PHP-FUSION

VERSION 7.0X



Copyright 2010 Jan Mlgaard
This manual is written for PHP-Fusion V 7.0X
Copyright 2008 Nick Jones

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 2



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Official PHP-Fusion Manual
2010 Jan Mlgaard
Porsgrunnsvej 45, DK-8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Phone +45 86 16 47 32
www.phpfusion.dk
All graphics created by the author
1. edition 2010

All rights Jan Mlgaard, 2010 ([email protected])
or the respective owners of trademarks and names.

This manual may not be printed in more than one copy
for private use. It is not permitted to use this manual
for commercial purposes either directly or indirectly
without the written permission by the author.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents .........................................................................................................................3
Introduction.................................................................................................................................5
Installation ..................................................................................................................................7
The installation process .............................................................................................................9
Upgrading from version 6.01........................................................................................................ 15
General remarks about dynamic web pages ................................................................................... 17
Site settings............................................................................................................................... 18
Structure and PHP-Fusion terms ............................................................................................... 18
Site administration overview .................................................................................................... 19
Basic Setup............................................................................................................................ 25
Choosing a theme ................................................................................................................... 29
Time and date settings ............................................................................................................ 35
Forum settings ....................................................................................................................... 38
Registration settings................................................................................................................ 39
User fields.............................................................................................................................. 40
Photo gallery settings .............................................................................................................. 46
Banners ................................................................................................................................. 51
Adding new smileys................................................................................................................. 56
Miscellaneous Settings............................................................................................................. 59
A few remarks concerning TinyMCE............................................................................................... 63
PHP-Fusion mails and other stuff ............................................................................................ 63
The navigation panel / Site Links .................................................................................................. 66
Changes in theme.php................................................................................................................. 69
The theme function ................................................................................................................. 69
User Groups, Administrators and Moderators.................................................................................. 77
Administrators........................................................................................................................ 77
Moderators............................................................................................................................. 81
User Groups ........................................................................................................................... 83
Forum ranks........................................................................................................................... 86
How to use TinyMCE.................................................................................................................... 89
Articles...................................................................................................................................... 97
News and News Categories ........................................................................................................ 103
News categories.................................................................................................................... 103
Writing news ........................................................................................................................ 105
Downloads............................................................................................................................... 109
Download categories ............................................................................................................. 109
Downloads ........................................................................................................................... 110
Images.................................................................................................................................... 114
Importing and using images ................................................................................................... 114
Photo album......................................................................................................................... 116
Web links................................................................................................................................. 124
Panels and panel management ................................................................................................... 128
Making forums...................................................................................................................... 132
User Polls ................................................................................................................................ 141
Polls on the front page........................................................................................................... 141
Polls in the forum.................................................................................................................. 144
Administration in general ........................................................................................................... 147
Shoutbox ............................................................................................................................. 147
User / member administration ................................................................................................ 149
Using TinyMCE on Custom Pages............................................................................................. 152
Submissions......................................................................................................................... 154
Comments ........................................................................................................................... 156
Backup ................................................................................................................................ 158
Private messages.................................................................................................................. 163
FAQ and how to use it ............................................................................................................ 166
Custom Pages .......................................................................................................................... 168
Modifying the system a few examples....................................................................................... 173
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Changing the layout of unique visits ........................................................................................ 173
Changing the login and logout messages.................................................................................. 175
A few so called MODs............................................................................................................ 178
Multisites more sites in one database ....................................................................................... 181
Infusions ................................................................................................................................. 190
Installing an INFUSION.......................................................................................................... 190
Making a new INFUSION........................................................................................................ 195
Final remarks about INFUSIONS ............................................................................................. 201
Literature and web links ............................................................................................................ 202
Final remarks ........................................................................................................................... 204
Credits .................................................................................................................................... 205
Index ...................................................................................................................................... 206
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Introduction
PHP-Fusion is a CMS (Content Management System) coded in PHP (a server side scripting
language) with a MySQL database running the backend. A CMS is a system which integrates
a lot of functions usable for establishing and maintaining a homepage on the internet in such a
way, that all the functions are part of the same solution and so that all maintenance of the
homepage is done via a web-browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox or similar).

PHP is a scripting language capable of establishing connections with a database and retrieving
and presenting data from this database in the form of a HTML page. And in a CMS like PHP-
Fusion, this means that all the information necessary to form the pages that the users will see,
is stored in the database and the pages are created dynamically as the user requests them.

PHP-Fusion distinguishes itself from other CMS packages by being very compact (the whole
system in the newest version fills less than 2.5 Mb including TinyMCE - an editor from
Moxiecode), very effective (pages are created and presented very fast) and very flexible (the
system is easy to adapt and expand according to your needs). PHP-Fusion is under constant
development, and behind the system you find a very active community and a constantly
growing network of users experts and others.

This handbook is a revised version of the English handbook for PHP-Fusion version 6.01.
Revisions are made in almost all chapters according to the changes in functions as well as
appearance in the new version.

A number of changes have been made from version 6.01 to version 7.0. The most important
changes are:

New BBCode system
Admin extensions
Spam protection
New forums layout
Groups, such as forum moderators
Improved forum administration tools
XHTML compliance
New theme engine
Double hashed logins
Improved overall security
Smiley management
Modular Search
Members can now edit their own comments.
New and improved installation program.
Improved possibility for adding new user fields.
Articles and news items can be saved as drafts.
The list of changes is much longer but these are a few of the major ones. In other words, if
you are prepared to spend the time and effort there are a lot of excellent reasons for
upgrading.
This handbook has been made as a guide for all PHP-Fusion users and is based on the most
recent version (7.00.07). If you are running PHP-Fusion using a different language platform
than English, you will have to wait until your localized version of the handbook is available.
Danish users though can download the Danish version already.

For localized help and support using PHP-Fusion visit one of the official support sites.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Great Britain (UK): http://www.php-fusion.co.uk

For localized Support sites, please check under the link Support Sites, which is located on the
left side of the site, here you will find the most recent and up to date list of all of the National
Support Sites.

For more themes (the file sets used by PHP-Fusion to control the layout of pages) and for
MODs or Infusions look here:

PHP-Fusion MODS (UK) http://phpfusion-mods.com/
PHP-Fusion MODS (DK) http://www.phpfusion-mods.dk/
PHP-Fusion Themes http://themes.php-fusion.co.uk/

Infuse your World Wide Web presence!

Jan Moelgaard
Aarhus, Denmark, January 2010

N.B. We intend to merge the three official sites sometime this year, after which all English
support and resources will be available from http://www.php-fusion.co.uk only. The mods and
themes sites will be left accessible for reference for an undetermined time afterwards.
This does not apply to the national support sites which will continue to offer help and support
in your national language.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Installation
When you download PHP-Fusion, the type of file you download is a zip-file (a compressed file),
which you first have to extract with a program like WinZip (or similar).

After unpacking the file, you will see a folder structure like this:


In the folder files you will find all the program files. The file readme-xx.html (in different
language versions) stipulates the conditions for using PHP-Fusion (AGPL) and the main
instructions for installation.

You must begin the installation process first by making a new mySQL database or by getting
your provider [web host] to create one for you on the web server where your web-page will
reside.

After that, copy all the files in the folder files to the root of the web server (by using a FTP-
program such as CuteFTP, SmartFTP or FileZilla). Before starting the installation process, you
must set the permissions on a number of files and folders for the installation process to run
smoothly. The README files refer to the CHMOD command. This means to change the mode
of the file, which is simply setting the file or folder permissions.

The permissions stipulate which users have which level of access to the files or folders. You
can set these permissions either through your FTP-program or via the interface solution
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

provided by your service provider. In the examples here we have used a FTP-program called
CuteFTP, but the principles are the same no matter which solution you use.
The folders and files:

administration/db_backups/
images/
images/imagelist.js
images/articles/
images/avatars/
images/news/
images/news_cats/
images/photoalbum/
images/photoalbum/submissions/
forum/attachments/
config.php

- should be set to 777.

The code 777 means, that these folders should have the permissions:


The code 777 means, that owner, group and public user should be able to read, write and
execute files.

The file _config.php (which you have to rename to config.php before installing) which is
located in the root folder should have the same permissions. This is necessary in order for the
setup script to change the information in this file.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

When the installation process is finished, its very important to change the permissions on
config.php back to 644 (to prevent visitors from changing the information in this file). The
code 644 means:


The installation process
First of all, you have to have the necessary server space, you have to have this space on a
server that supports PHP and you have to have access to a MySQL-database. Remember to
have all the necessary information at hand that is: username, password and database server
name. This in formation is needed during the process.
You initiate the process by opening your browser and typing the address for your site. When
you do this, this will appear on your screen:


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

In the drop down menu you can choose between the languages that are uploaded to the
server. In this case, English and Danish:


Depending of your choice of language here, the rest of the installation process will proceed
with the chosen language.
Initially, the setup checks if all the permissions on files and folders are correct. If not, you will
be informed about it so that you can return to the server and rectify what is not correct. If you
encounter an error press the back button on your browser and then try again. When
everything is correct, it looks like this:

When you click NEXT this is what appears on your screen:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Here you need the MySQL-information mentioned earlier.
The correct data for our testsite looks like this:

Database Hostname localhost
Database Username dbmaster
Database Password tRuM9kuph4
Databasen Name handbook
Table prefix fusion_

If you dont have the information needed, this is what you must require from your provider:

Database hostname Name of your database server
as defined by the provider
Database user name The database user name,
indicated by your provider
Database password The database password
provided by your provider
Database name Typically the provider will give
you a database name, else you
will have to create one yourself
Table prefix fusion_ - You can change this
prefix. But, remember that you
have to use two different
prefixes if you intend to install
two sites on the same database.
Also, it must end in an
underscore _.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Now fill out the fields in the form according to the illustration below.

When the correct data have been written to the table and you click NEXT, this is what you get
on your screen:

The configuration data have been written to config.php and all the necessary tables have
been created. Click next and this appears on your screen:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You will now need to fill out the required fields to create the first user, called the super
administrator with the username and password youll need to log on your site side when you
have finished the installation. Remember that the administrator password has to be unique.
This password is needed for security reasons, when you want to change something in the basic
configuration.
It is very important to keep a record of the values you enter here in a safe place. You will need
them later.
We assume that the required values looks like this:
User name Webmaster
Password f8a6reyamu
Admin password ba2Ek4gAp2
Mail [email protected]

This means that the correctly filled out form looks like this:

When finished click next. When you do this, this is what appears on your screen:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Remember to delete setup.php from the server. It is no longer needed and can be
misused by hackers. Also, remember to set the rights of config.php back to 644 so that it can
not be opened by unauthorized persons.
The installation is complete - and your site is ready for use.
Click on the link in the text (click here), and the new site appears:


Now you can start to use and modify your site according to your needs.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Upgrading from version 6.01
PHP-Fusion Version 7 includes so many structural changes compared to the previous versions
that you cannot expect previously all installed infusions to work. You should check first which
of your infusions will not work with v7 or whether there are conversions available. If you can
not find a version of your infusion, which is guaranteed to work with version 7, then uninstall
the infusion before starting the upgrade.
If you have made any changes to the primary scripts, you must be prepared that these
changes will be overwritten when you upgrade. And you must also be prepared that you might
not be able to restore these changes without problems in the new version.
You should also know that themes designed for earlier versions of PHP-Fusion will not work in
version 7. However, there are many themes available for v7 and most v6 themes have since
been converted.
In any event, we strongly recommend that you make a complete backup of your site use
your FTP client to back up all your scripts and backup your database either through the built in
backup system or via phpMyAdmin. For your own convenience we recommend that you turn all
3rd Party features off before you upgrade.
Start by making a backup of your database either using PHP-Fusions own function or
phpMyAdmin.

The backup function in PHP-Fusion is described later in this handbook, so we will leave it for
now. Backup with PhpMyAdmin is fairly simple, but you shouldnt use it unless you are sure of
what you are doing as you could inadvertently damage your database resulting in data loss.

This is a brief overview of what you have to do:

1. Open PhpMyAdmin
2. Select the database you want to back up
3. Choose Export
4. Choose all tables
5. Choose send
6. Choose No compression under compression
7. Click do it
8. Choose a location on your hard disk to store the copy
9. Thats it

Then follow the 7 steps described here:
1. Disable all insecure infusions or uninstall them we recommend uninstalling.
2. Disable all panels except the standard panels.
3. Upload upgrade script (from the folder upgrade v601x) to the administration folder on
your server.
4. Login to your site as the Super Administrator. Under the System Admin tab of the
Admin Panel, click on Upgrade, then click the button marked Upgrade. YOU MUST follow
the upgrade through a number of steps, the upgrade process will be complete only
when you see 'Database upgrade complete'.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

5. When you see this message on your screen, open the server and delete the contents of
the folder themes. You have to do this for security, so that you dont choose an
incompatible theme by mistake.
6. Now upload all the files from the folder files to the server except setup.php and
_config.php.
7. You will have to CHMOD the new administration folder thats created with v7,
images/ranks to 755.
8. Now the upgrade process should be finished. And after this you can start restoring your
site adding infusions or changing the default theme.
If you have to upgrade from an earlier version version 5 for example you will have to
upgrade to version 6 before you move on to version 7. You cant upgrade directly from version
5 to version 7.
If at all you are in any doubt please feel free to ask one of our support sites for help, there are
plenty of knowledgeable users in our community who can help or advise you regarding the
upgrade process.


