Pondering the broken URL's on Qt3

This has been brought up a number of times but I don’t recall seeing Mark, Tom or Chet address the issue. If they have and I missed it, my apologies for posting this.

There are two ways to make a link in phpBB. You can type a full URL and phpBB will automatically convert it to a clickable link:

http://www.thisisafakelink.com/

The other way is to embed the link using the [This is a fake link]( tag. This lets you give the link a text description:

[url=www.thisisafakelink.com)

The problem here is that the Qt3 forum is no longer properly parsing any web link that omits “www” from its address when you use the [http://quirkybastards.net]( code. For example, the address of my clan website is [url) . As you can see, the straight URL works, but if I try to use the [Quirky Bastards website]( tag, I get this:

[url=http://quirkybastards.net).

Which is to say, nothing shows up.

Is this a known issue in phpBB or is it a quirk with Qt3 in particular? I’ve searched the support forum at phpBB’s site and haven’t seen anything yet. BBcodes are stored in the bbcode.php file. Is it possible something got messed up in that?

Chet said the change happened with the last PhpBB update – something to do with a security issue or something.

Why do many other forums still have that capability though? Are they just less secure than QT3?

Denny, we are runnig the latest version of phpBB on our site and the problem does not occur there. I’m still looking through the phpBB site to see if I can find a specific reference to the issue.

I don’t think Chet updates with every new version. I seem to remember he had a falling out with the folks that develop the board over how sessions were dealt with, which I believe he fixed on his own nickle. If you customize the software, you have to do the customizations again each time you upgrade.

I just deal with the link issue. It’s easier to work around than the session issue you get if you’re posting behind a proxy.