Warning: This software is outdated. Further information on the home page.

Configuration file options

Many of these settings are also described in the administrative configuration section above. There may be two similar descriptions for one option. Compare both to get a better understanding. [TODO: check if they all say the same...] Most boolean options can be set off with a value of “0” and on with a value of “1”.

General settings

Column name
Description
forum_title Forum name. This title will be used in the page title and as sender of e-mails.
home_url Home URL of the board installation (only the directory name, without PHP filename). This is auto-detected by the installer. You shouldn’t need to correct it.
parent_url If set, this will be displayed as “Main page” as the first navigation line link.
toplogo_url If set, this will be the link target of the logo at the top of the page. The logo points to the forum index otherwise.
db_server Database server host name or IP address
db_user Database username
db_pass Database password (see notes about passwords below)
db_name Database name
db_prefix This key is added to the standard table names. Use different keys to store more than one forum in a single database.
db_utf8 Make use of the database server’s Unicode capabilities (available from MySQL 4.1 on). If unset, UTF8 encoding will be used if available. Set this to 0 for use with databases upgraded from UNB 1.5 or older.
smtp_server SMTP outgoing e-mail server host name or IP address
smtp_sender Sender address for all board-generated e-mails
smtp_user Username for SMTP-AUTH, if necessary
smtp_pass Password for SMTP-AUTH, if username is set (see notes about passwords below)
use_php_mail Use PHP’s internal mail() function instead of SMTP
enable_jabber Enable Jabber notification feature. You must have defined a Jabber account for the board for this to work.
jabber_server Jabber IM server host name, optionally with port number (default is “:5222”). SSL is not suported.
jabber_user Jabber user name on this server (without the “@servername” part)
jabber_pass Jabber password (see notes about passwords below)
def_lang Board default language (ISO code as for filenames, e.g. “en”)
tz_offset Default timezone offset, in quarter hours (-48 through 48)
tz_dst Daylight saving time configuration (0: off, 1: auto, 2: force on [not yet implemented])
Notes about passwords: Passwords can be stored in the configuration file in different ways. One of them is plaintext: Just enter the password as it is and with no encoding or transformation. The board will use another way by default: Base64-encoding. If the password is stored in Base64 encoding, it must be prepended with a “b64:”.

Appearance settings

design Name of board default design
smileset Name of used smiley set
login_top Show login controls at the top of the page. (0: show them at the bottom)
show_online_users Show currently online users. This has effect on bottom of the overview page and all forums.
foot_db_time Show database and timing statistics in footline
gzip Enable GZip output compression (on|off|auto)
mod_rewrite_urls Use Apache’s mod_rewrite for short URLs
named_urls Add thread subjects or forum names to the URLs to let them ‘speak’ more. Search engines may like this. Only valid if mod_rewrite_urls is enabled.
show_goto_forum Show “Go to forum” drop-down list
show_search_forum Quicksearch in forums/threads
enable_trace_users Enable user trace list. In this list of online users, everyone can see which user is currently where in the board.
post_preview_send_button Display a second “Create topic/Reply” button right after the post preview
show_last_visit_time Display the time of the user’s last visit on the overview page
forums_tree_style Use Unicode characters for the tree structure in the forums dropdown list. Available options: unicode, nolines, dots, hlines
display_forum_lastpost_re Prefix the last post topic subjects with “Re: ” in the forums list, if the last post in that forum is not a new topic but a reply
show_birthdays List all birthday users on the overview page
disable_search_highlighting Do not highlight the search terms in the displayed result posts. This option is still a bit buggy and can thus be disabled here.
show_forum_rss_link Show forums’ RSS links
location_link Location’s URL. “%s” will be replaced with the user’s specified location.
threads_per_page Threads per page in threads list
posts_per_page Posts per page in thread view
users_per_page Users per page in users list
hot_thread_posts Minimum number of posts for a ‘hot thread’
hot_thread_views Minimum number of views for a ‘hot thread’
extra_names Additional user profile fields. Enter all captions separated by a | character. You must not change the number of captions manually but only from the Admin CP.
new_topic_link_in_thread Display a “Add topic” link in a thread view, next to the “Add reply” link
post_show_textlength Count current text length of the post
post_attach_inline_maxsize Maximum allowed filesize to display an attached image inline
post_attach_inline_maxwidth Maximum allowed width to display an attached image inline
post_attach_inline_maxheight Maximum allowed height to display an attached image inline
max_poll_options Maximum number of definable poll options
own_posts_in_threadlist Mark threads with own posts in the threads list
show_bookmarked_thread Mark my bookmarks in threads lists
display_thread_startdate Display a thread’s starting date in the threads list
advanced_thread_counter Advanced counters in the threads list. Number of users who have read or posted to a thread.
count_thread_views Count thread views
display_thread_lastposter Display a thread’s last post’s author in the threads list
count_forum_threads_posts Count threads/posts in the forums list
display_forum_lastpost Display last post in the forums list
ulist_regdate Show user’s registration date in the users list
ulist_location Show user’s location in the users list
ulist_posts Show user’s number of posts in the users list
ulist_lastpost Show user’s last post in the users list
poll_current_days Find “current polls” within ... days
quote_with_date Store quotes’ date if older than ... days
no_edit_note_grace_time During this time, no “This post was edited” note will be added to edited posts, if no other user has already read it
moved_thread_note_timeout Time in days to keep thread moved notes
online_users_reload_interval Time in milliseconds to reload the list of online users after
user_online_timeout Time in seconds when users won’t be considered online after their last activity

