ProBoards
 | |
Type of site | Remotely Hosted Forum |
|---|---|
| Owner | Patrick Clinger |
| Created by | Patrick Clinger |
| Commercial | Mixed / Ad funded |
| Registration | Required |
ProBoards is a free remotely hosted message board service that facilitates online discussions by allowing people to create their own online community.
Ownership & Staff
The name 'ProBoards' is a registered trademark of Patrick Clinger, who founded and owns the company, and wrote the ProBoards software. However, Martyn Dale, one of the two paid employees, is now responsible for most of the running of the business. Craig Suffolk is the other paid employee, who handles user support on the support forum.
Former paid employees include Ryan Herbel, and Clinger's half sister Mary. The former was hired when Craig Suffolk took extended leave, then fired in 2004. No explanation was provided to support forum members as to why this was. Mary's role was a short term one, and while she retained the administrator position, she was paid only while she was employed to help in the Support Board.
Service Statistics
The service currently hosts over 1,500,000 internet forums, which in turn have millions of registered users worldwide. This makes ProBoards the #2 remotely hosted message board provider behind ezboard. Currently all ProBoards forums receive a total of over 500 million pageviews per month, making ProBoards one of the largest websites on the Internet.
Servers & Hosting
ProBoards has over 100 servers, and is hosted by ev1. Because ProBoards is one of ev1's major customers, Patrick Clinger was invited to take part in a commercial for ev1, which was then shown at the 2005 Houston Bowl. The commercial opened with a voiceover introducing Clinger as the owner of ProBoards.com, and he then had a short spoken part. Following this the commercial cut away to show ev1 servers, with more voiceover.
Software
PB software contains many features similar to those found in other forum software, and has been updated several times to keep it competitive. Founded in December of 1999 by Patrick Clinger, ProBoards originally used a threaded Internet forum software developed by Clinger and first used on another of Clinger's websites, hostedscripts.com. In late 2001 ProBoards switched to the YaBB system and became the first remotely hosted service to offer a subdomain with each forum (e.g. username.proboards[servernumber].com). In June 2001 ProBoards Version 2 was launched. This was coded entirely by Clinger and was a complete rewrite of the entire software rather than improvements to the existing YaBB based setup. The main goals of this rewrite were to improve the overall speed of the software and add new features to keep the product competitive. In February 2003 Version 3 of the ProBoards software was released, again making improvements on the overall speed of the software and including over 30 new features. ProBoards recently upgraded to version 4 of its software. The upgrade started on April 30, 2005.
All forums are hosted for free, with no bandwidth or webspace cap. However, free accounts on ProBoards have advertisements on them - namely banner ads at the top of each page, and text links below the page content. Until September 2003 ProBoards was supported by popunder ads, but these are no longer served. The banner ads are provided primarily by Google Adsense, but ProBoards also has a selfserve ads system, also coded by Clinger, which allows anyone to purchase banner advertising across the PB service.
While almost all of the software is provided free of charge, there are a few extra features only available to paying members. These include adfree (removal of the advertisements) and extra attachment space for file uploads. Users are not permitted to display any ads on their forum from which they make money unless they first pay for removal of the PB ads.
Version 4 Enhancements
On April 30, 2005, ProBoards began an upgrade on all their servers. With this upgrade were a significant number of enhancements, mostly to the admin functions. There were approximately 120 enhancements to the service, including:
- Addition of a security log available to the administrator of each forum, showing the last major actions on the board.
- A karma system, which is a community rating of members.
- Easier login.
- User selectable skins.
- Support for age detection to automatically remove accounts of users under the age of 13 to follow the United States's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
- Quick reply.
- Ability to attach files with posts.
- Easy banning for administrators.
- An improved system, with stricter flood control, and activation keys.
- Administrators may activate "Advanced administration" mode, where they can delete several threads in one click.
- The main administrator may create staff groups, and designate which powers the members of those groups may use.
- Removal of a bug in the system that could cause threads to disappear from a board seemingly at random. While PB was using version 3 of its software this glitch was such a common occurence that it became known as the 'woobug' (as in "Woo... bug!"). (Note: a 'fix a board' option was added during v3 to allow users with admin panel access to bring back posts which had gone missing in this way, so although the glitch caused problems, they were only temporary.)
While the release of PBv4 was intended to eliminate the aforementioned 'woobug', the problem was worsened in some ways. Although the glitch is no longer such a common occurence, similar problems have also affected user profiles, and the 'Fix a Board' option is no longer a 100% fix for missing posts. Proboards staff prefer that the 'woobug' be referred to as 'an indexing problem', though many people refuse to change.
The bug, which can also affect the users online list and private messages occurs because ProBoards uses flatfiles for data storage. Occasionally, especially when accessed repeatedly, these files glitch or corrupt, meaning the data is not properly output.
ProBoards Coding
ProBoards has a large coding community. Most ProBoards hacks are written in JavaScript, and tend to modify the visual display of pages. There are many sites with large code databases, and some sites that will create custom codes on request. While most scripts are very easy to implement via the admin panel, the downside of JS scripts is that users can disable them by disabling JavaScript in their internet browser. This means that certain codes are unreliable and can be avoided easily - for example removal of the 'delete post' button for members has to be done using JS.
Please note that there currently is no sub-sub-board (TWO sub's) feature on ProBoards, as displayed in the Coding and Design boards in the support board. A hack that will enable this on a member forum is against the TOS because of issues with the ads and forms.
Support Forum
The support forum as a whole is referred to as 'ProBoards Support', and the main board for user questions is called the 'Support Board'.
The Support Board itself consists of a section for all support questions relating to a ProBoard. Slightly misleadingly, it does not cover the creation of addon codes, and this can lead to confusion for new members unsure of which board to post in. There are many helpful and friendly members who help out there plus several staff who work hard to restore cracked/deleted forums, fix bugs found in the forum system, and generally help out with any other problems.
There is a testing area where any new members can test out the Ubbc [(U)niversal (B)ulletin (B)oard (C)ode] and the several available smilies. They can also test the new attachment feature.
There is a board dedicated to helping members on how to help their forum get larger and more attractive. Staff start these discussions while members post tips on how to make a bad forum good and how to make a good forum better.
GOAYB [(G)et (O)pinions (A)bout (Y)our (B)oard] lets members post their board to get constructive criticism, tips, ratings, suggestions and comments on your forum. There are strict rules that needed to be followed there, and constant bumping of threads is not allowed, nor is asking people to join, or posting the link to a board which is in Maintenance Mode/Force Guests To Register. This is to ensure members do not simply use GOAYB to advertise their forum.
In the Coding forums, members can get hacks for their Proboard, which are placed in the Headers/Footers section of the admin panel. Members may also request new codes or "hacks". There is no guarantee anyone will take the request, but there are some talented coders who have built reputations for fast and reliable PB scripting.
PB Support also has two of image related boards in the same section as the coding boards. One of these is for members to request images for their forum, with requests being filled by other, graphically talented, members; the other is a discussion forum but is mostly used for graphics battles and image rating.
Last, but not least, the General Talk forum is there for more general chat or discussion. This board has the most rules of all the boards on the Support forum, but is also the most active.
There are also numerous staff boards which are not available for regular members to view or post in.