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

General remarks about dynamic web pages

This is for those who intend to create or perhaps already have created a site based on the
Content Management System PHP-Fusion. Obviously, we are delighted about that. But, if you
are a beginner in this area there are some things we would like to remind you about.
You want to make a website to entice visitors - to show or share your knowledge with others -
or to encourage others who share your particular views. Therefore, it is important to construct
your site so that visitors feel welcome. So, how do we do just that?
The navigation (the way you move around a site) must be clear and easily understood. The
type of content situated in the various menu areas (top and navigation area) must be
displayed in a way that helps your visitors to find what they are looking for.
Do not use graphics just because you can - too many ornamental graphics (graphics that are
just there for effect) take up space on the screen without relaying content or meaning. As a
rule of thumb, only use graphics when the graphics has its own meaning or supports the text
message.
News is only news for a while. It is not always a good idea to let the news stand for ever.
Consider putting an expiration date on the items so they disappear from sight on a certain
date and not create the impression that nothing changes on your site. Visitors may not return
if they think your site isnt regularly updated.
It may seem flashy to use animated graphics and JavaScript and Flash to jazz up the page. But
if there is too much of this it takes the focus away from the content. It may look impressive
the first time a user visits your site - but the second and third time it only tires the eyes. It
also may seriously increase the time it takes for your page to load up for those visitors with
slower net connections.
A site made with PHP-Fusion is a dynamic page. That means that what your site displays is
HTML produced by the server on demand. We encourage you to take advantage of that. It's
easy to make changes and additions. It's also easy to update the text and correct any errors or
omissions. Have a go, see how easy it is! You should also get in the habit of adding the latest
correction date to your pages so that your visitors know that your information is updated and
valid.
Take advantage of the fact that PHP-Fusion is an active and vibrant community with many
helpful people and resources. If you have any problems or maybe a specific need, just ask. In
many cases there are people who either can nudge you in the right direction or perhaps
directly to make the code changes or the new code you need. But, also remember that there
must be a practical purpose for adding a feature to your page. If you do not update your
calendar (perhaps because you have nothing to fill in), remove it from your page. There is no
sense in keeping functions which you do not use.
You might think that such simple advice is obvious. But, take a look at some websites and see
to what extent these simple suggestions are followed - and if not see whether this does not
characterize your experience of the sites in a negative direction. It's very satisfying to be able
to accomplish something - and sometimes you may feel you have to just do things because
you can - but in the long run, both you and your guests are best served if you stick to your
message.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Site settings
Structure and PHP-Fusion terms

Before we start to go though the setup process there are some fundamental concepts and
references, we have to get in order. This is done through the following illustration:

1
The top logo of you page. This logo is either a gif, png or a jpg file make sure
that the style of the logo matches the theme and the subject of your page.

2
The Top Menu or the Menu Bar which your users can use to navigate your
site.
3
The Navigation Panel. Here you can repeat the elements of the menu bar or
you can add links to more specific items like Custom Pages.
4 The Welcome Message, which welcomes your users to the page.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

5
Log in Panel where the users can log on to their personal account, change
their details and see their private messages.

6
The Shoutbox a simple message facility for short text messages.

7
The Footer used to display information across the whole site Powered by
number of unique users things like that.
8
User Information Panel this panel displays how many others have
registered how many registered users are on line and who is the newest
member.

These are the fundamental ideas and concepts you need to know to be able to find your way
around your PHP-Fusion site and that we are using from now on in this handbook

Site administration overview
When you see your new Fusion site for the first time, youll see its using just the standard
settings and values. This means that in order to personalize it for your requirements you will
have to alter a number of default settings. In this chapter we will have a look at the main
settings, time and date format and the navigation panel.
Most of the settings can be changed from the admin panel which can be accessed from the
front page by logging in and clicking Admin Panel. When you see the admin panel for the first
time, this is what it looks like:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

As you can see the administration panel consists of three main sections Content, User and
System. And before we start the setup process we will give you an overview of all the
different functions accessible from the three sections.
The section called Infusions is inactive because no infusions have been installed yet. This will
be covered in a later chapter.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

This is a list of functions accessible from the admin panel:
Content

Set up Categories for articles you need to make at
least one category before you can create and save an
article.

Articles this is where you create articles for your site
visitors to read.

Pages (not articles) can contain PHP-code. For
special purposes.

Categories for downloads you need to create at
least one category before you can add any downloads.

Downloads URLs for the files you want your users
to be able to download from your site.

Frequently Asked Questions questions and
answers system you can use as help files or other
resource for your users.

Discussion Forums all settings concerning the way
forums are configured on you site.

Upload and display images.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


This is where you create the news items on your site
or edit or delete old news items.

Categories for news items you can use this function
to place your news items in different categories and
illustrate them with different icons.

Create Photo albums and add pictures to them.

Create user polls, so that your users (members) can
vote on specific issues.

Categories for web links you have to make at least
one category to be able to post links on your page.

Add web links to your link section.

Users

Here is where you add administrators to your site
and assign rights to them so that they can access
certain, or all, parts of the administration.

Block access to your site choose domain names,
email addresses or IP-addresses.

Forum Ranks: Here you can administer the ranking
system for forum users.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Administer the members on your site add new ones,
delete members or change member information.

Administer the shoutbox on your site delete or edit
shouts.

Administer member submissions web links, news or
articles. Publish them or delete them.

User Fields: Here you can add, activate and
deactivate your own custom user fields.

Set up user groups used to limit the accessibility to
certain categories or forums.
System

Banners: Here you add new top banners to your site.

BB-codes: Add, activate and deactivate the BB-codes
available on your site.

Heres where you make your database backups
either in compressed or non compressed format.

Set up general values for the forums on your site
number and threads to show attachments allowed
and so on.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Install new infusions or remove the old ones.

Your sites main settings panel theme, language,
name etc.

Expletive filter, number of shoutbox posts to show.
Maintenance mode on or off and Maintenance
message.

Panel administration remove or add panels, enable
or disable panels.

All main settings concerning the way Photo Albums
work on your site.

System info click here to see the PHP settings and
values of your server.

Settings concerning the PM system. Limits to inbox
and archive among other things.

Set how users register on your site? Allow registration
or not? Should emails be used to verify users and so
on.

Internal links or Site links the links in the navigation
panel and the menu bar in top of your site.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Smileys: Add, activate or deactivate smileys on your
site.

Title says it all time and date in different parts of
your site.

When an upgrade is available this is where you
should apply it.

Basic Setup
The basic setup process is controlled from your Admin Panel Main Settings panel, which you
access from the Login Panel (top right corner of your page) after logging on as an
administrator. When you choose this option, here is what you will see:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 26



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 27



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

In the following illustrations we have cut a bit in the main settings panel. The various elements
are explained one by one:

Your site must have a name. The page name is shown on the top line of your browser (in the
blue field in Internet Explorer), and you can choose any name for your page. Here we give the
page the name: PHP-Fusion: Handbook for version 7.

Your site also needs an address (this information is used by different functions in PHP-Fusion,
so its important that this address is correct). In our example here the address of the page
(the URL) is: http://localhost/601_hb/ On the web server it will look like this:
http://www.<yourdomain>.<...>. When you enter the Site URL it must have a trailing forward
slash like this: http://localhost/uk_handbook/ otherwise some functions will fail.

Now you will have to decide whether your page has to have its own banner. A banner is a
graphics file (jpg, png or gif), which is shown at the top of all your pages. I have made a
banner for this handbook site in the gif format. It is called handbook.png, and this is the
name I write in the banner-field (after copying the file to the images folder). Remember that
depending on the theme youve selected [see next chapter], the width of the banner may
determine the width of your page in the visitors browser.

You will have to add the correct email address as well. This address is used by PHP-Fusion as
the main mail address of your page (by the various contact functions).

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You dont have to change Your name or nickname.

You dont have to write anything in Site introduction. But if you do, this text is shown on top
of your main page as a welcome greeting to your visitors. You can put graphics in here as well
if you want.

Site description and Site keywords are used to create metatags for the Internet search
engines so that they can index your page correctly. Write a short, precise description and
some meaningful keywords and remember to separate keywords with commas.

Finally you can write a copyright notice which is shown at the bottom of all your pages.

The last thing you can do in this section of the site settings is to choose the theme of your
page. This is what the next chapter describes.

After these changes this is what our site looks like:


Next you have to choose your theme. This is covered in the following chapter.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Choosing a theme
PHP-Fusion is delivered with a number of standard themes that is, combinations of color
choices, backgrounds, fonts and so on which you are free to use. A couple of examples are
shown below:


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


There are many themes to choose from (more than 200 for version 7) try the different
themes to find the one that suits your pages purpose best. Later, we will give you a few tips
on how to change format (colors, page width and so on) in one of the standard themes. But if
you dont want to get involved in that kind of work, visit one of the many PHP-Fusion support
sites. Here you can download extra themes and the number of themes available is increasing
all the time.

http://themes.php-fusion.co.uk/

In this handbook we choose the standard theme Fumaeleon which is used in all illustrations
from now on. After choosing this theme and making the initial setup, this is what our page
looks like:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



What your users can choose from the top menu (the dark green area) and in the navigation
panel, is decided by the site links option on the admin panel. We will take a closer look at
this later in this handbook. But right now we will have to finish the main settings.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



You can make the decision that to start up with a different page but the default opening
page is news.php. If you want to change this you write in the name of the alternative starting
page in the field Site opening page.
If you stick to using news.php as your opening page you can decide either to show the news in
a single column news items below each other - or in two columns, where the latest news
items is displayed in full width, while the rest will appear in two columns below.
You can change the page's language. If you change the site locale, all the fixed texts are
displayed in your chosen language. The rest is shown in the language in which it has been
entered.
Furthermore, you can exclude the right or left side panels from displaying, as well as the top or
lower panels from displaying on a particular page or pages.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

If for example you choose to fill in this /forum/index.php in the exclude left panels field
here, the main page for the forum will look like this:

You can do the same with elements in the right side, top or bottom of the screen.
If you choose this setup:

This is how your forum page will look like when opened:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Without these choices, this is what the same page looks like:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 35



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Time and date settings
Open the admin panel and choose Site Settings and Time & Date settings. This is what
your screen will look like:


From the dropdown menus you can select a setting that suits your needs. When you have
chosen a time and date format, you must press the symbol >> to put the setting into the
relevant field. Or you could edit the settings in the fields Long date format, Forum date format
and so on to the same effect.

In the table beneath, you can see where the different settings are used:

Short date format Shoutbox
Long date format News, Articles, Guestbook
Forum date format Forums
Sub-header date format Used in the top menu
Time offset Your time offset compared with server
time-zone

This is how you should read the format settings:

%d Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros
%m Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros
%y A two digit representation of a year
%H - 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros
%B - Swatch Internet time (000 999)
%Y A full numeric representation of a year, 4 digits
%M A short textual representation of a month, three letters
%S English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You can read more about the codes available here: http://php.net/date.

Note that its possible to mix the date expression with text elements and html-tags.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

When you choose the time and date formats its possible to choose the preferred format from a
drop down menu that looks like this:

Choose the format you prefer and put this format into the form by clicking on >>.
In this handbook this is what the different data formats look like:
Format name Format Result
Short date
format
%B %d %Y %H:%M

Long date
format
%B %d %Y %H:%M:%S

Forum date
format
%m/%d/%Y

Sub-header date
format
%B %d %Y Not visible in this theme

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 38



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Forum settings
When you open the settings section relating to the forums (by clicking Forum Settings from
System Admin or by clicking Next from Main Settings), this is what you see:



At the top you can choose how many threads you want the panel Latest Active Forum Threads
to show. This panel is shown as a center panels on the front page if enabled.

Furthermore you can decide whether your users should be allowed to attach files to their
forum posts, and if Yes, decide the maximum size of these attachments and the acceptable
file types.

You can allow registered users (members) to subscribe to forum notification. This means that a
user will get an email every time a new answer is added to a particular thread. It puts a little
bit of strain on your server but its a very useful feature for some sites.

You can also decide here whether you want to use the ranking system (see more about this
later). You can decide to disable or enable locking of the posts whether or not members will
be allowed to edit their posts or not.

Think about it before you turn a particular option on or off. You can always decide at a later
stage to enable or remove an option. Though, your members may not like losing a facility that
they were used to having. Whereas, they cant miss what they never had in the first place.
Attached files take up space on the server the bigger they are the more space they use up
and there are a number of file types you should never accept for security reasons php and
exe for example. You can always go back and change these settings.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Registration settings
When you open the section Registration Settings (by clicking Registration Settings from
System Admin or by clicking Next from Forum Settings) this is what you will see:


In this section you must first and foremost decide whether you want visitors to register as
members or not. If you do, set this to Yes if not set it to No.

If registration is allowed, you should decide, whether verification should be used. If the
answer is yes, an email is sent to the new user with a verification link. And first when the new
user clicks this link, the membership is activated. The idea of this is that you can get a
verification of the users email-address see if this email address actually exists. This setting
requires that you have entered the correct email address for your site in Site Settings.

In the next line you decide, whether new members should be activated by an administrator or
not. If you choose yes here, no new member-accounts will be enabled until an administrator
has approved them.

In the next line you decide whether the validation code is shown or not. The validation code is
there to protect your site from bots by using a CAPTCHA test, so its a good idea to use it. And
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 40



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

finally you have to decide, whether the validation code should be shown as an image or as
text. To show the validation code as an image, you must have GD2 support on your server. If
this is not the case, choose Show validation code as text instead.
Finally you must decide whether you want to use the subscription conditions. If you activate
this feature all new users have to (by ticking a field on the form) that they have read and
understood the conditions that you set for membership. Membership will not be accepted if this
condition isnt met. You type in your conditions in the large text box at the bottom of the page.


User fields
In PHP-Fusion version 7 it has been made possible which user fields will be active. User fields
are the fields with information gathered about a single user or member and that the member
can change in through edit profile.
In the standard version this is what edit profile looks like:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 41



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


When you look under administration User Admin - User fields you can see which fields are
currently activated.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 42



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


As you can see only some of the fields are enabled by default when viewing edit profile.

The rest of the fields are mandatory and cannot be disabled.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 43



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

If you choose to disable signature and to enable number of comments posted, then the
possibility of making a signature under edit profile is removed and at the same time a new
field under member profile is added, where its possible to see, how many comments each
member has posted.
In this way you can manage what the member can and cannot do and manage your site
according to your needs and your sites topic.
Besides that you can actually create your own user fields as well. This is how you do it.
Let us assume that we want to add a field making it possible for members to add and change
their Skype-id.
First you make a new locale file naming it user_skype.php. In this file you save the following
code.

Save the file in the locale folder under (language files) user_fields in your site language.
Now make a new file with the name user_skype_include_var.php, with the following code
and save it in the folder includes/user_fields:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 44



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Now the administration part is done. We need one more file by the name
user_skype_include.php containing the code below. You will have to save this file in the
same folder as the one above.

