can you install tapatalk (it's free)

[CaptainVimes]

Can we please have tapatalk installed?

http://www.tapatalk.com

It's basically an add on for the forum, that allows forum users to access the forum using a special app on their smartphones. The app is free to install for android, when I had my iPhone last year it was £1.79, but it is VERY worth it. Don't know about windows phones.

Because it does not show all the graphics on the forum, (only a small amount of default smilies) it is much quicker and less data eating to load up, create a post, and send it to the forum. If you know the codes to type to use the extra smilies, you can type in the code, but you won't see them in your sent post, saving data again.

You can also upload unlimited photos, storing them on the tapatalk servers, instead of hosting at photobucket, or other photo storage sites.

I use tapatalk on a daily basis because I'm usually not well enough to sit upright to use my laptop and it's too heavy for me to rest on my tummy to lie down with it.

I have tried using the forum on my mobile, but because of the way it behaves, I have to create my posts in the gmail app, then copy paste them to the forum and add a title.

If we had tapatalk, I would not have to worry about this, meaning I could visit more often, and post more often too. (not spam)

The reason your forum is not mobile friendly, is because once you fill the reply box, it won't scroll down as you type, nor will it scroll down to your last typed character, if you've noticed a mistake and had to put the cursor higher in the box, or if you accidentally navigate the cursor away from the point after the last letter you have typed. (easy to do on a touch screen)

- this happens on my Samsung Galaxy SII. Don't know if all mobiles are affected, or just this one.

If you use android and know how to enable the directional keyboard, even if you press END, or arrow down to the last letter, the cursor will move to the last letter, but the box won't scroll down to the last letter, so from then on, you can't actually see what you are trying to type.

(this is ok if your accuracy is 100%, but I have yet to meet a smartphone user that has 100%, errors have to be allowed for due to predictive text, for example.)

I understand that you are probably not going to install this add-on just for me. BUT it could have it's advantages, for instance to date, there are NO forums listed when you type in bearded dragon in the search box on tapatalk whilst looking for forums. The reptile forum and many others come up when you type in reptile, but NOTHING is listed for bearded dragon specific forums.

This means, if you install the add-on, that you will be exclusive in the fact that you are the ONLY bearded dragon forum on tapatalk. which obviously means even more possible members.

I installed it on my forum, it took about 10 minutes to install, set up, (you have to go into the tapatalk folder that is created on your server and change all the file permission type numbers in the file) and then register on the tapatalk website with the forum details, to be listed in their database, therefore be searchable.

It is easy, I'm a dunce and I did it.

The tapatalk website says that it is compatible with phpBB...

pretty please will you at least look into it? I really like this place, and I would like to stay, just don't know how long I can tolerate typing my posts in another app, just to be able to post on the forum. :\ (obviously if you vote against installing it, I shall have to think of a better way of doing my posts heheh) x

Thankyou for reading my post

x

 

[kjinxx2]

It's been discussed before, basically when you add an add-on to phpBB, it becomes really annoying to update the actual forum software, as every add-on needs to be re-updated whenever there is an update to phpBB3. This seems to be the main reason that it's not getting added.


Alex (admin) also is very wary of security holes, so he's reluctant to install plugins/addons.

I use android also and understand your concerns, but I also understand his concerns (as I have run many forums in the past).

 

[CaptainVimes]

I totally understand.

Didn't realise there were security issues with it though, as I run tapatalk on my forum.

(saying that, my host has been down since Friday, due to someone taking advantage of a security hole :-\ how much shall I bet it's my forum? EEEEEK!)

 

[beardie]

There aren't always security holes (known yet, that is). But when they are found, it's yet an additional piece of software that needs to be updated to fix the holes, along with the complexity mods to the forums create.

HOWEVER... I am still keeping an eye out for options. I need to look more closely at some of the tapatalk plugins for phpBB. We do have an increasing number of people accessing the site from smart phones and tablets (although most tablets probably do better with original format), though. When I have some spare time (never have enough of this stuff), I will look at the latest Tapatalk plugins for phpBB. If they can remain fairly separate from the base code (i.e. minimal changes to the original phpBB code), they may be more viable... but I will need to assess just how "integrated" they try to be.

Cheers.
-Alex

 

[beardie]

(saying that, my host has been down since Friday, due to someone taking advantage of a security hole :-\ how much shall I bet it's my forum? EEEEEK!)

It's possible. What kind of hosted environment are you using? Is it a dedicated server or shared hosting? Anytime you install software on your website that provides some form of functionality via the web, you need to stay on top of applying updates whenever they are available. I may lag on updates a little, but I try not to lag too far behind. The longer a known security hole exists, the higher risk of having someone write an exploit to use it, finding your website as having vulnerable code, and then targeting you for attack.

That's partly why I try to keep installed software to a minimum on this server, and update what I do have installed. The more I install, the more I have to regularly update/maintain... so you can see how adding more makes a bigger maintenance headache over the long term. K.I.S.S. is a term used in software development for minimizing bugs (including security bugs)... it stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid". In the security world (my day job), the same acronym is used as "Keep It Simple and Small".

With desktop systems software also needs to be updated (especially web browser, email, and operating system software... being the most vulnerable to attack as the interface for people to the Internet). With Internet servers, it needs to be MUCH more closely managed, as the basic services are exposed. When I had the site on a shared hosting environment, I used the software they provided for some stuff, but had stopped using it, and didn't update it... doh! I had several attacks get through. Fortunately, those attackers just installed some alternate scripts that allowed them to use the web server as an email spamming engine. I was able to clean that off manually, and update (or remove if not used anymore) the broken software that let them in.

Ahhhh... security on the Internet.

