the domain name!</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>My users are complaining about being logged out too quickly!</b>
 
 <p>You can increase the default length of sessions (ie. how long before a users session is considered 'dead') in Admin->General->Configuration->Cookie Settings->Session Length. Set it to whatever value your users feel comfortable with, remember that security issues may affect your decision (ie. having too long a session may allow non-users to abuse your board should a user forget to logout or otherwise leave a current session on a public workstation).</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>I am having problems with HTML!</b>
 
 <p>If you want to allow your users to make use of HTML in posts you need to do two things. Firstly enable HTML in Admin -> General -> Configuration. Secondly to need to make sure that the tags your users will post are in the Allowed HTML Tags field (again Admin -> General -> Configuration). If users post using tags not on this list they won't be displayed as HTML! eg. to enable someone to post Flash you could add the embed tag to this field. Be careful which tags you allow, it is very easy to break the boards own output if the wrong tags are used in posts. </p></p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>Can I suggest a feature for phpBB 2.2?</b>
 
 <p>Yes you most certainly can, phpBB 2.0.0 is now feature frozen and only bug fix releases will be made from this line. However, work has already started on the next release of phpBB, phpBB 2.2. We already have a number of features in mind and these are listed on our task manager:</p>
@@ -159,7 +177,6 @@ h3 {font-size:12pt;}
 
 <p>We make no promises to the inclusion of features but we will endeavour to introduce the most requested or most interesting ones.</p></li>
 
-
 <li><b>Why is phpBB 1.x faster than phpBB 2.0?</b>
 
 <p>The original phpBB 1.0 saw a very large decrease in page generation times from version 1.0/1.2 to 1.4. This was achieved by rewriting many of the SQL queries and splitting the database. These changes came about from work on phpBB 2.0. With phpBB 2.0 we have introduced numerous additional functions and features, not least of which is full templating (the separation of page design from code). This results in a slowdown from phpBB 1.4, we suspect though that the new features will outweigh the small difference in page generation times.</p></p></li>