It is important to remember:
1: All user field names must start with the same prefix for example user_skype.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 45



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


2: The data field and the input name must be the same as shown for naming the files.

3: The locale file has to be saved in the national language folder that you use on your site in
this example English.

4: The two include-files must be saved in the folder includes user_fields.

When you open the admin panel now and look at user fields now, this is what you get on your
screen:

As you can see you now have a new field Skype phone Communication and if you
enabled this field you make it possible for your members to share their Skype information. As
you can see on the illustration below:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 46



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


This field will also be visible, when you choose to have a look at the profile for a certain
member.
How you can add other fields can be seen on the different support sites.


Photo gallery settings
PHP-Fusion version 7 comes with a built in Photo Gallery. To set this up, see the next section
of Site Settings. This is how it looks:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Thumb Size: Set the size of the thumbnails, which represent the different albums.

Photo Size: Set the size of the photos shown in the ordinary photoalbum pages that is the
max size of the individual pictures in each album.

Maximum Photo Size: Decide how big the individual photos in the popup-photo function will
be.

In all cases you set the size as Width x Height in pixels.

Maximum File size: Set the limit on how big images may be in your albums. Maximum size is
specified in bytes. This is particularly important if youre going to allow members to submit
photos to the gallery.

Thumbnail compression method (GD1 or GD2): You can adjust your site settings to the
server, on which your site is located. You get the best results with GD2 but if your service
provider (server) doesnt support this standard, you can choose GD1.

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Thumbnails per Row/Page: Choose how many thumbnails you want the Photo Album to
show per row its all about design here. And then set how many photo-thumbnails your
albums should show per page.

In this version the Photo Album supports pictures in the following formats: gif, jpg, jpeg and
png.

Enable Photos Watermark: PHP-Fusion version 7 has a function that makes it possible to
apply a watermark to your images. This watermark can be used as a security measure to
ensure that your images cant be copied without a copyright message.
Save Generated Watermarks: Decide whether this copyright notice should be saved on the
server. It takes a little bit of extra space on the server but we recommend that you use it.
Specify PNG Watermarks: In the textbox, write the path to the watermark file you want to
use. This watermark file should be saved in PNG-format. You will have to make the file and
upload it to your server before you can start using it.
Enable Text Description on Photos: Its possible to have your text description show on
each image. But, you will have to activate this function first. If its not activated, images will
only be shown with the image name and the basic information although you can choose not
to show this information when you upload.
Album title/Description and Photo Title Colour: Finally, you have the choice of setting the
colour for the title of the text shown on all images. This selection will be used if the function is
activated. You can type in the hexadecimal code for the colour or you can choose the colour
from the drop down menu.
In the illustration below we have tried to fill out some of the fields:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 49



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 50



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Here is the result as it looks with this setup:

You have to make the watermark image in PNG-format with a transparent background and you
can either upload this file with the image function or directly via FTP.
How to use the Photo Gallery is covered in a later chapter of the handbook.


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Banners
In PHP-Fusion version 7 you can use up to two different banners on the top of your site that
is a combination of graphic elements and text show on the top of your page.
You will have to use the GIF-format for your graphic elements. And as far as the text is
concerned you can use a lot of different effects. You can also add PHP-code to the banners
the code will be executed, when your site is shown in the browser.
When you choose banners from the admin panel, this is what you will see on your screen:


If you want to use graphics you will have to make them first and then upload it to the server.
In this example we have made two small graphic elements that look like this:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 52



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Now we apply this setup and type in your admin password in the field below:



When the setup is saved, this is what the site will look like:
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
Page 53



Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


If you are not satisfied with the banners youve installed, you can go back and edit, replace or
delete one or both banners entirely. Note: deleting the banner does not delete the file from
your server.
You can also choose a more sophisticated solution where you use an animated GIF-file or a
Flash file as either one or the other banner. If you do that you will have a live sequence
running on the top of your site.
But remember not to do this unless theres a reason for it. Your banners should fit the rest of
the design and the message of your site.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

BB-codes
BB-codes stand for Bulletin Board Codes its a mark up language used to format messages
primarily on bulletin boards. PHP-Fusion version 7 uses BB-codes as well. For example in the
forums and in the comment-function, as you can see on the illustration below:



The codes are shown as a row of small images under the text field here. And when you click a
smiley the code is inserted into the text like this:

When this comment is saved and shown the smiley code is interpreted and shown as a small
image like this:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

The other buttons add different text effects to the text in the comment field. It could look like
this:


Which BB-codes you want to make available for your members you decide via the
administration panel. If you open system and BB-codes, this is what you get on your screen:


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




At the top you see the codes already enabled and in the bottom part of the screen are all the
codes available for enabling.
You can enable a code and a button by clicking the link Enable To disable a code, click the
link Disable.
In the top of the screen you can also change the order in which the codes are displayed on the
various pages. Move a code up by clicking on the green arrow (arrow up) and down by clicking
on the green arrow to the right.
In principle its possible to add new codes to the list. But that requires some additional coding,
so we will not go into that here.
Adding new smileys
In this chapter we will show how you can use the PHP-fusion function for editing your smileys.
Enter the admin panel under System and open Smileys. This is what you see on your screen
if you do that:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


At the top of the screen there is a section that makes it possible to add new smileys in the
bottom you can see the smileys we currently have in this installation.
In the table you can see the code that this smiley is represented by right now, the graphic
representation, the text and at the right you have the options edit and delete.
If we want to add a new smiley (the one in the illustration below here) this is what we do:

Start by choosing the size. In this case we set the size of the graphic representation to 19 x 20
pixels. Save the image in GIF-format.
Now, upload the image to the folder smileys under images. You will have to do this via your
FTP-client. Enter a name for it in Smiley Text. Next, find the image that you just have
uploaded via the drop down menu. It should look like this:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Now, you save your new smiley. Next time when you choose the comment function, this is how
it will look:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Miscellaneous Settings
The next section in the setup area looks like this:

Here you find some settings which do not really fit in any of the other sections.

PHP-Fusion version 7 comes complete with TinyMCE by Moxiecode already integrated in the
system. But it is up to you to decide, whether you want to use this editor or not. If you want to
use it, simply choose yes in the first line. If you dont like it you can always return to this page
and change your choice. We will take a closer look at TinyMCE later in this manual.





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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

If you use the standard editor to edit a news item, this is how it looks:



If you enable TinyMCE the same page looks like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



In earlier versions of PHP-Fusion a new function was introduced, that made it possible for you
to use SMTP mail in all mail functions across your site. If you wish to use this function fill out
the fields with server name, username and password here. SMTP stands for Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol and it is the de facto standard for email transmissions across the Internet.
SMTP is a relatively simple, text-based protocol, where one or more recipients of a message
are specified (and in most cases verified to exist) and then the message text is transferred.

PHP-Fusion has a built in function to filter out unwanted words everywhere on your site
(shout box, forum and so on). So, if theres a word that you dont want to appear (for one
reason or another) you can write it in the top box (one word per line) and then write the
replacement word in the second box named Bad word replacement.

On the next line can give guests (non-members) the ability to write short messages in the
shout box, and set the number of shouts to be shown on the front page.

After that you can set flood interval for your site. In the illustration here, the flood interval is
set to 15 (seconds) and this means, that members or guests writing more than one message
within the same 15 seconds will be stopped.

Finally there are a couple of functions you can use when you put your site in maintenance
mode. If maintenance mode is activated (usually when you perform a major upgrade of your
site) the message in the message box will be shown instead of the front page of your site and
only administrators will be able to log in on the site.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

In some themes you might have some problems with the background colour showing through
when using TinyMCE. In this case, for example its coloured not white. But, it is relatively
simple to change this - although it requires a small alteration in the code.
The file to be altered is called admin_header_mce.php and is contained in the folder
themes\templates. Open this script in a text editor (or in a dedicated PHP editor like the
example here), and take a look at lines 61 to 72:

If you remove line 69 this is what the code will look like:

Save the file and now your editor looks like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

A few remarks concerning TinyMCE
First it must be pointed out that the standard package (the package that you download) does
not contain other language files for TinyMCE except English. If you use the standard package
for installation, you will get some errors using TinyMCE if you change your site language.
These errors can be removed if after downloading but, before you install PHP-Fusion.
Download the language pack either from TinyMCE's own web site or from the PHP-Fusion
download page.
Secondly, you must be aware that if you want to use TinyMCE's image functions first
(immediately after installation) you will have to update the "register file" which contains your
image information. You'll find a link to this script in the bottom of the administration under
images if you have enabled TinyMCE. You will only have to update this file once. After the
initial manual update it will be updated automatically every time, you upload a new image.
Thirdly, you must be aware that the font changes made with TinyMCE can to some extent
distort the general layout or be ignored altogether. The choice of font and font colour is located
in the PHP-Fusion stylesheet - the stylesheet, which belongs to the chosen theme. This may
create some unwanted effects on the layout of your page (headlines being too broad, for
example, which changes the width of your page).
The functionality of the TinyMCE editor is explored in more detail later in this handbook.
PHP-Fusion mails and other stuff
When sending mail from your side (For example, sending confirmation email in connection with
new members signup or mail notification when new posts are saved in the forum.), you can
either choose to use a standard PHP mail function, or you can specify the name and user
information in relation to a dedicated SMTP host. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol. This is done by filling in the form below.


In PHP-Fusion you can also take advantage of the facility to filter unwanted words from
anywhere on the site (shoutbox, forum etc.). So, if there are words or phrases that you do not
want to see on your site (for whatever reason), enable the Bad words filter and then enter that
word in the top box - one word per line.
Then, in the Bad word replacement box enter your replacement word for the one censored.


PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


In the lower part of the setup page, there is a comprehensive range of functions.
Should your guests (that is visitors who are not members) be allowed to use the reply
function? We do not recommend it because it can generate a lot of SPAM.
Should users be allowed to change the theme on the page? It is up to you. But if you make
changes to a default theme to make room for special features, you should probably turn this
option off.
How many news items do you want displayed per page? The reason why the figure preferably
should be odd is that the design looks best this way if you switch to two columns of news. If
you choose only one column, then its not that important.
How many shouts do you want to show in the Shoutbox on the front page? Again you must
think of your site design. Sometimes it's fine with many shouts (if your page is quite long). But
if you want to maintain a more compact design, you should bring the figure down.
The time limit set in the next line is there to prevent so-called flooding. The figure indicates
how much time your site requires between new posts. The figure indicates a limit in minutes.
The restriction is there to prevent malicious scripts trying to close your site by pumping
messages and replies into it. If you do not experience problems of this nature just keep the
default value here.
Finally this setup page has a feature that allows you to put your site into maintenance mode.
This means that your site will be closed to all ordinary users, while administrators still can
enter it. Ordinary users will be greeted with a screen that displays the message you have
typed into the textbox at the bottom. An administrators warning will display in all pages of
your site while it is in maintenance to help prevent a site being left locked out longer than is
necessary.

Heres an example of what a visitor to your site will see while its in maintenance.:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

The navigation panel / Site Links
The main navigation panel is controlled from the Admin panel. If you open this panel you
should look for the option Site Links and when you click this link, the following is shown on
your screen:


As you can see this list is ordered just like the list in the navigation panel on the front page.
Beside the link name is that links visibility (Public or Member here) and the order in which its
displayed.

In the top of this menu you can add new links or edit the existing ones. And here you can use
a function which was introduced in version 5.00 you can decide whether this link should be
visible in the navigation panel, the sub-header or both.
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Besides making new links you can use this function to make rulers and headings in the list.

If you want to divide the navigation panel into three sections with their own headings, this is
what you do:


When you save this site link (and the two other links a little further down) your navigation
panel will look like this:

If you only want to divide the sections with rulers, you make a link that looks like this:

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



You can move site links up and down in the navigation box by clicking the green arrows. One
click on the green arrow pointing upwards moves a site link one step upwards one click on
the green arrow pointing downwards moves the link one step downwards.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Changes in theme.php
Unlike earlier versions, in PHP-Fusion v7 its not necessary to change a lot in the theme.php.
Most of the changes can be implemented from within the Admin Panel. But, still we may want
to change a few things here.

We are using a theme here where the site banner and the width of the theme does not work
well together, so it will necessary for us to change the width of the page in theme.php.

To set the width of the site correctly, you need to change the expression
$theme_width=100% to $theme_width = 800; - in this example its because our
banner is 800 pixels wide.

The theme function

Basically a theme consists of a number of files. Some of them you can see on the image
below:



In the folder forum, there is a series of graphic files that are used in the forums - and in the
images folder there is a similar amount of graphics files that are used elsewhere on your site.
Index.php file (which has no content) is only in the directory to prevent it from being seen by a
simple lookup on the address in a browser. But the files theme.php and style.css (css stands
for Cascading Style Sheet and are generally referred to as stylesheets) are fundamental. In
these two files a number of features are defined (both functionally and graphically) that
determines what your site will look like.

Fundamentally, this is what the theme structure looks like:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



The structure works like this:

1. A script is loaded for example news.php
2. This script calls the selected theme-file value is found in the database
3. Theme.php loads the graphic files needed
4. Theme.php also loads the templates needed got the task at hand
5. Theme.php loads the stylesheet styles.css necessary to define the classes used by the
main script. Fonts, font sizes, colours and so on.
6. News.php opens the database to find all news items of your page
7. Data fetched from the database is formatted and shown on the screen.

In theme.php for example you find a function called render_page, and this feature is used
everywhere when pages are changed. And in the stylesheet for example, youll find a function
(known as a class) that defines how the default text on your page should look like - size, font
and colour.

When you open the file theme.php from the theme chosen for your site (in a php-editor like
here or in for example Notepad) it looks like this:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Here you can see that a theme consist not only of the scripts in the theme directory. In line
13 there is a call to the script theme_functions_include.php, and in this script, you will find
a range of complementary functions, used in all the scripts - not only in the theme.php.
If you open this script, the upper part looks like this
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


And as you can see a number of global functions is defined here that are used all over your
site. In line 20 for example the function called check_panel_status is defined. This function
is used to check whether a panel (where the ability to open and close the panel is selected) is
open or closed. And below this function you will find a wide range of other similar functions.

