phpBB2 shoutbox installation instructions

Here is a guide how you add a freeshoutbox.net shoutbox to your phpBB2 forum (like freeforums.org forums for example):

1. Create a free shoutbox at http://www.freeshoutbox.net/
2. Login to the admin panel, go to "Management" under the header "Forum Admin"
   
3. Press the "Create forum"-button without putting anything in the name box
4. Fill in these values for your new forum:
   
   Forum name: You can leave this empty, or simply put the text "Shoutbox" if you want a header, do not put the shoutbox code here or it might break your forum.
   
   Forum description: Here you should put the HTML-code you get when you login to freeshoutbox.net
   
   Category: Set in which forum category you want the shoutbox to appear.
   
   Forum status: Locked, because you are not creating a true forum but a shoutbox, this will not affect the shoutbox posting.
   
   Auto-pruning: Leave these settings at their default values
   
   Here is the forum.freeshoutbox.net shoutbox as a reference, click at the image to enlarge it:
   
   
   
5. By default everyone can view/post in the shoutbox, if you only want users that have registered in the forum to be able to post, set the forum permissions for the shoutbox "forum" to "Registered [hidden]"

I hope this will be useful for everyone that want to have a shoutbox in their phpBB2 forums, feel free to comment this article or post in the support forums if you have any further questions.

Word wrap

Because of the new AJAX function the wordwrap function work again. So long words that dont fit on one line will wrap to multiple lines.

Updates

The bottom ads gets ok rates for now, so unless the rates drop the top-advertisement is gone for good :D

Also I've fixed some bugs with background colors and frame-sizes in IE6 and IE7, the shoutboxes should now be able to use any sizes without breaking the formatting, thanks to Nexus for pointing this out.

Ad at bottom

I'm testing a bigger ad at the bottom at the shoutbox instead of the smaller top-ad. I think it will make the shoutbox easier to view. Also the ad is scrollable, so it won't break your page if you are using a smaller box.

I don't know anything of the revenue as of yet, but if it is enough to cover the server costs then the top-ad might get removed for good.

Feel free to post your thoughts about it as comments to this post or in the support forum, remember that I have to get money some way to have my 2 servers (and probably more servers later).

More effecient AJAX-function

I've done another backend update, now the shoutbox should only be re-downloaded if there actually is any updates (before it was auto-updated even if there where no changes every 10 seconds). So this will further decrease bandwidth utilization and server load :-D

As always, report any bugs with this to the support forum.

Two servers

To get higher performance for freeshoutbox.net I'm currently balancing the system across two servers, my current dual xeon for all page loads, and the older server for static content.

As both servers is already online there should be no downtime (only increased speed ;)) because of this, but as always if you have issues with your shoutbox post in the forums.

Some updates

I'm currently working a lot on the backend so I thought it was time to tell you what's going on.

I've optimized the server and the AJAX code mainly to reduce bandwidth, speed up the page loads and lower costs both for users using paid for bandwidth connections and for the cost of server bandwidth. There have been a few bugs of this that has already been fixed, if you find a bug please report in the Support Forum.

The second thing I'm working on is different alternatives of advertising to cover the server costs, my current goal is to make alternate ad placements to give enough so I can remove the top Google ad from all shoutboxes. Let me know if you get any inappropriate ads or have some ideas regarding this.