Security settings

new_user_validation New users’ validation type (0: registration disabled, 1: immediately, 2: validation via e-mail, 3: manual by Mod/Admin)
disallowed_usernames Disallowed usernames
disallowed_emails Disallowed e-mail addresses. List of disallowed Usernames and Mail addresses for registration. These strings must not appear entirely or partly in requested Usernames or E-Mail Addresses at registration. Comparison is done case-insensitive. Enter all values separated by “|” character.
allowed_email_domains Allowed e-mail domains. Registration is only possible with e-mail addresses from these domains. Comparison is done case-insensitive. Enter all values separated by “|” character.
disallow_email_reuse Don’t allow two users to share the same e-mail address for registration
username_minlength Minimum required username length
username_maxlength Maximum allowed username length
usertitle_maxlength Maximum allowed user title length
pass_minlength Minimum allowed length of users’ passwords in characters
pass_notusername Do not alow passwords equal to the user name (case-insensitive)
pass_neednumber Require passwords to contain at least a number [0-9]
pass_needspecial Require passwords to contain at least a character that is no number [0-9] and no letter [A-Za-z]. This includes i.e. punctuation or accented letters.
avatars_enabled Enable use of avatars
allow_remote_avatars Allow users to use remote avatars specified by URL
avatar_x Maximum width of avatars
avatar_y Maximum height of avatars
avatar_bytes Maximum filesize of avatars (can be overridden via ACL)
photos_enabled Enable use of user photos
photo_x Maximum width of user photos (can be overridden via ACL)
photo_y Maximum height of user photos (can be overridden via ACL)
photo_bytes Maximum filesize of user photos (can be overridden via ACL)
max_post_len Maximum post length in characters
max_sig_len Maximum signature length in characters
attach_bytes Maximum filesize of post attachments (can be overridden via ACL). Note: Post attachments filesize is limited to PHP’s “upload_max_filesize” setting in any case. This will be recognised and the correct value will be displayed to the user.
attach_exts Allowed post attachment filename extensions, list elements separated by a | character
topic_subject_minlength Minimum required topic subject length
topic_subject_maxlength Maximum allowed topic subject length
abbc_sig_no_font Disallow font style BBCode tags in users’ signature
abbc_sig_no_url Disallow link BBCode tags in users’ signature
abbc_sig_no_img Disallow image BBCode tags in users’ signature
abbc_sig_no_smilies Disallow graphical smileys in users’ signature
no_cookies Don’t set cookies
session_ip_netmask Restrict a session to clients within the same IP range as they have logged on. 0=disable and allow all, 8/16/24=the first n bits (subnet) must match, 32=the exact address must match
use_veriword Display the verification code image
auto_ban_flood_ip Enable automatic IP ban on flood
auto_ban_flood_ip_period Time to count requests in
auto_ban_flood_ip_threshold Maximum allowed number of requests in that time
admin_lock Administrative board lock (see advanced configuration settings above for details)
read_only Global read-only access (see advanced configuration settings above for details)
enable_versioncheck Enable periodic version check. If enabled, once a day the current version information will be downloaded from the UNB website and a warning will be displayed to admins if the version is not current. Further documentation on this version check will follow in the Administration documentation

Plug-ins

disable_plugins List of disabled plug-ins. Every compatible plug-in from the plug-ins directory will be loaded automatically if not listed here.
filter_words List of words to filter out in posts, signatures and announcements (used by 'wordfilter' plug-in)
show_ads Show advertisements. 0:none, 1:top of page, 2:bottom, 3:both. Requires 'ad' plug-in

Advanced settings

These configuration options are not available in the web frontend (Admin Control Panel). Since most of them require a change of code files or pathnames in some way, it should be OK to edit the file, too.
lib_path Path to UNB’s library directory, relative to forum.php. Must also be updated in forum.php.
lib_url URL to UNB’s library directory. You can set this to a different value than lib_path if the URL paths are different from the physical directories in the filesystem.
log_path Path to UNB’s log files directory, relative to forum.php
indep_page Create stand-alone <html> pages (0: page embedding)
basefile Board’s base filename
baseurl Board’s base URL (see lib_url note above)
prog_id Program ID. Security relevant: This string is used to build the session name and should be set to a unique value for the current domain at setup time. If you have two UNBs or PHP session dependant environments using the same session name, this could lead to users being able to login to this board (or the other environment) as someone else.
no_forward Don’t automatically forward to the next page on forward-only pages. Shows a link to click on instead. This can be set to “0” to read debug output from POST forms and the like.
show_sql Show SQL queries (“on”: enabled for everyone, “off”: disabled, ‹num›: only enabled for this user ID). Avoid using this publically because SQL queries might contain sensitive data and will mess up the page layout.
nav_line Show navigation line. Warning: If disabled, you need a page framework or enter the main URLs yourself!
show_login Show login controls
foot_line Show footer line
nice_quotes_style Replace default quotes ("") by special characters (“”) in posts. 0=disabled, 1=“default” (en), 2=„begin bottom“ (de), 3=«angle quotes» (fr), 4=»inversed angle quotes«. This is currently experimental and disabled.
last_versioncheck Internal: Timestamp of last online check
versioncheck_newavail Internal: Version number for that an update was available last
last_saved_with_version Internal: Version that last saved the config file
last_upgrade_version_time Internal: Version time when the configuration was last updated
© 2003–2024 by Yves Goergen web1@unclassified.de
2,855,736 visitors since 2004-03-30, 118 today, 168 yesterday
Content last updated on 2007-05-09 17:05 UTC
dotforward webhosting Get Firefox XHTML 1.1 CSS