In this script and in theme.php the definitions or classes, as defined in style.css are used. And
a large number of routines which are used by the main scripts on your site are defined here as
well.

Please be aware that changes in one of these scripts can have undesirable consequences on
your site. It is therefore something you should do with caution - and never before you have
made a backup of the original scripts.

But small changes you can try to make even if you are not a code expert.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

For example in the function render_page in theme.php you sometimes find a value that is
reused across the site where page width is defined (in other themes you can use the function
THEME_WIDTH like here):


The expression 100% here you can change to an absolute figure (in pixels) and this will
change the width of your page to that figure. It could look like this

But if you take a look at your page, you will see that the changes havent yet penetrated
completely.
Sometimes you will have to change the value in more places than one. And if you want the
page centered in the browser, you will have to make a few more changes (notice that this only
works when the theme is controlled with div-commands):

First of all you will have to add a piece of code to the stylesheet (style.css) like this:



The expression margin-left: -535px corresponds to the absolute width of you page. The 535
pixels equates to page_width / 2.

After you have added this section to style.css you will have to change a line in theme.php. The
expression:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

<div id='main' style='width: ".THEME_WIDTH.";'>

Have to be replaced with this:

<div style='width: $ THEME_WIDTH;' id='wrapper'>

As you can see in the following illustration:



This is the result in Firefox, Opera and Chrome but not in MS Internet Explorer v. 8:

If you want your design to work in IE as well, you will have to do something more (as usual)
a quick and dirty solution could be this:

In the top of theme.php you add a sequence of code that will establish if the user is using IE:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Line 7 and 8 is there to adjust the page (invisible in the browser because foreground and
background are in the same colour).

In line 11 we find out if the user is using IE. If so we set the variable $ie = align=center. If
not the variable is set to NULL.

In line 49 we use the variable $ie like this:



We will have to this once more because the variable $ie has lost its value. But we do it a little
bit differently this time in line 93. It looks like this:



Once again we ask if the user is using IE if so, we echo the tag <center> - if not, we do
nothing.

As shown, this was a relatively simple change. And yet it was necessary to modify several
parts of code to get it to work properly. This demonstrates that changes in a theme are
something you as an ordinary user should do with caution and care.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

As the theme function in PHP-Fusion version 7 is more complex than previous versions, you
should normally not have to correct much. We recommend you only use themes that have
been tried and tested by the community.

Remember, you cannot use themes made for version 6 or earlier on a version 7 site. If you do,
you will find that your site may not display correctly in all browsers or even stop working
altogether.

On the PHP-Fusion theme site you find a reference to an English-language guide, which
describes more in detail how you construct a theme. You can find this guide on this URL:

http://www.php-fusion.dk/downloads/php-fusion-7-theming.pdf

Now, the most basic setup is in place and after this you can start to put news, articles and
links on your site. More details about the setup (date formats, forum etc.), well return to later
in the handbook. But, first we take a look at the group and role definitions, and what they
mean.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

User Groups, Administrators and Moderators

PHP-Fusion works with two basic role-definitions for users administrators and members /
users. Besides that you can only be a guest on a PHP-Fusion site.

Administrators can have very different access-profiles. So actually you can operate with as
many profiles as you need.

Finally from PHP-Fusion v6.00.1x and forward you have been able to use user groups and
moderators as well.

This chapter is all about that.

Administrators

While the members profile is relatively fixed, you can setup the rights of the administrators in
a separate area. The Super Administrator, which has been set up during installation naturally
has the right to edit all values and also has access to all information. But for new
administrators you assign can rights from the Admin Panel User Admin which looks like
this:



We have created a new user besides webmaster (the super admin). User name is janmol.
And now we write this username in the search field at the top and click Search. Now your
screen will look like this:



I can choose to give this user all privileges or I could make the user a super administrator (in
line with the webmaster) or I could simply click Add Administrator and then later assign the
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

user the necessary rights. Here we choose to make this user an administrator and to assign
rights at a later time which gives the following result


You must remember to enter your administrator password before you click Add
Administrator. Otherwise the operation will not work.
Now I choose to click on the edit link next to the user to add specific rights. When you do that
this is what appears on your screen:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


On this page I can tick all the functions that the new administrator should have access to. I
can also select all - deselect all - or I can reduce the rights of the specific.
When I have chosen what I want I click Save Admin Rights.
Think carefully before you assign rights to an individual, as certain sections allow direct access
to your database and could be misused to cause harm to your site.
Each area or each administrative function has its own unique code. If you want to see which
codes correspond to which area, you can open the table <your prefix>_admin in your
database where the values are defined. It could look like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



When the new administrator opens your site, he or she gets access to the areas that you have
set them. See example in the illustration below:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Moderators

Moderators are naturally only relevant in connection with the discussion forums. And here
moderators have a number of rights that ordinary users or members dont have.

Access rights in the forum can be added to either one of the three types of members
(administrators, members and guests). But only an administrator or a user group (see about
groups later) can act as a moderator.

These options are illustrated in the image below:



At the top you see the forum we are working with here and beneath that you have the option
to assign rights to each role or all the users that are members of a user group. At the bottom
you can decide who should have moderator rights (see more below). If we choose the group
Test Group as the moderator here, this is what the forum will look like when you open it:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




A moderator can Renew a thread that is he can force an update of the list.

A moderator can Delete a thread that is he can remove a thread completely.

A moderator can Lock a thread that is, he can put a stop to new posts in this thread.

A moderator can make a thread Sticky which means that this thread stays on top of the list.

Finally, a moderator can also Move a thread from one forum to another.

He or she can also edit and delete all individual posts.



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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



User Groups

The third and last part of rights and access control is managed through User Groups.

User groups were introduced with version 5.01. User groups which can be created easily
according to your needs can be used to control access to forum threads, news, custom pages,
site links, links categories and article categories.

You create a new user group by choosing User Admin and User Groups from the Admin
Panel:


Here you make a new user group by giving it a name and entering a short description of it:


When you click Save Group this is what your screen looks like:


If you choose Edit in the upper part of your screen, this is what you see:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You can search for users (either by using user names or user ids) and add them to the group.
We search for the user we made earlier and this is how it will appear:

Now you can then select the users you wish to make members of the user group. Next time we
edit this group, the screen looks like this:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As seen here the user janmol has been added in the lower part of the screen and can be
removed by selecting him and clicking Remove selected users.

In the same way as in the forums you can choose to restrict access to site links and a number
of other features. In relation to the site links the panel looks like this:


As you can see the two user groups that we have made now appear on the drop-down list. If
you choose here or elsewhere to restrict access to the user group only members of this group
have access to this function. [This does not apply to Super Administrators who have access to
everything.]
This applies for the forums - for news items - and for articles or user-created pages. If we take
the news as an example and write a new item, the lower part of the screen looks like this:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



You can restrict access to this news item to a single group of users or a specific user group.
Forum ranks

In PHP-Fusion version 7 you can create a number of forum rank categories and set criteria for
when a user should have a specific rank. This function is used in the forum only. Click on User
Admin and Forum ranks in your administration panel, youll see this next screen (once you
have remembered to enable ranks under forum settings):


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



In the upper part of the screen, you can create new ranking categories and assign a specific
image to these classes. In the lower part of the screen you can see what rank classes are
already established -and you can see how a class is shown in the forum.

If we just take a look at the forum (not much is written in it yet but anyway) it looks like this:



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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


The member webmaster wrote this post. And he is marked as Site Admin that is as the
sites super administrator. He has not yet written much and dont get any extra stars super
administrators is not a part of this ranking system. But if we take a look at a third member
with 506 posts, this is what he looks like:



In the lower post you can see how it works.
You can use our standard values here or you can make your own.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

How to use TinyMCE

As previously mentioned, you can either use TinyMCE as editor in relation to news, articles and
other texts, or you can use the integrated editor. Tutorials have been made of how you can
use other WYSIWYG editors - for example the FCK editor - but this is not covered here. We
concentrate on TinyMCE, which comes pre-packed with PHP-Fusion.

To switch between the two editors is quite simple. This is done by a single value in main
settings as you can see in this screenshot:


If you choose Yes here the editor is turned on - choose No and its turned off again. You can
change the mode at any time without any consequences for your texts.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using TinyMCE?

The advantages are clear:

You see your text in the editor exactly as it will look when you've saved it and published
it on your site.
The editor offers a wide range of functions (tables, among other things) that you can
use to format your text directly on the screen whereas the built-editor requires that
youre familiar with HTML and able to code for example tables.
When you choose an illustration you can see the image instantly and scale it up or
down in size, whereas the build in editor requires some knowledge to the HTML codes
for image display.
You have the ability - if you know your way around HTML - to edit the text in HTML
mode (assuming your browser allows pop-ups). It can help you to correct anomalies in
the layout.
When you want to choose an illustration for your text, all the images in your image
folders are at your disposal from a drop down list.

But there are also disadvantages:

Font adaptation that might look fine in TinyMCE shows up on your site in contrast to
your general layout.
If you use TinyMCE the text fields fills more on your screen which will require more
scrolling.

All in all, its a matter of personal choice whether you prefer one or the other editor.

How do we use TinyMCE?

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

If we take the news as an example, this is how the screen looks when you open the news
function:



The news feature is described elsewhere in this manual. We are just concentrating on the
editor functions for now.

All the functions that are available to the user are represented by buttons.

The top line shows the following features:

Text formatting
(bold, italic, underline,
strikethrough)
Adjustment (align left, align center, align
right, align full)
Choose
style
Predefined
format
Font
size

In the next line we have these functions:

List functions
(unordered list,
ordered list)
Outdent
text, indent
text
Undo or redo
last operation
Make or delete
web link or
bookmark
Image, cleaning
code and edit
HTML source
Insert
date or
time
Foreground and
background
colour

And in the button line we have the following functions:

A number of table
functions (new table,
adjustment, insert and so
on)
Insert a horizontal ruler,
remove formatting and enable
or disable invisible elements
Insert subscript
or superscript
Insert custom
characters and
symbols
Edit values for
the horizontal
ruler

To write text into the editor window is very simple as easy as typing text in a normal word
processor. So, no need to cover that here. Indeed, the only thing we will cover is the use of
images in the text.

As noted earlier, we must first update the file that contains information about the images so
that the list may be complete in order for the image function to work correctly.

We do that in the image section of the site administration by clicking the link in the bottom of
the page. You need only do this once after the installation is complete and TinyMCE is
activated. From then on your list will be updated automatically.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.





When you open the image feature in TinyMCE by clicking the button, this is what you will see
on your screen:



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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




Here is the list that contains information showing the folder name (in this example; Images)
and the image name (banner_1.png).

If you choose one of the images on the list, that image will appear in the Preview field and you
get will more information about the image.

It could look like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


This shows you the image name, its location, the alternative text and the image's title (similar
to HTML title tag). The description and title can be edited if needed.
If you select tab number two, you get additional options:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Here you can select the alignment of the image. The preview box on the right shows what
impact a selected adjustment has. You can set the images dimensions, move it left or right or
apply a style to it as well as give it a frame or border.

The third tab gives access to a range of more advanced features:


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



You can choose what happens when your mouse is moved over and away from the image. You
can also make a number of more advanced configuration choices as well.

Not many users work in this area. But the features are there - and if you need them you can
find them here.

You can also choose to adjust (for example) the image size after it is inserted into the text.
Highlight the image and drag it into place like this:


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Or select the image and press the image icon - then the image selection function opens again.
You should also just note the small shaded triangle in the lower right corner. If you need to
increase the size of the window, you can grab it and scale the window. It might look like this:





There are many options in TinyMCE. But whether you choose to use it or not is entirely up to
you. If you find it doesnt suit you, you can always switch back to the built-in editor.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

In all the illustrations from now on, we will be using the integrated editor.

Articles

Articles are all kinds of larger texts that you want to display on your site. It could be recipes,
reviews, guides, tutorials or anything you want.

Before you can add articles you have to make one or more article categories, which you use to
group your articles.

You start from the admin panel where you choose Article Categories, which will give you this
screen:


Add a category by naming it, and entering a description of the category (a short intro) and
finally by clicking Save Category. If we add two categories (Guidelines and Explanations),
it will look like this:


You can choose who can view the articles in each category using the Category Access menu.

Category Sorting allows you to sort the articles by article id, article subject or article date.
Also, you can decide whether the articles should be sorted in ascending or descending order.
For example, if you choose to sort your articles by article subject in descending order it means
that your articles will be shown in alphabetical order from A to Z.


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You can always return to your categories and change the sort order if needed as well as editing
existing categories. You can also add new categories or delete existing categories. [see below]

PHP-Fusion will not allow deletion of categories if there are articles related to them. If you
want to delete a category, you must first delete or move all the items which are attached to it.

We now move on to the Articles facility and show you how to set up an article.

It can be accessed via the Admin Panel - Content Admin and select Articles. See screen
below. (We have chosen to use the built-editor):



Writing the article is straightforward. Just remember that the snippet is only shown in the
Articles list, not when viewing the complete article. It is therefore a good idea to repeat the
snippet at the top of the article.

The button functions are detailed here:


Insert
a page
break
Bold Italic Under-
line
Insert
web link
Insert
image
Ad-just
text
Small Smaller Alter-
native style

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

The function of the buttons is to insert (HTML) code in the text which in some cases have to be
completed manually. Lets say we want to add some graphics to the article text. When you
click img button, this is what happens:



This is the code: <img src=images/ style=margin:5px align=left>

And to finish it so the image can be displayed, you have to add a little bit to the code:
<img src=images/banner.gif style=margin:5px align=left>
i.e. the name of the image. Of course you also have to be sure that the image banner.gif
exists in the images folder. Otherwise it will not work.
You can also select an image from the Select Image - dropdown menu, this will
automatically enter the code required to display your image. This menu only displays the
images in your images/news folder.

Besides typing in the name of the image in the code, you can also choose to alter some of the
three (3) default parameters. You can increase the margin width (type 8px instead of 5px) or
you can choose to let the image align right instead of left in the presentation (by typing
align=right).

