This MOD makes it possible to prevent users from viewing the unapproved posts until the contents has been approved by the moderator(s). The MOD can be used to combat spam bots that make random posts in the public forums or for extended moderation in any forum with sensitive topics (religion, politics, etc.) where post screening is required to maintain forum integrity. The MOD is quite flexible in its settings and allows you to configure various approval options per forum.
This MOD is very flexible when it comes to setting the approval permissions. It allows 3 main approaches to define who is allowed to post freely and who isn't: by setting forum's approval options, by setting user/group approval permissions or by setting ranks approval option. All of these can be combined to fit more specific requirements. Additionally, there are some extra options that can affect the approval decision making, such as 'Approval for new topics only' (and not the replies to them) or 'Topic starter can approve topic posts'. All of these features are discussed in more detail in the documentation. Also, see the next two questions for the real life example of approval settings combinations.
Most likely, yes, you can. The actual configuration will depend on how you define the terms 'new' and 'trusted'. If you judge purely by the number of posts then using ranks is the best way. If you want more 'human' control over the posts quality then you have two main possibilites: "do not trust anyone by default and pick the 'trusted' users later" or "allow everybody to post anything but 'punish' troublesome users by adding them to a special group that is not allowed to post freely." All of the above (ranks as well as the group permissions) can be set per forum. This means that users who are allowed to post freely in one forum may require approval in another one.
Yes, you can! This is a per forum setting. All you have to do is to enable this option in the forum settings.
Yes, you can! If you enable the 'Hide unapproved posts' forum option all unapproved posts will be completely hidden from ordinary users (moderators and admins will still be able to view them). When the posts are hidden the forum appears as if no post was made at all. This includes post count statistics in the forum index and topics view!
The moderators can approve posts in the forums where they have actual 'moderator' rights. It is also possible to give an ordinary user (or group of users) the right to approve posts in a chosen forum. Such users can approve (or delete) unapproved posts in the forum but do not have real moderator rights, i.e., they cannot edit or delete other users' posts and cannot use the Moderators Control Panel. In addition, it is possible to set the per forum option 'Topic starter can approve topic posts' which will give any user the right to approve/delete unapproved posts but only in the topics initiated by that user.
Absolutely! Just enable the notification option in each forum you want to monitor and you will get an email as soon as the new unapproved post is made. The email contains a link to jump directly to the new post to view it, as well as a link to approve it directly. The post text is also included in the email. As a bonus feature you can also enable notification about any new posts, whether they require approval or not. This way it is possible to keep track of the board where the posts are not made that often. The admins do not get any of those notifications. If you are the forum admin and would like to get new posts notification, you should mark yourself as the moderator for the forums you are interested in.
Easy! There is a new link on the forum index page that appears when there are new unapproved posts that you are able to approve. This link is called 'View unapproved posts' and is located above the 'View posts since last visit' link (top right). Simply click on it to display all the unapproved posts in all forums you are allowed to moderate (same applies to forum admins).
Sure! Please remember that directly after the MOD installation your board will behave exactly the same way as before. It is only when you start changing approval related settings that the behaviour will change. So take it slow and do not enable many options at once. Experiment with the settings one by one and make sure you understand what each option and permission really does. The flowchart in the documentation is quite helpful for understanding this MOD's behaviour. You can always ask a question in the MOD support topic at www.phpbb.com community forums.
Please have a look into the 'contrib/fixes' directory in the MOD archive. You will find the compatibility fixes for some of the MODs encountered so far. If you are concerned about compatibility and cannot see the fix for your MOD, consider this: the Approval MOD most likely will NOT work or will work improperly with any other MOD that changes message posting or topic/forum viewing behaviour. There are more notes regarding installation and compatibility in the documentation. Please read them carefully if you have many other MODs installed on your board before attempting the Approval MOD installation. If you are still having troubles making it work with other MODs you can ask for a compatibility fix in the MOD support forum. Due to the lack of time I cannot promise to deliver any compatibility fixes. Other people may help as well so it is still worth asking for it. If you decide to ask for compatibility fix PLEASE INCLUDE THE ADDRESS THAT POINTS TO THE MOD DOWNLOAD/DESCRIPTION PAGE. I cannot afford the time to find which mod exactly you mean and where to find any information on it. Additionally, it would be very helpful if you could provide a brief description on what the conflicting MOD does.
