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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

How to change the User Registration Terms of use in PhpBB3 forums

Forums has been always a great platform for user interaction and group discussion as well as development. It has several striking features which attracts millions of internet users to take part in millions of board communities for many years. PhpBB had always been pioneering these events. Though some of its features may have become irritating to forum owners and moderators, still it is the number 1 forum management software available for free worldwide. One of the irritating thing is that it has no direct option to change the terms and conditions of users’ registration page from its administration panel. So you will need to achieve it in other way.



Go to your forum root directory, open language directory, then en directory, then open the ucp.php file. In that file find 'TERMS_OF_USE_CONTENT'. There you will find the content which appears on the screen when a user tries to register in your forum. You can edit this content as you like and save it, which will take effect in the page where users try to register in your forum.

So from now you will not need to bear any unwanted user terms or conditions, which bother you whenever a user tries to get more familiar with your forum. Please your upcoming users with most sweetest messages you want to show them.

23 comments:

Unknown said...

Weard, In my old ucp was the text, I've created backup before editing and then either of them didn't wor not backup not edited ucp!

Then i found an original one (not fron server, but from zip file)

in which there wasn't the registration terms text to edit...

please send me an email and I will send you the files...

Anonymous said...

I am actually unable to understand your exact problem. If you have your phpBB functioning well, you can easily change the terms through the above mentioned method.

Anonymous said...

Hi. I've just changed the text like you said, but when I refresh/reload the "Register" site, It just shows up blank! What have I done wrong??

Anonymous said...

Hi Mattias,
First make sure that you are using phpBB3. Then I can say that this is a well tested and proved method. You surely have done something wrong. Please restore the old version, if you have backed up or get another copy of the file from the original phpBB3 zip.
Then if everything works like previous then try again. Still if you fail, then I can do it for you.

Regards,
Acmeous

Anonymous said...

Hii
i am using phpbb3.
This post is old although in big hope i am posting here.
Yes i want to edit that terms. and i did also. But every time when i edit and open register window i get many errors.

please need help.

Anonymous said...

Hi guys,
After getting two unsuccessful stories, I downloaded the latest version of phpBB3 just now and performed the task. I am completely successful now in replicating the procedure. So this process is still valid and working. But what is seemed to me is that you were not able to edit the text according to the programming. Please try to understand the coding standard and then edit the text otherwise if you break the coding even if a ' is wrongly deleted, then you will be having errors.
So if you fail doing this, then let me know, I'll love to help you with this. You can contact me directly at acmeous[at]gmail.com.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this excellent post Acmeous. I was having trouble finding where to change the terms. Using phpbb3 and followed your steps and everything worked like a charm. Many thanks. Bob

Cindy said...

When I try to edit the text, I get the following message on the very top of the registration page (ucp.php?mode=register)


[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3760: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /language/en/ucp.php:1)
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3762: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /language/en/ucp.php:1)
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3763: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /language/en/ucp.php:1)
[phpBB Debug] PHP Notice: in file /includes/functions.php on line 3764: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /language/en/ucp.php:1)

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Thanks.

Acmeous said...

Hi Cindy,
Thanks for checking out my Blog. I think you got some problem with the coding syntax by editing that file. If I can get a look at it then I can tell you accurately.
Thanks,
Acmeous.

Cindy said...

Thanks for your quick reply Acmeous. Do you have an email address were I can side the code? It's rather long to post here.
Thanks:-)
Cindy

Cindy said...

Acmeous, I found the problem: The edits should be saved using UTF-8 with no BOM. I thought that is what I was doing with Windows notepad, but when I used notepad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) instead, I was able to edit without a problem!

Thanks, Cindy

Acmeous said...

Hi Cindy,
It's very nice that the problem has been solved, though I am surprised to see the solution. This is because many times I use notepad to edit many files and the Character Encoding always remain the same UTF-8 as this is also by default.

Anyway, my email id is acmeous[at]gmail.com and you can contact me anytime.

Regards,
Acmeous

Amit Banerjee said...

Great Job. Just what I was looking for ! You Rock !

Anonymous said...

Just had the same "cannot modify headers" trouble as a few people above me have had. I just noticed that I was editing it in the wrong type standard.
Make sure to edit in UTF-8 no BOM otherwise you risk getting errors.

Trygve said...

Thanks for this useful post Acmeous. I had no problem changing th English text. But I do not want to translate my special conditions to all installed languages. Is that necessary? Can the user switch language before registering, or look at the condtions after registering and a language switch?
If not, why is there an ucp.php file for each installed language?

X said...

I edited it into this and it still shows same old terms?

case 'terms':
case 'privacy':

$message = ($mode == 'terms') ? include('http://xxxx.xxx/forum/terms.htm') /*ORIGINAL 'TERMS_OF_USE_CONTENT' */ : 'PRIVACY_POLICY';
$title = ($mode == 'terms') ? 'TERMS_USE' : 'PRIVACY';

John Parker said...

Thanks dude, this was really helpful when I was frustrating searching for it here and there.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

about the regulations at the registration page, on previous versions that was at /langFolder/lang_main.php, I guess now it's at langFolder/common.php but I didn't look at it yet

Unknown said...

If you live in the U.S. and your selected language is EN_US, you might want to save the file there instead of the EN directory. It only took me 3 hrs of trying to follow these directions here before it dawned on me what the problem was. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Do NOT use apostrophes in the text.

Example: instead of don't and won't, write dont and wont.

Anonymous said...

ok' thanks

Anonymous said...

None of this works anymore, its buried in some random damned file. Also all of the Knowledge Base Articles are wrong. There is nothing in the UCP.PHP file besides 'TERMS_OF_USE_CONTENT',
not the 400 lines of text that actually appears.

Whilst when you goto the register page it magically is loading 3 paragraphs of information.

So the question now becomes where in the bloody hell have they hidden it this time? in templates/ucp_agreement there is again, nothing but some font formatting.

I dont know why its so damned hard for people to make crap simple to access.

Bonaforisnigenterprises said...

Yes as good as I think thanks so much

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