The other buttons work more or less in the same way. Try them out. And if you wish before
saving the article to view what the article will look like in user mode you can use the
Preview Article button at the bottom. Then your article will display at the top of the screen.

We have to mention two more things in connection with articles.

At the bottom of the screen you will find a check box Automatic Line-breaks.

If you check this box then you can add new lines in your text every time you wish to add a
new paragraph. Leave it unchecked and you will have to insert line-break HTML code manually
the html code <br /> is the one you have to use.

Additionally, if you have a very long text, it might be an advantage to break the text up into
several pages.

You do this by placing the cursor where you want the page break to be and then click on the
new page button. This button also inserts a code. The code looks like this:

<--PAGEBREAK-->

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

When PHP-Fusion parses through the code, it breaks the text to a new page. At the bottom of
the page a navigation box will be created, which will make it possible for the users to navigate
between the pages and to see how many pages the article consists of.

We save the article and then we can have a look at how it looks to the users.

You should just be aware that in PHP-Fusion Version 7 you now can save an article or a news
item in draft form. If you use this option, everything is saved in the database, but nothing will
appear to users. If you are working on a larger text, it might be a good idea to do this in
several steps. And it's nice to be able to save the text as a draft.

Now lets save the article and take a look at, how itll look to your visitor.


We allowed users both to comment on the article and to rate it. And this means that the
bottom section of the article looks like this:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



If you only open Articles, this is what it looks like:


and like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


If you click the subject here, the article is opened, so that you can read the article name and
the text entered earlier in the snippet box. Click on the article name to view the full article.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

News and News Categories

A site based on PHP-Fusion has a built in news feature. The news is written from the admin
panel and always displayed on the website. You can place the different news items into
categories (and create new ones, if you need it). News Categories are groups of news items
with common features. And before we write the first news item we make a few categories that
we can use.

News categories

When you open News Categories for the first time, this is what it looks like:



From this screen you can add new categories, edit existing ones or delete those you dont
need.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Each time you add a new category, you have to add a category icon as well a small gif image
size 89 x 70 pixels (recommended) and when you use the category this image will be shown as
a part of the news display.

Below weve deleted the bottom six categories and are going to make a new one called
Handbook. We create an image in GIF-format and upload it using the link in the bottom of the
screen. And choose it in this screen:



Enter the category name, in this Handbook. When you click Save Category the new category
will be made and this is what your screen will look like:



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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Writing News

Selecting news in the admin panel (Content Admin + news), this is what youll see:



In this section, were using the standard editor. If you have enabled TinyMCE, it will display
here instead. As you can see, the structure of the screen is similar to the one we saw in the
articles section, but with a few additions.

At the top you can choose between existing news items (editing it or deleting it) and beneath
that you see the built-in editor with boxes for Subject, news text (News) and extended text
(Extended News) if you have chosen to use TinyMCE as your editor, the editor screen for
News will look like the TinyMCE screen you have seen under Articles.

If you use extended news a link will show as Read More at the bottom of the news item,
and by clicking this link, users can view the extended text.

At the bottom of the screen some smaller boxes have been added, which gives the ability to
control news display by date. This means that news can be made public at a certain date and
be removed at a certain date. Use this function if you want to be a little ahead and if you
want to be sure that outdated news is removed automatically.

If you want the news to be displayed from February 15 2010 10.15 am to October 25 2010
10.15 am, the settings must look like this:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You may also notice the box Select Image. This dropdown will display a list of images you
have previously uploaded to the folder images/news (see the image administration later),
selecting one will place it into your news text.

The Select Color dropdown will add the selected colour to any highlighted text.

Below that, youll see the Visibility dropdown menu that, as explained earlier, allows you to
control access rights for each news item.

A new feature in this version is that you now can specify that a certain news item should
remain [Sticky] permanently at the top of the news list. If you wish to un-sticky it a future
date, just edit the item and untick the box. It will then take its place chronologically among the
other news items.

After saving the first news item, we can take a look on how it looks on the front page.
See below:


At the top we have the title - and the news text. Underneath the news item, theres a section
which shows information on who has published it, when it was published and ifwhether theres
more text than shown, (Read more). No comments have been made. Finally, you have a print
link, which you can click to view the page in a printer friendly version.

Similar links are automatically added to all news items and articles.

Click the Read more link and this is what youll see:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




This will show the full text of the item [extended news text] and at the bottom of the page
members can add comments or select a rating (if rating and comments are enabled in the
news settings).

Notice that you also can insert links in your comment, use bold and italics and insert images
(you have to provide the full path to the image it will not get uploaded) and so forth.

PHP-Fusion version 7 operates with several image folders: news, articles, photo albums and
what you might call the main image folder.

From the news editor you have access to this folder, as you can see below:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




You choose the image from the drop down menu (right) and you can pick text colour from the
drop down menu (left).

News Items in PHP-Fusion are not automatically deleted, even if you have provided an end
date. They need to be manually deleted if desired. Select the required item from the dropdown
under Current News and then click the delete button on the right. A confirmation box will pop
up giving you the chance to change your mind. Click OK and itll be deleted.

As you publish more and more news, the oldest news items will be moved to new pages you
find them by scrolling down to the bottom of the front page and then clicking on the navigation
links there.

A new function was added in PHP-Fusion version 6, an edit link besides the print icon for
SuperAdmins and Admins with news rights to edit the news item directly from the news
display.

When you display a news item on your screen, a small icon (small pencil image) or a link will
appear as indicated by the arrow here:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


When you click this icon (the pencil) or link you will be taken directly to the editor, so that you
can edit your text on the spot. So, theres no need to have to navigate to the item through the
Admin link, etc.

Downloads

PHP-Fusion sites can also contain downloads, files that your visitors can download to their own
computers.

Download categories

To add downloads to your site; you start by creating download categories. Choose Download
Categories (admin panel).
See below:



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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Add a new category by typing in the name in the top box and a description in box number 2,
then click Save Category. Note: the description is not mandatory.

As you can see in the above image, you can also edit the category (change the name or
description) and delete the category.

You cannot delete a category if there are downloads associated with it. If you wish to delete
the category anyway, first delete or move all downloads attached to it. When you have done
so, you may be able to delete the category.

Just like in articles and web links, you can choose which field to sort your downloads by and in
which order to sort them.

We make a couple of categories and now the screen looks like this:


Downloads

After you have made your download categories you can create your downloads.

Its recommended that you have a special folder on the server for downloads we might call it
download-files. If you have such a folder you can set up new downloads by uploading files to
the folder (via FTP) and adding each file to the downloads-section in the screen below (admin
panel downloads):

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




A new download is added by typing in the information in all the fields. Heres an example:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




After finishing typing you then click Save Download, and now the new download appears on
the list at the bottom of the screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You can see the newly added category. You can also see that there is one (1) download in this
category.

Users will see your downloads this way:



It's a good idea to use the description field to - briefly - explain how the user handles the
download - for example by writing a little about what to do to get it installed and to work.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

There are MOD's [modifications] for PHP-Fusion, which makes it possible to link small pictures
to individual downloads, but this is not covered in this handbook.

Images

There are two elements here. First the general image handling, which will import (upload)
graphic files for use in articles, news and so on. Secondly the use of the integrated photo
album. The two elements are treated separately below.

Importing and using images

PHP-Fusion assumes that the image files (jpg, gif or png) to be used to illustrate articles and
news must physically be located in the folder images or in one of the other standard image
folders.

You can upload images to these folders either directly via an FTP client or through built in
image import, which can be accessed from the Admin Panel.

If you click Images from the Admin Panel, this is what you get on your screen:


In the lower part of the screen youll see a list of image files that are currently in the images
folder (main folder). You can either View or Delete them individually.

If you wish to view the content of the Article Images folder, click the Article Images link at
the top, where youll see this on your screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


If you click View the image will display as shown below:



In this panel you can choose to either delete the current image or to go back to image
management.

In the upper part of the screen, there is a dialogue box that allows you to import new image
files to the folder that you are currently in. If you click Browse, you can navigate to the
required image file in the windows File upload box. Once selected, clicking Upload Image -
will import it to the PHP-Fusion image folder.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Once successfully uploaded, it will display like this:



When the image is imported, it appears on the list along with the other images and can then
be used as an illustration elsewhere on your site.

If you wish to use another folder than the standard folders to save graphic files in, you can do
that, but the import facility is always pointing at the folder images (unless you manually edit
the source code).
Likewise the image buttons in the editor will always by default use the News Images folder
when you are editing a news item and the Article Images folder when you are working with
articles. This too can be changed - but it requires an intervention in the code.

Photo album

PHP-Fusion version 7 comes as standard with a photo album, made to show collections of
images or photographs in a structured way. This section focuses on how to use the photo
album.

You start the creation of a new album from the Admin Panel page by clicking Photo Albums,
(content admin + photo albums). When you do this, this is what appears on your screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As you can see, no albums have yet been created. By filling in the fields Title, Description,
etc. the album will be created.

Were going to create an album, which we call Trip to Harzen.

The thumb here is the "album header" with which the new album will display in the albums list.
The image you designate as the thumb will automatically be reduced to the size specified
during the setup page for photo album (see earlier).

The order textbox allows you to set the order by which the Album thumbs are displayed. You
can leave it blank and the order will automatically be set by date of album creation.
For example, if you have five existing albums and want to create a new one but you want it to
display third in the sequence. In that case enter 3 in the textbox and click Save Album. Then,
at the bottom, click the Refresh Album and Photo Ordering link. This will reset the album
sorting sequence with your new album now displaying in 3
rd
position.

When all the information has been entered, click Save Album, and the new album will appear
in the list of Current Albums as shown in the next illustration:
















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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



To upload photos to the album click the icon (the image). This will open the Add Photo panel.
See below:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Now you start adding images one at a time to your newly created album by entering a title, a
description and using the browse button upload the image files.

Remember that the built-in album will only accept JPG, GIF or PNG files. If an image is larger
than the maximum values specified during setup, the image will not be uploaded. Change the
values before you start uploading pictures, if necessary.

If you use the watermark function you should be aware, the images only upload in GIF-format.

Every time you put a picture in, we must decide whether it should be possible to comment on
and rate this picture. Enable [tick] or disable [untick] these functions using the check boxes
below.

Having put two images into this album, the screen will look like this:


The two images are uploaded now, and the first album created. If you wish to make several
albums, then you just repeat the process. You can of course, go back and either add more
images into an existing album or delete images from it.


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

When a visitor to your site clicks the Photo Gallery link in the navigation panel, this is what
theyll see. As you can see there is only one gallery listed, If you add more, their thumbs and
details will display beside the existing one.


Here you can see the galleries that we have made on this site. Click on the thumb to get this
on your screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Here the gallery is presented with the thumb at the top and with a series of miniature versions
of the images that have been put into the album. As you can see its a good idea to work a
little on the titles of your photos. If the title is too long, it might distort the design on your site.

If you click one of the images, it will look like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You can see the image itself and some information about it (size, the date it have been added,
how many times the image has been shown etc) and at the bottom of the screen you and your
members can add comments and ratings to the picture. You can also navigate through the
album by pressing the forward and back arrows above.


If you wish to see the full size image, just click on it.


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Here is the selected image showing in a popup window. The maximum size of this window is
determined by the general setup.

You should note that the texts are incorporated into the image before it is stored on the
server. If you change the text later, the changes will not be reflected in the superimposed
texts. To change this, you will have to delete the original watermark files first.

The standard solution can only upload one image at a time. But there are add ons (Infusions),
which makes it possible to upload up to 10 images or more at a time. Check out the PHP-
Fusion Mods site.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Web links

In principal you work with the PHP-Fusion web links the same way you work with articles or
downloads. This means that before you can add web links, you will have to create some web
links categories to structure the web links.

To set up a new web links category from the admin panel. Clicking Web Link Categories will
bring this up on your screen:


Give your category a name (a title) and a description and when that is done click Save
Category. Below is how itll look with two categories defined:


You can return to this page at any point to add new categories ors well as to delete or edit
some of the existing categories. Just remember that the system wont accept deletion of
categories if they have attached links. Before deletion you either have to move the links to
another category or delete them.

Now we can attach links to our categories. Choosing Web Links at admin panel will bring this
up on you screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


At the top you can add new links. At the bottom you can see a list structured by the categories
we have set up as well as the links currently attached to them. If you add a new link, it will
look like this:


You have the option to test the link (clicking the link title), to edit the link (click Edit) or to
delete the link (click Delete).

It is also here you can move your links from one category to another. If you click Edit, you can
pick a new category for this web link change the title or edit the URL as well. You save your
changes by clicking Save Web Link.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


This is how the links are presented to the users:



When you click PHP-Fusion Support sites this is what you see:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Panels and panel management

The basic layout of a PHP-Fusion based web site is based on what we call panels. There are
three main panels (left, centre and right). And each panel is made up of a number of separate
subpanels a little like LEGO building blocks. A full panel might look like this:



This panel consists of two subpanels the User Info Panel at the top and the Shoutbox at
bottom.


The administrator of a site (a web page) can control these panels through the panel
management, which is reached from the administration panel. This is where you determine
the location of the subpanels and add new subpanels to be positioned in either the two side
panels on the site (respectively left and right side) or in the middle panel.
If you click panels from the administration page this is what you get on your screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You can see which panels are active the list below Panel Name (the active ones are marked
Disable the inactive ones are marked Enable) you can see in which side of the screen
they are placed as well as in what order they are shown in the left and right panels and finally
you can see what type they are and who has access to them.
Furthermore you can administer the panels from this page.
The first row of arrows (Side) allows you to move a panel from the left to right side or vice
versa. The direction the arrow is facing is the side the panel will be moved to.
The next row of arrows (Order) allows you to move a panel up or down in the main panel in
which it is located.
Finally, you can edit, enable, disable or completely delete a panel. You can also set up new
panels.
First, we are going to have a look at what a panel consists of. Choosing the panel Forum
Threads by clicking Edit displays this on you screen:

Here you can see that the panel is a standard panel, calling the file
forum_threads_panel.php located in the folder infusions and installed by default in PHP-
Fusion. You can see that this panel can be viewed by everybody Panel Access : Public. But if
you click the arrow beside Panel Access, you can also see that it is very easy to change the
access rights to the panel:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



If you want to change something in this panel, you need to change the item's source file. You
can see it, you can delete the item (which is not the same as deleting the source file) or you
can turn it on and off. But you cannot edit the source file from within PHP-Fusion.