No, unfortunately it is not. The only theme it is compatible with out of the box is 'subSilver'. I cannot write a MOD for every theme out there, and it is normal for a MOD to be compatible only with the default phpBB distribution. Anything extra and you are on your own. This is not the limitation of the Approval MOD. Same applies to any MOD that changes phpBB templates. Having said that, if you have basic understanding of HTML and CSS it is very easy to modify any theme to be compatible with the Approval MOD. Just look which files from the 'subSilver' theme are modified and apply similar changes to the theme of your choice.
By default the Approval MOD comes in English language. Additionally, French, German and Russian languages are available. See the files in the 'contrib/languages' directory for adding those languages. If you are willing to make (and share) a translation for this MOD in your language drop me a mail and I will include your translation in the package. See Q#19 for the contact info.
No it won't. Do not even think of trying to install it on phpBB 3.0.x. This MOD is solely for phpBB 2.0.x. Besides, Olympus (phpBB 3.0) has its own posts approval functionality built in. It is called 'moderator queue' and is supposed to provide some features of the Approval MOD.
The MOD was released when the actual production version of phpBB was 2.0.22 and the phpBB 3.0.x (Olympus) was in a Release Candidate stage. Judging from the updates frequency for both code branches it is clear that most of the efforts are dedicated to the new version 3.0.x. It is reasonable to assume that the updates for phpBB 2.0 won't happen very often in the future and, if that is true, I will try my best to keep the MOD in line with the main phpBB codebase. As a rule of thumb, two updates a year are OK to keep up with. More frequent updates would be a bit problematic. Please do not expect a new version of the Approval MOD shortly after the new version of phpBB 2.0.x is published. Besides, chances are very good that the minor fixes won't affect the Approval MOD code and it will still be compatible with the newer phpBB 2.0.x releases without modification. Lastly, there won't be any support for phpBB versions earlier than 2.0.22.
Yes, there is! It is called EasyMOD. It allows you to install EasyMOD compatible MODs using a Web interface with just a few mouse clicks. Approval MOD is absolutely friendly to EasyMOD and can (and should) be installed with EasyMOD. Doing so will significantly reduce the chances of making a mistake that could cause general forum malfunction. If you are not familiar with phpBB MOD-ding you should definitely consider this option. Even if you are proficient with HTML/CSS/PHP I still recommend to use EasyMOD simply because the Approval MOD is BIG and it is very easy to make a stupid mistake (trust me, I did make it many times myself).
I will not answer any question like 'What is a MOD?' and 'How do I install a MOD?' If you are unfamiliar with the general concept I suggest you seek help in the general MOD support forums and official phpBB documentation. I will not install this or any other MOD on your site even if you pay me (well, I may consider it if my time is paid the same way or better than my daytime job, however, I really do not expect that to happen, so generally it is still a 'No').
No. I do not have time. Sorry. (Regarding paid development, see the answer to the previous question #16).
The general idea is that it does work for quite a few people out there, so chances are very high that something is wrong with your particular setup. This is confirmed by my experience when vas majority of people who initially had big problems with this MOD later came back saying that they made a mistake or forgot to edit a file or two. I would say that 99% of all problems arise from a simple typo (if you did manual installation without EasyMOD). There is always a small chance of incompatibility with other MODs (especially if you have lots of them installed). See Q#10 above.
If you are absolutely sure that you did everything right and the problem is within the Approval MOD itself, here is a "before you ask for help" questionnaire that you should use as a guide when reporting your problem:
phpBB installations can be quite different: OS, PHP, SQL server versions, additional MODs/themes/languages installed -- all of that could matter and often I would have no way of recreating your configuration at my side. Please have that in mind even if you have answered all of those questions. I can't always come up with the solution and it is false to assume that I can solve any problem just because I wrote this MOD.
MOD support will be given directly in this MOD's official topic @ phpBB.com. You can send me a private message too. Should you need to send an attachment or a long code output, please use the following e-mail address: soft@purple-yonder.com.
Last updated: 21 Oct 2007