Citroen XM Forum

I too will be on there as always, we still have the C5s and 206 so the FCF is the place to be!

CitroJim wrote:Ciarán,
From one forum admin to another All I can say is you've done a really top, first-rate job of setting this forum up Take a very big bow sir! It's an absolute pleasure to come and vist and I'm delighted (as I'm sure you are) just how many of us have signed up. I going to sure miss you all on the FCF but no worries, I'll be a frequent vistor here and will get cracking on posting all the 4HP20 stuff. I'm a bit surprised I'm the only non-XM owner to so far register but I'm sure that'll change soon.

Well, I daresay we will not be strangers on FCF either, the outage of Club-XM reminded me that I had signed up there many years ago, and its good to get a diferent mix of non-Citroens once in a while too IMO! I'm sure everyone else is the same.

Thanks for all the information on phpBB3. It's given me a bit of momentum to get the FCF and BXC updated. What version of PHP and MySQL are you currently using. I'm stuck with PHP4 on our webserver and I'm cuurently running MySQL4 on my database server. Both run under windows 2K3. What OS are you running on your server?

The only issue I've seen which has thankfully been avoided here as this is a new build, are when people have went from earlier versions of PhpBB to 3.0.4, it can encounter issues with file permissions, particularly in the Cache folder and the like. Now being Linux derived, the usual solution is to chmod the affected files to 777 or 750....obviously you cannot do this in a Windows environment, so the nearest equivilant would be to make sure your webserver's IUSR_Machinename account is granted read, write, and modify on any problem files. You may need to do 'full control' in some cases, but need to be careful from a security point of view.
The server OS is Windows 2003 SP2, on a machine I specifically built for the site. Its a spare Athlon XP1600 with 1GB of RAM I made from parts that were lying about. I do have a Redhat Enterprise Linux machine which arguably would have been better suited to the task from a 'native' point of view, but its libraries are years out of date, and it has an old 600Mhz CPU, so I wanted something with a bit more oomph. I have a few other 2003 servers I could have used also, but one of them is already hosting 8 or 9 websites, and the other is a domain controller on my internal network, which I really don't want sitting directly on the internets for obvious reasons
So, the best solution was to just build a dedicated machine, it means there's no nonsense with it sitting on other servers with other sites, it just runs the XM forum and that's it, no messing about.
In answer to your other questions, the PHP version is 5.2.9.2 non-thread safe. Which I specifically chose over the standard version, because it works very well with the new 'FastCGI' extension which Microsoft have released for IIS. Combined, these two make PHP performance on Windows very fast indeed, and easily on an even keel with Linux.
The reason for using the non thread safe version is, as you probably know, in Linux the CGI processors tend to run as Daemons like MySql etc would, which is great, they receive a request, deal with it, and move on to the next request etc. Now in Windows, because CGI isn't native to IIS, it has to emulate it like an ISAPI extension inside the IIS worker process. That works fine in theory, but in practice it results in tons of crappy wee independent processes being created and destroyed inside IIS process, for each and every CGI request , which can be dozens per page in a forum like this. As you know, the time wasted in the creation and destruction of a process everytime is very expensive from a performance point of view, so this kind of activity just doesn't sit well in a Windows environment, in fact to say it runs like a pile of shite, would be being kind. So, Microsoft developed the FastCGI extension, which allows the CGI processor to run in a similar manner as a Daemon would in a .nix environment. This improves CGI performance on Win32 100 fold. With FastCGI you can configure cut-off thresholds on the number of 'processes' it will create before it destroys and reinitialises the fake daemon. This is set to every 10,000 requests by default, I couldn't see any reason to change that unless you're on a seriously busy site.
So, not to get sidetracked, but if you install and configure FastCGI first, then install the non-thread safe PHP, it will detect FastCGI during installation and configure itself accordingly. Performance is a million times better if you do it this way.

As for a database, I was going to install MySQL, but I ended up just using my existing MS SQL 2005 database server, as its dual CPU and has a nice fast RAID array, so performance from it is arguably better than having a local MySQL installation on the XM server. That said, the PhpBB 3.0.4 installation states that any version of MySQL above 4 is supported, so you could in theory just download the latest stable release (7 or something now isn't it?)

If it is Ok with you, I'd be grateful if I can borrow your knowledge of phpBB3 but I'll leave you in peace until it all settles here..

Course its Ok, ask anything you like, I'll help wherever I can. If it would help to have a peek at the server or configuration at this side, or have me take a look at yours, just shout

Wonder if a SubGreen theme can be created for this forum? That'll really put the icing on the cake

Well, be my guest. Personally, I hate green (I see enough of my XMs ), but if you can find one, by all means. The beauty of themes is users can decide which one they want to use!

Ciarán

Hello from France. Hope it all gets settled down and things can get back to normal (whatever normal is !)
Well done Ciaran.
Cheers for now , Carl G

CitroJim wrote:I quite like the default "subsilver" theme here.

I've seen a few customised phpBB3 boards and frankly they look appalling...

Also like it, it's smooth to the eyes, reading-friendly.
George

(Ciaran, could u put the text to "Justify" alignment ???? If all agree! Thanx! G)

Hi Geroge,

The forum software doesn't give an option to change the text layout by default, it seems to be controlled by the theme.

You'll notice that in this theme, it displays the user info to the right-hand side of the posts, the opposite to how FCF and even Club-XM do it. This affects how the post text displays, because its pushed to the left.

What may help, is if you try the original 'subsilver' theme. You can do this by clicking the 'User Control Panel' link at the top left, then goto the 'Board Preferences', then finally scroll down to 'My Board Style', change it to 'subsilver', then click 'Submit' at the bottom.

That will implement subsilver, which should display profile info to the left of posts, and provide a more 'justified' text look.
If that's still not what you're after, let me know and I'll try to install some other themes for you to try, if I can track down any with the desired text effect.

Ciarán

Indeed subsilver did the job! The world is not upside-down anymore !!

The controls seem to have quite a few options to explore, nice....(had never noticed if club-xm had similar versatility).

Thanks very much Ciaran!!

G

Good to be back again. Thanks for all your hard work Ciraran.

Hello all,

I've just signed up, never was a member of club-XM, in fact I must confess I'd always rather overlooked the XM, however a few months ago I had a ride in Paul's car (citroenxm) and was terribly impressed. Really keen to have an XM at some point, a series 1 2.1TD would be lovely! Can't contribute much XM specific info, but keen to learn...

Jonathan.

Hi Jonathan

And welcome to the forum with no name I think Paul has a nice Petrol 2.0 Turbo for sale, not very economical though.

Edit, unless its LPG'd that is
D