The same is true for all the other panels including user-created panels based on external
source files. You can see the principle in the illustrations.

Create a new subpanel by giving it a name (even if you use an existing file) and then either
select an existing source file from the drop down list or by putting the content code into the
template. If you choose to name the item and you dont choose an existing file from the list (a
list of files in the infusion folder) you can create items like this:


This panel adds a modification (known as a MOD) to your PHP-Fusion page. In this case a
panel which is showing the most recent users ONLINE on your site. The code is longer than
what you can see in the illustration, but this is what it might look like on your site (after you
have enabled this panel):
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You just have to remember two things in this context:

First you must remember to enable the panel after you've made it. Otherwise it will not appear
on the page.

Secondly you must remember to enter your administrator password in the appropriate box
before saving. If you fail to do so you get an error message.

You can always edit these user-created items. You just click Edit next to the relevant panel.
When you do this the panel opens so that you can edit the code - add stuff and so on.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Forums

In PHP-Fusion, theres a built-in forum module. (These can also be known as Bulletin
Boards). Before you can make this forum available to your visitors, you will have to set up a
structure, so that topics and discussion threads can be organized in the proper manner.

The top layer consists of categories. Each category would normally hold one or more (or many)
forums of a similar subject or grouping depending on your site subject matter or your
individual needs. After setting up the categories you would then add your forums into each
one. Once your forums are set up, you and your members can then create threads in the
forum of choice.

Making forums

We start by clicking Forums in the administration panel. This is what youll see:



We make three categories here and for instructional purposes we make a forum as well.
When we have done that, this is what your screen should look like:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You can add as many forums to each category as you like and you can make as many
categories as you like. In this example this is how the discussion forum presents itself to your
users:


In previous versions of PHP-Fusion you had to decide which users and user groups should have
access to the forum when you made it. But because access rights in PHP-Fusion v7 are more
complex, the access levels are set after the forum is created.
If you click a forum from this screen, this is what youll see:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

As you can see, no threads have been started yet.
By default the access rights to each forum is set at Member. As you may want the public to be
able to read your forums, youll need to set the access rights to each forum. So, you need to
go back to forum Admin, see next image:

Click the edit link to the right of the forum name, not the category name.
This is what you get on your screen:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

You can now decide in detail which members will have rights to what in this forum. In other
words you allow all users, administrators and guests or any of your members to see the forum
- create messages, write replies, attach files, create polls and also vote in these polls. And it is
on the same panel that you have to decide who should actually have access to the moderator
functions.
An access profile might look like this:

Here guests (unregistered users) can read the forum threads but only registered users
(members) can create messages and write replies. These users may not attach files. This is
reserved for administrators. And it is also only administrators that may create polls, even
though ordinary members may vote in them.

Create the access profile for your forums to suit their subjects as well as your security needs.
And make a new profile for each topic.

Click the forum you want to participate in.

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



If you click New Thread (new topic) from the forum main page, this is what you get on your
screen:



Here you can write a subject and a message (with different effects) and add smileys.

When you are finished writing click Post Thread, and then the forum will look like this:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Each forum can have multiple moderators. And when a user or administrator is defined as a
moderator on a specific forum, they have some options that the ordinary user doesnt have. As
you can see here:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



These options allow you to:

Renew Thread sets date to present and updates list.
Delete Thread this cannot be undone!
Lock Thread - Thread is still visible, no new posts allowed.
Make Thread Sticky keep thread at the top of the list in the forum.
Move Thread move this thread to another forum.

In PHP-Fusion version 7 you can, if the administrator has allowed it, follow or Track a forum.
This means that you get an email whenever there are new messages in this forum. If this
feature is enabled a link will appear in the upper right corner with the text Track this thread:
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



This function as well as the ranking system is enabled or disabled from the admin panel
(settings):

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Number of forum threads to show: default set at 5, increase as needed.

Show IP Publicly: Choose whether to display members IP [Internet Protocol} addresses
publicly or not.

Attachments max size: Choose the maximum file size the members can attach to their
thread or post. If you set this too high, you could fill up your allotted webspace very quickly.

Allowed file types: If youre not sure, leave the default values as they are. This is a security
feature, so be cautious before adding extra file types.

Enable forum thread notification? See Tracking, explained previously.

Enable forum ranks? A simple yes or no choice.

Lock Edit: Prevent users from editing their posts. This does not override moderator functions.
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

User Polls

To add some more interactivity up your homepage, PHP-Fusion gives you the ability to set up
Polls for members - polls with one question and several answers. Polls can be archived when
they are no longer relevant, so that you and your members can check up on previous poll
results.

The Poll is shown on the Main (Start) page - after voting you can see what members have
voted in this specific poll so far.

You can create polls in the forums as well. (if enabled)

Polling on the frontpage works so that users can see the result immediately after voting. At the
same time a cookie is saved on the users PC so that they can only vote once and only if they
are a member of the site.

Polls on the front page

Click Polls in admin panel (indicated by the arrow):



Then you will see this on your screen:



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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Here you can create a new poll by typing in a Poll Title (the question that users have to
answer) and a number of options to choose from - option 1, 2, 3...etc.

Here is an example poll:


We clicked twice on Add Option and added two more poll options. Now there are 4 options on
the list. If you press Preview Poll, you will see how the poll looks at this stage:


You end the poll construction by pressing Save Poll.

The Poll has now been saved. We still need to enable it and make it visible on the Main page.
We will do this via Panels on the Admin Panel. It looks like this:

If you have removed the panel from the panel list you will have to get it back on the list first
by choosing to add a new panel and choosing member poll panel. By default this panel is
installed though so the only thing you will have to do is to enable it.

Choose enable from the panel administration.
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Now you will be able to see your polling panel on the front page.


If you want to change the Poll or make a new Poll later, you can open this poll or the poll
function from the admin panel.

If you choose to edit a Poll from the list, this is what you get on your screen:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You now have the possibility to Add Options, Delete Options, view the Poll or End the Poll
(Close this Poll). If you choose to close the Poll, the Poll stays on the Main page, but its now
closed and shows the result to both users who have entered a vote and those who have not.

If you want to remove your Poll Panel from Main page, this can be done from Panels on the
Admin Panel by disabling Members Poll. If you want to make a new Poll in the future,
remember to enable Poll Panel in Panels, or else it will not show on Main page as it is disabled
by you.

Currently there is no support for Multiple Polls at the same time. If you create a new Poll while
an existing Poll is still running, then the existing (older) Poll will automatically be closed.

Polls in the forum

If you have sufficient rights you can also create local polls in a forum. The administration of
rights in relation to the forums, have been explained earlier in this handbook.

If you have rights, you will be able to create a thread specific poll when a new thread is made -
as shown on the illustration below:
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Lets make a small example here. It might look like this:

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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Polling works exactly the same here as a polling on the front page. But you have to be aware,
that its not possible to correct the polling theme and the answers when you have made your
poll. And its not possible to see these local polls from the administration panel.

You should also be aware, that its only possible to make one poll for each thread.


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Administration in general

In this chapter we will look deeper into the administration of several of the built-in functions in
PHP-Fusion. Basically this administration is all about editing, deleting and controlling the
contents of your site.

Shoutbox

PHP-Fusion comes with a small messaging function, a Shoutbox, which by default is placed on
the Main page of your site. The shoutbox is located at the bottom of the illustration here:


In the Shoutbox, registered members (or guests if you allow it) can write small comments
(220 characters) ask fast questions or comment on each others remarks. To make it even
more attractive smileys can be used in these comments. You can see the available smileys if
you click the smiley icon.



Smileys: Small faces that replaces certain preconfigured typing, e.g. the VERY happy smiley
shown above, made with inserting/typing :) Other smileys are available. Click Help to see the
full list of available smileys.

The Administrators on the site have more options to administrate these shouts.

You can choose some basic administrative operations directly from the Shoutbox itself by
clicking Edit:

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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




If you do this, this is what you get on your screen:



You can manage the Shoutbox on a basic level from the admin panel (Miscellaneous
Settings). Here you can decide whether guests are allowed to post shouts or not and how
many shouts you want displayed on the front page:



You can do more in the admin panel (User Admin) itself:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




By clicking Delete Shouts, you delete shouts older than the number of days listed in the drop
down box (90 days in this illustration). But remember that theres no turning back here. The
moment you click Delete Shouts they are deleted.

You can also get some information about the shouts posted on your page. You can see the
members name, date of shout and their user IP.

One more word on the Shoutbox though. As you have seen you can allow guests to post in the
Shoutbox. We strongly advise against doing so because it will lead to clogging of your
Shoutbox with unwanted spam, etc. But, if you want to allow it, you can see on the illustration
on the previous page as to how its done.

User / member administration

Its much the same way with the member administration. If you choose User Admin +
Members from the admin panel this is what you get on your screen:



Here you see a list of registered members on your site. User (name) and User Type are
shown for all members. From here you can edit members profiles and also change the User
Type.

If you have a lot of members on your site, you can sort members by clicking letters in the list
underneath. Clicking the letter A will produce a list of members whose username begins with
the letter A.

For each member, the option to edit, ban or delete is available.

If you click Edit (Does not work with Super Administrator), you will see this on your screen:


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As you can see, it is possible to edit all the same fields that the user / member can edit in his
or her profile (Edit Profile).

In Members Administration you can also register new members. If you click Add New
Member at the top of screen, this is what you will see on your screen:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


In this screen you can add a member by giving the member a User Name, Password and
stating a valid Email Address. When this is done, you click Add Member. The new user can
then log in and update his profile via Edit Profile.

From Member Administration you can also choose to ban certain members. If you do this, the
banned members are not allowed to log on to your site. Instead they will get a message telling
them that they are (for the moment) excluded from entering the site. Of course it is not
possible to prevent the person from registering with a new nickname, but it takes a new
nickname and a new email address to register once again.

Furthermore, it is possible to completely shut out visitors from a specific IP address or disable
member registration for guests with certain email addresses. If you click Blacklist from the
Admin Panel, you will see following on your screen:


This feature can be used to exclude people more efficiently than just using Ban Member in
Members Administration. A banned member can always make up a new profile, but if you
blacklist certain IP-addresses or mail addresses (or domains) the exclusion will be more
efficient.

WARNING: Note that IF you blacklist for example an entire email domain, you might risk that
a lot of new members lose the ability to join your site. Also worth noting is, that excluding
people by excluding partial IP addresses, will risk excluding new members just because they
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

happen to share a scope of IPs that an Internet Provider has in their register. Providers often
use Dynamic IP addresses (so called IP scopes), which means that several people can use the
same IP address but at different times. Try only to use advanced exclusion (Blacklisting) if its
really important.

Using TinyMCE on Custom Pages

Many users of PHP-Fusion who also want to use TinyMCE for the creation and editing of the
Custom Pages.

Basically, the custom pages are an option to allow a page to insert HTML or PHP scripts that
are not part of the standard. But if your intention is primarily to use this feature to display
HTML or regular text, you can enable TinyMCE here as well.

So it is no longer necessary to modify the script itself. And you can use TinyMCE when
appropriate.

This function looks like this (without TinyMCE enabled):




If you enable TinyMCE this is what the same page looks like:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As shown a new button is now displayed on the page, making it possible to turn TinyMCE on
and off as needed. If you click once on the button, this is what the page looks like:



A good example of the improvements introduced in version 7 of PHP-Fusion.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Submissions

Members on your site can submit articles, news and links. The submission will not be shown on
the site until an administrator has validated and approved the submission.

It is possible to see if any submissions are waiting to be validated from the Admin Panel. This
information is shown in the bottom of the Admin Panel in the next illustration (marked here
with an arrow):



To Validate and publish the submissions or decline them, click Submissions from the Admin
Panel (User Admin). It might look like this:


In this example, there are 3 types of submissions. As shown above, you can either View and
then Submit, or Delete them right away.

If you chose View in Articles, it should look like this:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


In this case, not much has been written in either the subject field, the short introduction (the
snippet) or in the full article field but its only made to demonstrate the principle. From here
you are able to Publish or Delete the article. If you want to edit an article submitted by one
of your users, you will have to publish first then go to Articles and edit it here as you can
see in the illustration below:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




Comments

Both news and articles can be commented on and rated by members on your site if you decide
to use this option (see below).

It may be necessary to edit comments. The administrator on a site has the ability to edit (or
delete) all comments. Comments can be selected for editing from the place where they are
posted that is the news item or article where the comment is attached.

Here is an example where rating and commenting have been used:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


If you click Manage Comments, this is what you will see:

You can see who made the comment, the IP address of the person posting it and the date of
posting. You also have the option to either edit or delete the comment as shown in this
illustration.

If you click Edit this is what it looks like:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


In Edit Comment, you may now edit the comment, and afterwards click Save Comment to
save the edited comment.

If an administrator edits a Comment, you cannot see on the page that it has been edited, like
you can with threads in the Forum section.

Backup

In PHP-Fusion v7.00, a standard backup function is implemented. Through Admin Panel /
System Admin you can access Database Backup, where you have the ability to backup your
database.

If you have saved backups, you can always restore your site from these backups.

It is a good idea to make backups on a regular basis to maintain the ability to roll back. And
you should always do this before making major changes in your database or site settings.
Thats the only way you can return to a state when everything worked OK if something goes
wrong.

Besides which, it is a good idea to keep your backups away from the server, downloaded to
your own computer. Mainly because of the risk of someone hacking your site, but also because
of the risk of your host having a major breakdown. Most hosts do make backups, but dont rely
exclusively on that.

Therefore, every time you have made a backup of your database, download it from your server
and delete it afterwards on the server so that only you have access to the local copies.

NOTE: If you have made a backup of your database with PHP-Fusion, you cant use this
backup to restore the database with an ordinary MySQL administration tool only with PHP-
Fusion. If you want your backups to be more versatile, use an administration tool like
PhpMyAdmin to make the copy of your database.

