Features currently supported by UNB
The following list contains all features that are supported by the Unclassified NewsBoard, as of writing/updating this document or in the latest development version (in no particular order).
- Real-time e-mail and Jabber notification on new threads and replies, one or both selectable by the user individually for each forum/thread (uses own SMTP library or PHP’s mail() function at option)
- Access rights management with an Access Control List (supported actions, extensible by plug-ins)
- Unread posts management, storing the read state in the database (no cookies used)
- Automatic topic ignoring (user option): Puts all new and entirely unread threads on the ignore list when searching for unread threads and then marking all threads as read. You won’t get to see again what you were not interested in last time!
- Post formatting with BBCode (features, extensible by plug-ins)
- Attachments for posts (each post can have one file)
- User profiles incl. post signature, avatar (and remote avatar at option), larger user photo and several additional fields (extensible by plug-ins)
- Full Unicode support, everything is UTF-8
- Polls and result graphs (single answer per poll)
- Search function by text (subject, contents, user name), date range and sub-forum, with phrase search or inverse search
- Special search queries like current/unread topics, current polls, current topics of the last 1/3/7 days, topics the user has started or replied to, user’s posts, recently viewed topics
- Multiple board designs, selectable by the user
- Multiple languages, automatically selected, selectable by the user
- Time zones support, automatically selected, selectable by the user
- User registration immediately, by e-mail verification, manual by an administrator or disabled; secured by a CAPTCHA image
- Automated installation and upgrade script
- Plug-in support (many hooks are already available, new are added on request; configuration of plug-ins on the settings page)
- Plugins like ACL editor, database consistency check, user groups editor, find and remove inactive users, log viewer
- More plug-ins for developers to add new BBCode features, add new pages, alter the navigation line, add new user profile fields, filter unwanted words from posts and other contents, show AdSense advertising in diverse places on each page, add custom actions to the ACL system, set forum visibilities by group membership, a simple Spam™ filter, add thread attributes, ...
- Announcements that are visible above all/certain forums and optionally in each thread page; they can be marked as read by a user
- Hide and ignore forums and threads so that they’re gone from the listing pages resp. hidden from search results
- Arbitrary nesting of sub-forums, categories that contain no posts directly, web links that just point to external sites
- In-place configuration of forums, threads and posts; no separate “Admin Control Panel” for those tasks
- List of currently/today online users and number of guests, list of users that have birthday today
- Pagination of threads and posts, configurable
- Important threads that are highlighted in colour and appear first in thread listings
- Description line for threads to more precisely explain what the thread is about, in addition to the subject line
- Post options to disable smileys and/or formatting syntax for problematic cases of syntax confusion
- Fast reply to directly reply in a text box under a post, selectable by the user (only when logged in)
- Guest posting can be enabled in the ACL, secured by a CAPTCHA image
- Thread splitting where a moderator can select each post that goes into a new thread; enter a subject, description and sub-forum for the new split-off thread
- Thread bookmarks
- RSS newsfeeds
- User groups that grant access rights by the ACL, multiple group membership is possible (and often used)
- Public user groups that a user can join and leave on his own (probably only useful for the forum visibility plugin)
- User options like half avatar size, automatic login, hide all avatars/signatures/image attachments
- Inline display of post image attachments up to a configurable pixel/bytes size
- Automatic page GZip compression (option)
- Short URLs for many pages like site.com/thread/237, site.com/forum/51, site.com/cp or site.com/user/409 (option, requires Apache HTTPd mod_rewrite and .htaccess support)
- More admin options like display and location of login controls and forum selection list, display of online/birthday users list/last visit time/RSS links, location map service link (links a user’s specified location to a web map service), pagination settings, post length limit, attachment size limit, selection of details to display in thread/user lists, timeout settings (session timeout, thread moved note expiration, current polls time range...)
- Disallow usernames and e-mail addresses (with wildcards) and allow e-mail domains for user registration; require unique e-mail address (option), several password security options
- Option to disallow certain formatting features in post signatures (maximum length, no fonts, no links, no images, no smileys)
- IP flood control, configurable
- Administrative board lock (with a message to display to the surprised user) and global read-only mode, for maintenance works
- Version check to notify on new UNB versions (option)
- Members list, sortable and searchable, with links to user profiles
- Statistics page that shows all-time counters and per-day number of threads, posts, online users/guests, page hits and registrations
