Just a quick reminder to everyone

I’ve been keen to fill the gallery to show off WP-United’s features to new users (there’s nothing better than seeing it in action on real sites). Up until now, I’ve been adding sites regardless of whether they link back to WP-United.com or not. In actual fact, the vast majority do — so I’m pretty happy.

However, there are a growing number of new sites which have dumped the included link from their footer, or haven’t linked to us at all. To be clear, this is your prerogative (provided the copyright statements in the PHP code remain completely intact) — however, links back to us are one of this site’s main lifelines. Without them, far fewer people would find the site — either directly or via Google.

Feel free to modify the link, or move it to a separate “credits” page. I understand some sites want to make it look like they are developed in-house, or believe in security through obfuscation, but in reality there’s really very little reason not to link back — some very large sites are doing so.

Also, a few people have kindly written about WP-United on their sites or blogs. Some have even written tutorials in their own languages. This is fantastic, something I love to see

The stick: eventually, when the gallery fills up, I’ll start being a bit stricter with who stays in there The carrot: The more people discover WP-United, the more incentive there will be to keep it developing rapidly.

Thanks to everyone who is already supporting WP-United — either by donating, linking, contributing code or translations, writing about us or recommending us to peers. It is much appreciated.

As the readme file introducing the WP-United template tags is missing from the phpBB3 download, as as I’ve been meaning to do a proper write-up for months now, I’ve put together a page, All About Template Tags.

For most users, the provided widgets should be sufficient. However, if customisation is your “thing”, then this page is for you!

Sorry for being a bit ‘hands off’ the last week — had a long weekend in Hong Kong, but managed to get in a spot of work on WP-United for phpBB3. (More…)

Most phpBB-based sites fall into two categories: Those where phpBB is used as an add-on feature of the main site: for example, as a support forum; and those where a phpBB community is the site.

Sites in the latter category live and breathe ‘community’ — and are often places for pre-existing off-line communities to discuss topics and meet online. Often, such sites using a stock phpBB install spring up and attract large numbers of users — without even a custom design or other site features. It usually doesn’t take long, however, for users to request new features, and a nice portal page summarizing news or announcements is usually the first request. (More…)

WP-United is now well-tested with PermaLinks — the nice-style URLs that Search engine spiders find easier to crawl and index. Since v0.8.9.x, you don’t have to mod any files to set them up - however you want them.

If you are not currently using Permalinks with WP-United, you should seriously consider doing so. You’ll be surprised at the difference they make. At the very least, your site will have pretty and easily navigable addresses. If you’ve enabled per-user blogs, your users will surely appreciate yoursite.com/blogs/author/myname far more than an ugly query string.

Here’s how to do it: (More…)