When you are about to make a backup, you have to keep two things in mind.

1: Do you want to copy the entire structure and all tables in your database or only the basic
structure and basic tables?

2: Do you want to backup compressed (.sql.gz) or uncompressed (.sql). If you have a large
database, you may want to choose the compressed backup (if your providers server allows it.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Not all do). Though a site has many posts, articles, threads, members etc. you will be
surprised to see how small the database actually is, so its up to you whether you want to
compress the backup or not.

When you choose Database backup from the admin panel, this is what you get on your screen:

In the example here we have chosen uncompressed and all tables. And this will mean that
the backup copy will have a size of a little less than 118 Kb which should be manageable.


If you click Backup from this screen this is what happens (in Firefox):

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


As you can see you get a pop-up window (it differ in looks depending on the browser you use),
where you must decide whether you want the browser to open or save the backup file (Open
or Save). We choose Save (SAVE) and must now either choose a folder on the local machine
(if you use Explorer), where the backup is saved or just say yes to get the file saved (in
Firefox).

Now that the backup is created, you can do several things with it. You can delete it directly (or
you can delete one of your old copies if you wont need it again). But you can also see some
information about the copy - or you can choose to restore your database from the backup.

You can always go to his backup (if it is uncompressed) and look at it if you need it. The file
can be opened with an ordinary text editor, and it would in this example look like this (at least
a part of it):


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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Actually you can get a lot of information from the sql file that was created by the backup and
flip through it reading it in detail.

This backup can now be used either to restore your site on the server, or to create a copy of
the page on your local host (if you have a local server installed).

The copy of your site can either be created by importing your backup file through
phpMyAdmin or a similar management tool or by running Restore from the PHP-Fusion
administration page.

If you choose to restore your database from a backup in PHP-Fusion this is what you get on
your screen:




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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You can see that you can choose to recreate the entire table structure or to recreate all the
content. If the structure of the database is corrupted, you will have to choose all in both
columns. If its only the content that has been corrupted you choose all in Populate tables.
Whatever you choose, you should remember to enter your administrator password before you
click on the Restore button. If you dont do this, the operation will not be executed.
Recreating table structure and data using a MySQL tool (phpMyAdmin or other) is not
examined in this handbook. But in the bibliography at the back of the handbook you can find
references to URLs and books that may help you if you want to use this method.


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Private messages

PHP-Fusion has a built-in facility so that individual users can send tiny messages to one
another without the use of e-mail. These messages can be viewed, replied to or deleted in the
users (members) private messages box. Every time you login as a registered user (member)
on the home page, you will automatically see a notice in your User Info Panel when there are
new messages for you. The notice looks like this:


If you click You have 1 new message, this is what youll see:


You have several options. You can choose to view the individual message by clicking on the
message Subject. You can view the profile of the user who sent the message (click on the
user name under from). You can delete your messages one by one by selecting the message
(the box) and clicking Delete. Finally, you can choose to delete all messages by clicking
Check All and choosing Delete.

If you click on the message subject (Testing messages), you get this on the screen:


Here you can choose to Reply to the message, Save the message, mark the message as
Unread or Delete the message.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


You have several options in the PM function as you can see from the illustration below:


You can format your text (bold, italics etc.), enter links (URLs) remember to remove
http:// in the link - and images. You can paste text as quotes (quote) or code (code) and
finally you can use smileys. If you want to send code in your message you should disable
smileys. It makes the code easier to read.

But the message function has more options. Lets return to the main screen and choose
options here:



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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

As you can see above your message box comes with an Archive, an Outbox (you can set the
message function up from the admin panel to save copies of the messages in the Outbox
automatically) and finally some options, that each of your users can set up individually.

The different options for setting up the Private Messages function are explained elsewhere in
this handbook.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

FAQ and how to use it

In PHP-Fusion there is also a built-in function for creating and viewing the FAQs (Frequently
Asked Questions). These FAQs can be used for many purposes depending on the subject of
your home page. But mostly this function is targeted at home pages, offering some kind of
guidance.

As with Links and Articles you start by making some categories, where the single questions
and answers can be placed under:



We make three categories here and now the screen looks like this:



When the categories have been made (and you can add new ones all the time) you can begin
to write questions and answers.

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As you can see above, you have the same editing abilities in connection with the FAQ-function,
as you have elsewhere in PHP-Fusion bold text, italics, making links etc.

After entering questions and answers your visitors are able to view the FAQ to see if there
should be a description of the users problem already and a solution on how the problem can
be solved. This could look like the following:


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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Custom Pages

In PHP-Fusion the user (the administrator the owner of the home page) can make their own
custom pages, which can be linked to the navigation box on the front page or called from a
link on another page. Also administrators with assigned rights can create Custom Pages.

You compose a custom page from the admin panel by choosing Custom Pages. This is the
custom page panel:



In a custom page you can write text but you are also able to insert PHP code (by clicking the
button <?php?> - you can insert links, images and so on.

In the example we have just placed some text in the page content area.

When you create your custom pages, you have to choose accessibility to these pages. If you
wish to give a special member access on your home page, you can choose to limit the access
by selecting member from the drop down menu Access.

Finally, you can choose if the page should be added to the navigation menu or not, whether it
shall be possible to make comments or rate the page.

As described earlier in this handbook you can, if you have TinyMCE enabled, use this tool to
edit your Custom Pages.

Page title is also the content on the link, which appears in the navigation box. So its a good
idea to pick a significant title.

Before you save your page the same goes for articles and news - you are able to preview
your page as it will show up for the users. If you click Preview Page in the example here it
will look like this:
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




Clicking Save Page you will get this:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



You can see that the page has been saved and that it has created the link:

viewpage.php?page_id=1

which means the page has been saved in the database and can be viewed by calling the file
viewpage.php with the parameter page_id=1.

Viewing the front page and the navigation menu after saving the custom page will produce
this:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As you can see the new page has been placed at the bottom in the navigation menu, and
clicking the link will give you this result:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Modifying the system a few examples

There are numerous MODs available on the official sites in England, Germany, Estonia, Poland,
Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and so on. These MODs you can download and add to
your page free of charge. Furthermore, there are support sites exclusively dedicated to system
modifications, where all new modifications are being carefully tested and registered in a
database, the main UK site is located here: http://www.phpfusion-mods.com/ . There are also
a number of National support sites dedicated to MODs and Infusions, all linked from the main
MOD site.

Because of the vast number of MODs and Infusions it is impossible here to give you an
overview of them all. Instead we have decided to describe a few examples, so you can get an
idea of how to use these modifications.

IMPORTANT: Always remember to make a backup of your database and the original files
before you start experimenting with system alterations. That way you will always be able to
roll-back to an earlier stage if something should go wrong or doesnt work perfectly.

Also, remember to document your changes. Alterations of this kind are not part of the
standard installation. And you might have to do quite a lot of laborious work to get your
system up and running again after you have installed a new version, because this new version
either not supports the alterations or demands that these changes must be done once again
with the new version. Altering core files will mean extra work during upgrades as its no longer
a simple overwrite.

The most risky part is alterations to the database. If this is required, then you have to at least
make a backup of your database before your start. That way you have a chance to get your
site up and running afterwards, if something should go wrong.

It is recommended to install a local web server (Apache) with PHP-support and MySQL on your
local machine, where you can try the alterations out before uploading to your production site.

You can find an all-in-one package at: http://www.wampserver.com/en/ and other places
see also this exciting home page: http://www.hotscripts.com/), it does not demand a lot of
resources from your machine, and is an excellent platform for experimenting.


Changing the layout of unique visits

The first example of adjustment does not demand a lot from you as a user. But it
demonstrates very clearly how you because you have access to the source code in the
system can change and add settings, which make your home page more personal.

The example also demonstrates that in connection with alterations you have to be careful
with these changes. The fact is that when you make these changes, you yourself have to
manage them and later (during updates or upgrades) must recreate the changes yourself.

It is highly recommended to keep a journal containing the changes, and that you document
them on a regular basis. This way it becomes easier to recreate them during system changes
and upgrades.

At the bottom of all your pages you can always see the following information (or something
similar):
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




At the top you see the copyright-sentence you can type in at site settings, admin panel. Below
this you see a line containing the PHP-Fusion copyright notice the logo of the theme creator
and a number signifying the number of unique users who have visited your site. You are not
allowed to remove or change the bottom line unless you have paid the license removal fee for
your site.

Any alteration or deletion of part or all of the copyright information may result you being
banned from all support sites and your web host being contacted which could result in your
site being removed.

Further information about the various licensing options can be found at the Main PHP-Fusion
site or at one of the other official support sites.

If you get a lot of unique hits it might be an advantage to show the number of Unique Visits
in a different way.

Without the changes it might appear like you see it at the top here.

But if you want to show the figure with a separator for thousands, you can accomplish this by
making a small change in the theme_functions_include.php file.

You open the file and find this part of the code (function showcounter):



In this code you change the format for the way the counter is shown by writing:

".number_format($settings['counter'], 0, '', '.')."

The function number_format changes the format of the number the counter is delivering in this
example so that the number is shown with a period as the thousands delimiter. The altered
code looks like this:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



And the result of the change can be viewed here:



You can read more about how you control the format at http://php.net/number_format.


Changing the login and logout messages

More users have asked how to change the message you receive every time a member logs on
or off your site the one looking like this:



This change is actually a very good example of how to correct for the system to fit your needs,
so lets see how its done.

First find out which file that contains the logon and logoff texts. Its the locale file (all standard
texts are stored in locale files) named global.php. Here you see the two texts used in
connection with the login and logoff procedure:

$locale['global_192'] = "Logging out as ";
$locale['global_193'] = "Logging in as ";

If you search for $locale['global_192'] in you scripts you will see, that both 192 and 193 are
used in the script setuser.php. They can be seen in this piece of code (marked with arrows):

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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



In the same passage you can see, that the system here is using a variable with the users
username we are talking about $userdata[user_name].

If we want to change the texts so that your page writes Logging you on + page name and
Logging you off + page name we will have to change the code in two places in line 44 and
in line 61.

But before we do this, we will have to change the locale file. We change the two variables from
before to:
$locale['global_192'] = "Logging out from ";
$locale['global_193'] = "Logging in on ";

We do this in the script global.php and save the file.

Now we will have to change setuser.php. The two relevant lines are changed so that its now
the site name which is shown together with the two variables from global.php. This is what it
looks like:



When these changes have been made and the files saved your logoff screen will look like this:

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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



This was another change that relatively easy can be made. But around in the PHP-Fusion
world, you can find all sorts of so called MOD's (system modifications), which you free of
charge can use to add functionality to your page.

In the following section we review a few of them.



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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

A few MOD examples

In this example we will add two panels at the front page. The first one shows information
about the 10 last members that have been visiting your site, and the other one tells the visitor
which five downloads are the most popular.

Both system add-ons (or MODs as they are called) are made by PHP-Fusion users, and can be
used for free at your site.

You add both functions as panels (left or right side). The code used in the first panel (is
gathered at php-fusion.uk and altered afterwards), looks like this:



Briefly explained this is what happens:

Line 2: The panel is opened and given a title. We use a function called opensidex, which gives
the panel an open / close marker, so that the user can decide whether the item is displayed in
full or not.

Line 3: We make a SQL call to the database and store the result in array form in the array $
result.

Line 6 to 42: Now use the data to calculate values. These values are handled in a series of if-
expressions.

Line 43 to 36: Finally the results are printed on the screen.
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


In order for this code to work it is necessary that the graphics used by the function
(smiley010.gif - smiley100.gif) are uploaded to the images folder. But on the editor screen
the code looks like this:




You give the panel a name and save it.

When the panel have been enabled (thats important to remember) this is what it might look
like on the front page of your site:



The second panel we will show here displays the 5 most popular downloads. This is what the
code for this panel looks like:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



When this panel has been saved and enabled this is what it looks like:



On the official PHP-Fusion pages and on a number of Fusion pages you can find more MODs
MODs you can use to enrich and enhance your website.

Actually you dont have to be an expert in PHP-coding to put something like this on your page.
Copy the relevant code in the version equivalent to your PHP-Fusion version paste the code
from your admin panel, save and activate. In most cases your new MOD will work
immediately.

Even better, with the release of version 5.00 of PHP-Fusion a new standard was introduced for
adding extensions to your site. A new standard that makes it a lot easier to add fairly
advanced MODs to your site. This standard - INFUSIONS is what later chapter deals with.
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Multisites more sites on one database

It has always been possible with PHP-Fusion to run several pages from one database. The trick
is to give the tables different "first names". This means that you when you install the first
site choose for example fusion1 as the prefix for site number two fusion2 and so on.

The condition is of course that your pages are placed on the same server - or at least uses the
same database server. The prefix is given to the tables in connection with the installation on
this screen:


But in PHP-Fusion v.7 you now have the opportunity to share one or more tables between the
two sites - for example the user table - and thus also share the information. In this section
we describe how to do it.

The key to the creation of a multi-site scenario can be found in the file multisite_include.php
located in the folder includes. This file defines a wide range of standard tables as global
variable names, so that these variable names can be used anywhere where PHP-Fusion calls its
database.

A portion of the file looks like this:


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As you can see the global variable for the table fusion_admin here is defined as DB_ADMIN
and so on.

When this table is used, we use the variable name DB_ADMIN instead of the full table name.
This gives a safety benefit, but it will also make it possible to share table data across sites
using the same database.

A DB-call could look like this (when we look at the table fusion_downloads defined as
DB_DOWNLOADS):



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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

If we assume that we have installed our test page here with the standard fusion_ prefix and
one more page on the same database with the prefix fusion2_, the site number two will have
a series of tables with prefix fusion_ and a series of tables with fusion2_ prefix as you can
see it on the next screen.



In the configuration file (config.php) the installation process have written information about
the database you use and what prefix the tables of this page is using. And in the file
multisite_include.php this prefix is used to create the global variable names.

Each site has its own multisite_include.php. And this is the script you need to alter to make
the two sites share information.

On the first site this is what config.php and the relevant lines of multisite_include.php look
like:


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




In config.php the variable $db_prefix is defined as fusion_ and this is used in
multisite_include.php via the expression db_prefix. This variable in other words has the
value fusion_.

