Administrator Tips

Here are some useful tips for board administrators that have Prillian running on their forums. These will help you make the most of your Prillian installation and keep your forums easy to use.


Configuring Prillian
Once Prillian is installed on your forums, there is a new section added to the phpBB Administration Panel called "Prillian." This new section contains a Configuration page which features new global settings added to your forums. You should check these new settings and change them as you desire. If the installer script failed to add variables to the phpbb_config database table, the Configuration page should install them when you submit the form.


Dealing with Abusive Users
If a user is abusing their instant message privileges, you can ban that user from Prillian. Go to Administration Panel > Prillian > User Admin. There are options there that will let you ban users from various levels of Prillian use.


IMs vs. PMs
If your users have a hard time understanding the difference between Prillian and phpBB's native private messages or want to receive both types of messages in the same place, here are a few thing you can try:

• Prillian, as of version 0.6.0 can open new and unread private messages in the same manner as new or unread instant messages. (Replies sent through Prillian are still considered instant messages.)
• Prillian's Message Log can be used similar to the private message folders. The Log of received instant messages can be used like a pm inbox and the Log of sent messages can be used like a pm sentbox/outbox. You could create links to the Message Log or it's individual pages alongside the private message Inbox, Outbox, Sentbox, and Savebox links. Examples of these links would be:
  

  Code:

  <a href="imclient.php?mode=log">Instant Message Log</a>
  <a href="imclient.php?mode=log&type=received">Received IMs</a>
  <a href="imclient.php?mode=logtype=sent">Sent IMs</a>
  
  
• Unfortunately, it's not possible to make IMs appear in both Prillian and the private messages inbox while keeping the numbers of such messages accurate without major changes to either Prillian or privmsg.php. Network Messages in particular represent a large problem with this concept. The concept of using the Message Log as part of the native private messages area will be expanded in future versions.

Load Windows Quickly
I do not recommend using a lot of large graphics in your Prillian templates if the auto refresh rate (for the board in general or users specifically) is set to a low number. It's possible to use up a lot of bandwidth in such a situation. For that matter, I do not recommend setting the refresh rate to a very low number anyway. If the page tries to reload before it has completely loaded, you might not
receive some messages.


Refresh Problems
When the refresh method is set to use a META tag, clicking a link in the IM Client may cause that window to stop automatically refreshing. This is a browser problem, so Prillian cannot fix it. Two workaround solutions are available, however. Solution one is to use either the JavaScript or Use Both refresh methods. Solution two is to click Check for IMs control panel link or image (this refreshes the IM Client and restarts the automatic refresh).


Keep Your Database Slim and Trim
Do your users use Prillian a lot or have the automatic message deletion turned on? If so, you may want to periodically run an SQL optimize command on some of your database tables. This command reclaims unused space that results from having a lot of table rows deleted and can speed up a forum greatly in some cases. Users of phpMyAdmin can do this easily through that script's provided interface. The exact method varies from version to version of phpMyAdmin, so it is up to you to figure out how to use this feature.

If you don't use or have phpMyAdmin, the optimize commands would look something like this in MySQL:

Code:

There is a very useful hack called Optimize Database that can automate this procedure on MySQL databases.


Admin IM Viewer
Prillian has an admin version of the Message Log that you can use to read messages a user has sent or received. Using this without telling your users of it's existence could violate their privacy. Please don't get yourself in trouble, okay?


Prillian vs. Prillian Lite
Prillian and Prillian Lite, despite their similarities and names, are two different modifications. Don't try to use them together unless you rename the database tables for one. The two modifications have different database table structures, so you get errors if you try to use Prillian Lite's tables with Prillian's files.


Windows System Tray
Some people have requested having Prillian sit in the Windows system tray. While this is not possible at the moment, it is possible to put Prillian on your desktop with Window's Active Desktop. I do not suggest using this, though, because I'm sure the bandwidth usage would go through the roof.


Connect to Other Sites
Network Messaging, like the rest of Prillian, is a work-in-progress. Before
your users can see, send messages to, or receive messages from users online at
another site, you must add that site's information to your database using the
Network editor in the Admin Panel. The following information can be added for
each site:

• URL - This is the url of the other site's forum without any file name on the end. If site.com has a forum at http://site.com/forum/index.php, you would use http://site.com/forum/ here. Note that the forums.html is not in that and that it ends with a slash. The slash is also required.
• File extension - This is the file extension used on the other site. In almost all cases, this will be "php".
• Path to profile - This is the path to the other site's profile.php file. This is not the full url like site.com/forum/profile.php. It should also not include the file extension. In fact, unless the other site has moved their profile from the phpBB root directory, this should just be "profile".