 

[AllanonsWrath]

Ahhhh... security on the Internet.

Sometimes it's my worst nightmare!

~Jonathan

 

[CaptainVimes]

(saying that, my host has been down since Friday, due to someone taking advantage of a security hole :-\ how much shall I bet it's my forum? EEEEEK!)

It's possible. What kind of hosted environment are you using? Is it a dedicated server or shared hosting?

I THINK it's shared hosting (I highly doubt my few pennies a quarter would pay for a dedicated server. :silent: )

Basically I used to co-run the forum and front page with my Fiance, but one of my darn members had a go at him in the public forums, and this was the last straw, he's not been back since. (on the forum! I still live with him and we are still together lol) He used to do all the technical stuff, our forum software is smf, and it's NOT easy to "just upgrade", because we did not "kiss" lol there are too many mods to do a simple upgrade that they provide, even the "use this if you have lots of mods" doesn't work, we have to do a manual upgrade. I reckon I'm about 3-4 upgrades behind, because I keep forgetting to grovel and ask him to help me upgrade :roll: so, the host "security hole" that has caused them to format and re-image (over my head but that's what they said) all their servers, has caused my forum to be down since Friday night. It COULD be my forum's fault. we got hacked via our "joomla" front page last year, and they trashed half of my hosts' servers with their hacking "skills" (pffft)

I just need to find someone that I can TRUST to come and admin with me and do all the technical stuff. There's no attraction for my Fiance to come and do it any more, so he doesn't. He did the last one, in the middle of this year for me, but I haven't grovelled for him to do this one.. yet.. but if I find out that it WAS my part of their server that has caused them to wipe everything and start again... I will most probably start over with a whole new forum software and NOT install ANY mods, so that it can be simply upgraded by a click and an "OK" heheh. (knowing my luck it STILL wouldn't work that way)

So, if you know of anyone with some spare hours on their hands that would love to do all the technical side of the forum, and leave me to just looking after the end consumer side, then tell them to give me a shout. Not that I can do anything at the moment until my host fixes their servers... last time I clicked on the bookmark to my forum I got...

Table 'ukrac_new.smf_settings' doesn't exist

It's not loading at all at the moment and half of my host's website is down, so I'm guessing that they are doing even more necessary work... IF it comes back with that message, should I be able to fix that with going into control panel and "doing something technical"? heheh (can you tell how techno-thick I am?) I'm panicking because my last update of the forum was months and MONTHS ago. EEEEEEEEK!

Anyway, this forum isn't here for me to talk about the trials and tribulations (?) of my forum, so I shall bugger off and shut up now. lol (delete this post if you need to)

 

[beardie]

Hehehe. Yeah... I know how you feel. When I first started this site and with the forums (as opposed to basic pages I coded myself), I was more free with adding plugins. I hadn't realized how badly most of the PHP applications were about not creating very good plugin architectures. A good plugin architecture would allow for plugins to "hook in" at various points in processing but not actually modify the main programs code. Java applications will usually do this, since the source code isn't always on the server to "modify". I guess that's why most PHP programs call plugins "MODs", as they are modifications to the actual original program.

So, after having been through the pain you have, and when I upgraded to phpBB 3.x (making mods I had in place before incompatible anyway), I decided to keep things as simple as possible. Even my banner ads required modification to the source code (my own personal custom mods), in order to support direct banner ads and not just Google's, and to properly rotate between them. I'd already started to change that so the banner ad rotation could be put in the templates (designed to be customized) and in the software that serves the images (more like how Google works).

It's a pain. As you can see. That's why I'm cautious with just jumping in and adding stuff like Tapatalk. Hopefully the people writing the mods are being better/smarter about avoiding code changes as much as possible. Ideally, it would be cool if they just had different templates people could select to use, that would be nice, but I believe it needs more than just that.

 

[CaptainVimes]

It's a pain. As you can see. That's why I'm cautious with just jumping in and adding stuff like Tapatalk. Hopefully the people writing the mods are being better/smarter about avoiding code changes as much as possible. Ideally, it would be cool if they just had different templates people could select to use, that would be nice, but I believe it needs more than just that.

Yup, which is exactly why I said "I understand" instead of whinging on about it would be nice to be able to use the taptalk function on the forum.. but as you have already explained, it's a no go.

I don't know if the programming behind tapatalk is "opensource" because there's a certain forum online (for androids, no competition to yourselves) that actually have their OWN app for browsing the forums... (HowardForums) funny because it looks EXACTLY like the tapatalk "user front end" does when using it.
("user front end" - does that even make sense?! :roll: :lol: Part of my "poorly" is not being able to make sentences half the time, and using completely different words to those that were meant to be in the sentence, I have severe cognitive disabilities basically (along with a load of other language problems caused by my many illnesses))

There was an app for iPhone that allowed phpBB specific forums to install the code to use this specific app for using the forums too, I'm guessing that that also has it's problems too (can't quite remember quite what it was called, "ProBoards" I THINK? (that could be something COMPLETELY different that I just thought of :lol: ))

BTW - I'm a bracketabuser, can you tell? :lol: (I'm the only person that my friend knows of that can use brackets within brackets up to 10 times and still remotely make sense) - I'm excellent at going off in tangents too.

*slaps herself*

*shuts up*

OK, so thank you for taking the time to explain why tapatalk is a no go, sometimes when I ask in forums I just get completely ignored or told no way straight out, without explaining why. Now I know, I will not repeatedly ask for it in forums that DO NOT have it, and will consider keeping it on my own forum. (as I am the only one who uses it!)

 

[Youngyoshi]

Hope you find the plugin usable. Viewing the site from my cell becomes a pain sometimes. But gotta get my beardie fix