If we now take the file multisite_include.php from the other site - that is installed on the same
database but with another db_prefix, namely fusion2_ so this is how the relevant lines look
here:



It is completely identical with the file from the first page. But now we alter three lines that deal
with the user administration like this:




Then this page and the first page will use the same tables to store user information in.

The two pages now share user information.

The same can also be done in other areas such as news or articles. Just remember that some
tables require others. The table downloads cannot stand alone. If you share downloads, you
must also share download_cats. The same is the case with articles and news.

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Design in general

We have heard users say many times that all CMS systems are more or less similar to each
other and that the basic design in PHP-Fusion, while you can change graphics and alter the
style sheet is quite rigid. The basic make up of a PF site i.e. a broad center panel, a column on
the left and right and a banner in full width at top.

In this regard users have a point. It requires a lot of work to change the fixed structure. On
the other hand, it is not impossible, as few examples are supposed to demonstrate.

All following pages are actually made with PHP-Fusion:



http://phpfusion-freak.dk/
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




http://www.janm.dk/kritiskdebat




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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


http://www.displus.sk/news.php
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



http://www.tranekaerantik.dk/

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



http://www.slagteren.net/

The key really is the site owners imagination and stubbornness. Get inspired. Hunt for good
PHP-Fusion pages and then ask the owner how they were made. Most PHP-Fusion users are
more than willing to share their ideas with others. It doesnt have to be dull and uniform all the
way.

The easiest way to alter the look of your site is by changing the theme to one which reflects
your requirements.
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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Infusions

In connection with the release of PHP-Fusion version 5.00, a new standard for adding
extensions to your site was introduced - the INFUSION standard.

The strength of this standard is that system extensions are now added to PHP-Fusion in a
much simpler manner, seen from the end users point of view

This concept has been brought even further in version 7.00.xx

The strength of this standard is that add-ons to the system are handled in a way that makes
future upgrades much simpler than they were before. No changes to the core files, instead you
add a layer to the system that in most cases is not affected at all by upgrades.

Installing an INFUSION

An INFUSION can consist of more files. If we use the Newsletter INFUSION as an example, the
file structure (the folder submitted_mod_67, ie HS Gallery) looks like this:



In the two folders you find a single file, some graphics for the admin menu and a number of
files that make up the infusion itself:
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.




As you can see all of these files are placed in a folder with the same name as the infusion.
When you want to install an infusion you start by uploading all the files, in this case the
contents of directory administration and contents of the folder infusion to the server.

When this is done, go to administration, then System and choose infusions. The infusions
available for installation can be seen in a drop-down list with a color marker, as shown by the
following illustration:



When you click infuse, the infusion is installed. At the same time the line through the text
infusions disappears if the infusion has an admin interface. This is a sign that at least one
infusion has been installed. In this case it will not happen. But on the infusion install screen
something happens:

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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



And at the same time a new link have been added in the navigation panel on the front page:



If you click on it, you see your photo gallery as usual. But click on an image to see enlarged,
and you will notice that the image view has changed:


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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



And this is a result of the new infusion.

Its not necessarily complicated and it is not always necessary to make interventions in the
database. An infusion may for example consist solely of a single panel. In order for it to be
handled by the management tool is has to consist of a file - infusion.php - which contains the
necessary information to infuse the system.

If we still use the new gallery as an example, this is what infusion.php looks like in this
example:
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Line 23: This line looks for a language file corresponding to the infusion and the language
chosen on your site. If we dont find a corresponding locale file we use English.

Line 31: Here we retrieve the title of the infusion

Line 32: Here we retrieve the description of the infusion

Line 33: Here we retrieve the version number

Line 34: Here we retrieve the name of the developer

Line 35: Here we retrieve the mail address of the developer

All of these values are used to make the description of the infusion, which will appear on
infusions on the admin panel.

Line 38: This is the name of the folder in which the infusion is installed.

Line 39: If the infusion has an administration page and the icon for this page is special, it is
indicated here.

Line 40: If there is an administration page, the name of admin script is listed here

Line 43 to 47: This indicates that a link should be added to the navigation bar - and what this
link should point to (the new link that came up after installation)

Line 48: Here you indicate for whom the new link should be displayed. In this case, the value
is 0 because it should be accessible for guests.

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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

The installation function (even if rather complicated codewise) is pretty simple. It opens the
folder (infusions), checks if there's any uninstalled Infusions in it, presents the information
about the ones present (which it gather from the file infusion.php) and then execute (at the
administrators command) the instructions coded in the file infusion.php.

If there's a file present in the actual Infusion folder that indicates that there's a panel-file
needed, it means that the Infusion shall be added via the Panel Administration as well. All you
have to do is to activate it after creating the new panel with reference to the file in question.

Making a new INFUSION

We wont go into details with this issue. If you want to know more about this, you can find
more extensive information on http://www.phpfusion-mods.com/ and in the Infusion SDK,
which can be downloaded on most official PHP Fusion Support sites. But we will go through and
comment on an example found on the Main PHP-Fusion site.

If you want to make a new infusion, you will have to start by downloading the SDK. When you
have downloaded this kit (SDK stands for Software Development Kit) and unzipped it, this
is what you see:



The SDK-kit includes these files:

- new_infusion_panel.php
- infusion.php
- new_infusion_admin.php
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

- new_infusion.php
- an English standard locale (language) file (in the folder locale)

Lets have a look at the files one by one. Lets start with the file new_infusion_panel.php:



The code here is relatively simple. On lines 12 - 14 this script includes the core files of PHP-
Fusion.

In line 16 it checks, if the rights of the user if sufficient the user is allowed access to the
panel if not the user is sent back to the index.php.

The next section (line 18 25) checks to see if there is a local language file present. If not, the
English file is used as default.

After that (line 27) the panel is opened (panel code placed between openside(side panel) and
closeside()).

Alternatively a panel in the middle section of the page is opened (between opentable(center
panel) and closetable()).

Thats all.
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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.


Next file is infusion_db.php.



In this file line 20 says that if this or these tables are not already defined as variables and
therefore could be called from different scripts, they will be defined here. For instance, if you
create two new tables with your infusion you should have two lines defining the variable names
for these two tables - for example like this:




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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Now we are ready to take a look at the file infusion.php. The upper part of the file or script
looks like this:



This part of the code has been commented earlier here, so we will leave it at that. Beneath this
part of the script you find this:

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reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



Line 41 to 48 is the part of the code that creates a new, or in this case two new tables in the
database.



When you create two new tables during the installation, you must also remember to remove
them again if you later uninstall this infusion. The instructions that you need for this you find
from line 52 and forward. This is what it looks like:



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publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

The relevant lines are line 59 and 60.

If you in your infusion need to add data to a specific table, do it in line 57 as shown in the
illustration above. If this is the case you need to replace DB_INFUSION_TABLE with the name
of the table and field1, field2 etc replaced with the field names of the fields to be populated -
and the expressions after VALUES marked here with two single quotation marks should be
replaced with the corresponding content.

If you need to modify an existing table (add or remove fields), this happens in line 62, where
the name of the constant that represents the table name must be replaced with the correct
table and where you have to write in a correct SQL expression that performs the command
for example ADD, as shown here.

In the lower part of the script you can - if necessary describe the data needed to call an
admin page or add a site link as described earlier.



Finally we have a template for an admin page for the new infusion file name is
new_infusion_admin.php, and this is how the code looks:

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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.



As you can see this is where you have to place the code for administration of the new infusion
(your code here). And it is also here you can define the access rights to this admin page - that
is what is going on in line 23.

The only thing missing now is to make a new locale file that is placed in the locale folder.

Final remarks about INFUSIONS

A new infusion must be approved before it is published - and the best way to get it approved
(and approval ensures that this addition to the system meets all standards and acts in
accordance with the description) is to upload the infusion to http://phpfusion-mods.com/ .

Its always a good idea only to use authorized and approved infusions. This will make your life
as a site owner easier when your site needs upgrading.

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Literature and web links

Below is a list of resources on the Internet and to books which might help you if you wish to
further improve your understanding of PHP-Fusion and PHP / MySQL-programming. All the
books mentioned can be bought through http://www.amazon.com.


PHP

PHP is a scripting language a programming language used to build products and solutions
that can be executed on a web server (for example Internet Information Server from
Microsoft or Apache).

The complete documentation for PHP can be found online on different websites.

Online-manual
English online-manual for PHP: http://dk.php.net/manual/en/

You can find a lot of information on other addresses on the Internet as well. A couple of these
you can see below:

Zend Technologies
Here you find the homepage for a brilliant editor (primarily for advanced users). This page also
has a lot of general information and help: http://www.zend.com/. I use a code editor from
Zend called Zend Studio.

PSPad free PHP editor
Its actually pretty good and its free.
http://www.pspad.com/

PHPBuilder.com
Lots of ideas and explanations in English: http://www.phpbuilder.com/

PHP Resources
Extensive English page with lots of ideas: http://www.php-resources.org/

Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL from novice to professional
W. Jason Gilmore, Apress, 2004: A very good and extensive documentation to both PHP and
databases from the simplest to the most advanced (and not very expensive either).

Object-Orientated Programming with PHP5
By Hasin Hayder PACKT Publishing
For the more advanced coders. I have used it with good results.
.
MySQL

MySQL is the database which PHP-Fusion (and lots of other products) is using as the database
back end. Its Open Source provided free of charge (yet) and it is allowed to use and modify
it to suit your own needs.

MySQL Manual
Online manual (in English) to MySQL: http://dev.MySQL.com/

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

PHP and MySQL for Dummies, 2nd Edition
In spite of the title its actually quite good.
Janet Valade, 2004

Graphics, HTML, Java and JavaScript isnt covered here. Try www.amazon.com or one of the
more specialized internet bookshops. They can probably supply you with all the information
you need to move on. Or ask at one of the official PHP-Fusion sites.

PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Final remarks

One could examine many other similar additions to the system, but we have chosen to limit
ourselves to these few. A certain standard for how modifications are made is evolving, and
usually you can not only see the code for the additions but also a pretty rigorous review of how
to get them work.

And remember, that if you have any problems with either system or with an addition or
extension to it, you can almost always get help on one of the official websites. PHP-Fusion
users are generally helpful - also because this is a new system, and because users feel a bit
like pioneers in the field.

We hope that this manual can help you get started so that you can become a part of its helpful
and happy community.



PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Credits

This handbook was originally written in Danish by Jan Moelgaard in 2009 based on a similar
handbook for the 6.01 version of the system. And it was translated and adapted for the English
language by Jan Moelgaard in the beginning of 2010. It describes PHP-Fusion 7.00 2008 -
2010 Nick Jones.

The handbook is available free at your disposal. This means that you are allowed to use it to
make your own PHP-Fusion site. But you are not allowed to sell it either as a part of another
transaction or as a product in a store.

You may redistribute it though. But here the same rules apply. The copyright of the handbook
belongs to the author so it cannot be distributed in whole or in part, without specifying the
source.

Thanks to Happy Svensson, Sweden (KEFF) and the rest of the team on PHP-Fusion, who has
spent many hours to ensure that this book is technically correct.

Thanks also to all the major international team behind PHP-Fusion. It is fantastic to be part of
such a community.

Enjoy!

Aarhus January 4 2010
Jan Moelgaard
(mail:[email protected])
PHP-Fusion version 7 Manual
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Copyright 2010 Jan Moelgaard, Porsgrunnsvej 45, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. All rights reserved. The material in this
publication is subject to the rules of the Copyright Act. Unless otherwise specifically agreed with Jan Moelgaard, any
reproduction or any other publication or any commercial usage is only allowed as far as it is permitted by law or
authorized through an agreement with the proper organization.

Index

Admin Panel.....25;69;77;144;146;153;156;160
Administration.................................... 152;153
Administrators......................................77;149
Article Categories ....................................... 97
Articles.................. 21;35;97;105;156;157;168
Automatic Line-breaks................................. 99
Backup......................................... 15;160;161
Bad word replacement................................. 61
Banners................................................ 23;51
BB-codes .............................................. 23;54
Blacklist................................................... 153
CMS............................................................ 5
Comments ............................................... 158
Custom Pages ......................................18;170
Database backup...................................... 161
Database username .................................... 11
Database password..................................... 11
Database hostname .................................... 11
Database name .......................................... 11
Date settings.............................................. 35
Date formats.............................................. 37
Delete a thread .......................................... 82
Delete Shouts .......................................... 151
Download Categories................................. 109
Downloadkategorier .................................. 109
Downloads.................................... 21;109;110
Edit Profile......................................... 152;153
FAQ .................................................. 168;169
Forum.................................. 21;35;38;39;160
Forum Settings...................................... 38;39
Forums................................................35;132
Infuse ......................................................... 6
INFUSION................................................ 192
infusions..............................................24;129
Infusions .............................................. 6;175
INFUSIONS.............................................. 203
installation.....................................7;9;77;175
Lock a thread............................................. 82
Login Panel ................................................ 19
Main Settings ............................................. 38
Miscellaneous ........................................... 150
MODs ..................................... 6;175;180;182
Move a thread ............................................ 82
MySql ...................................................... 204
MySQL....................................... 9;11;204;205
Navigation .......................................... 18;128
News..................................... 35;103;105;108
News categories ....................................... 103
Panel Access ............................................ 129
Panels .......................................... 24;144;146
Photo Gallery .................................. 24;46; 48
PHP................................................1;204;205
Polls..................................................143;146
Preview Article............................................ 99
Read More ............................................... 105
Registration ............................................... 39
Renew a thread .......................................... 82
Shoutbox................................. 19;35;149;150
Site link..................................................... 67
Site Settings .................................... 35;39;46
Smileys .............................................. 56;149
SMTP......................................................... 61
Sticky................................................. 82;140
Super admin .............................................. 77
System Admin.................................38;39;160
Theme............................. 18;24;28;30;69;176
TinyMCE .....................................5;59; 89;105
Top Menu................................................... 18
Top logo .................................................... 18
Top menu .................................................. 18
User Admin......................................... 77;156
Web Link Categories.................................. 124
Web Links................................................ 124
Welcome Message....................................... 18
WinZip.........................................................7