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How can I track changes to a phpBB forum?
November 14, 2007 11:35 PM   RSS feed for this thread Subscribe

How can I track changes to a phpBB forum?

Hello,

For good reasons, I would like to track all changes to a particular phpBB forum -- new posts, edits, and deletions, essentially like what Wikipedia has. I'm running into a bit of a roadblock about how to do this. In principle it is simple. I found the following tool: WebSite-Watcher, which does some things like this. However, there remain a few complicating factors, mainly that there are certain changes I don't care about and don't want to show up in my version control.

For example, if user Joe writes a new post, the line "Posts: 12" changes to "Posts: 13" next to Joe's name on every thread that Joe has posted on. I don't want this kind of change to be listed.

My goal is to be able to archive this website regularly, and navigate through time to see which changes were made when.

I know how to program, but hope someone can think of a way to do this without creating a big programming ordeal. Is there a relatively simple way of implementing this?
posted by wireless to computers & internet (3 comments total)
Surely, if you "know how to program", it's just a simple task of looking at the latest 10, 20, x new entries in the phpbb database?
posted by slater at 1:29 AM on November 15, 2007


True, but I don't have access to the phpBB database, since the forum isn't mine. Also, even if I could scrape it, I'm not sure that edits to posts and deletions will show up in the latest entries in the database. In addition, I have to set up some kind of version control so that I can track the individual changes over time. See what I mean?
posted by wireless at 8:01 AM on November 15, 2007


The easiest way would be to add a key in the database. Assuming you are an admin, it shouldn't be too hard to get in touch with the owner and have him add the key. I don't think it is going to be possible without either access to the DB or without the ability to add files to the directory of the forum both of which require server access.
posted by JJ86 at 8:43 AM on November 15, 2007


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