IPB Tutorial: Forum Configuration

The first thing you would like to do after installing the forum is to perform some fine-tuning. We will deal with it in this tutorial section. 

In order to start managing your forum, you have to visit the administration panel. The address looks like this: 

http://yourdomainname.com/forum/admin

How to configure the email functions in IPB?

The first thing you can do is configure the email functions of the board. This can be done from Tools & Settings -> Email Set-up. 

You should use SMTP authentication method and have a valid email box under your account hosted by SiteGround. The configuration should resemble the following:

Customize date & time formats in IPB

The server time cannot be changed. However, IPB gives you the option to set time offset. This can be done from Tools & Settings -> Date & Time Formats.
Click on the Native Server Time Zone drop-down box and select the correct time offset that corresponds to your time zone.

General configuration

Next in the list of adjustable settings is the General Configuration right below Email Set-up in the Tools & Settings tab.
The most important settings here are - Board Name, Website Name, Website Address - those are self-explanatory, the important thing here is not to end with a trailing slash "/" any of the URLs or paths to directories. The rest of the settings can be left to the default values.

Click on [Update Settings] at the bottom of the page when done.  

User profiles

You can access the User Profiles menu by clicking on the link under your Tools & Settings tab.
The most important settings here are:
   1. Allow HTML in signatures? - set to No to avoid unsolicited ad messages.
   2. Allow BBCode in signatures? - BBCode is important part of every board and it's a good idea to have it set to Yes.
   3. Auto prune all topic subscriptions if the topic has no replies over [x] days - you might want to set a number of days after which unanswered messages will be deleted from the board. It's a good idea to keep the database clean from junk data that might slow down the forum.