What is Reddit's opinion of
phpBB?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
➔ phpBB website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
63 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
I personally think that BarkBoard could have had more people using it if it was better advertised. That being said, BarkBoard had some problems that I don't think could be solved without modifying a lot of code.
This has been mentioned basically every time someone talks about BarkBoard, but BarkBoard is just an instance of phpBB, so it would technically be easy to set up another instance of BarkBoard EXACTLY as it was before, minus some things like logins being linked to ISO and restricting users to MTU users as a consequence.
I don't think you'll find a link to classic BarkBoard. WayBack machine shouldn't have been able to scrape it, it would need to use an ISO login to get past the landing page, so I think you're SOL on that one. But again, because it's just phpBB, if your trying to figure out how it works, you can just look at any other instance of it (or run one locally).
I'm going to PM you in a bit, because if you're serious about wanting to build a better, more focused BarkBoard, I want to talk to you about that.
They seem to be fine with their current dark layout. Really looks like they just need to tweak the site for a larger member base. I would assume they need to install a caching plugin and index the database tables.
My largest phpbb forum had 2 million members and around 1.5 million posts. I think it was like the 7th in the world for awhile.
Really once you get the stupid styles.css and all the .template files mastered its super easy. Feel free to ask me any questions.
This is a very helpful thread on that topic.
Öh ja alles schön und gut Aber, wo bleibt das konstruktiv in deiner Kritik?
Funktionieren würde zum beispiel ein Abschließender Satz, wie dieser:
Da mich das Thema sehr stört, habe ich mal selbst im Internet recherchiert, und man könnte Beispielsweise folgende Forensoftware nutzen und mit relativ geringem Aufwand an die bestehende Userbase koppeln: https://www.phpbb.com -- der Klassiker, open source php. http://www.vbulletin-germany.com/ -- der Klassiker zum kaufen. http://www.discourse.org/ -- redditähnlich closed source, kein eigenes hosting. Von vBulletin und phpbb habe ich gesehen gibt es WorpressConnectoren?
Vieleicht hilft euch das, die Userexperience ohne großen Aufwand nach vorne zu treiben. Euer Bananenbaum
It's this: https://www.phpbb.com/
With this theme: http://themeforest.net/item/marina-responsive-retina-ready-phpbb3-theme/6509951
You can see the info in the page source for the forum:
phpBB style name: Marina Blue v.1.0.0 Based on style: prosilver (this is the default phpBB3 style) Original author: Tom Beddard ( http://www.subBlue.com/ ) Modified by: PixelGoose Studio
Hey, here's a quick tip to really help you out. Most modern browsers have Inspection Tools built in, they make figuring this stuff out a lot easier so you'll want to become familiar with them if you're going to be making other changes in future!
Using Chrome, you can right click on a page area and then select 'Inspect Element' to bring up a few panes containing information about the item you chose.
In this case, what I did was navigate to the working demo these guys provided, inspected the main background area and checked the 'styles' pane on the right hand side of the inspection tools to see which rules are being applied.
See where it says 'background: #f8f8f8'? That's what we want to replace, instead with something like
background: url('path/to/your/image.png');
You can do it right there in the inspection tools to preview the change, but of course these changes won't be saved until you actually make the change in your stylesheet. So back to your question, where do we do that?
In your style breakdown pane you can click the link next to any rule to view the stylesheet, doing that we find the responsible code is:
/* BEGIN @include oxygen.css */ html,body { background: #f8f8f8; }
So, I'd check your oxygen.css file for that selector ("html,body") and make the change I suggested previously, save it and away you go!
Also, if you're having trouble with sizing and positioning your image, check out the Mozilla Developer Network. Here's their info on the background-image property, and you'll find links to other useful properties (background-size, background-position) in the navigation menu.
This is factually wrong.
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2562636
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=2541761
links to two different pages.
You can even have just one link to link to multiple different pages:
Hi. I'm the guy who helped create this. I have absolutely zero evidence to prove my story. The original notebook that Boo wrote in is lost. It's probably in the basement of my parents' house with the rest of my college stuff, but who knows. IIRC, the forum was created using phpBB.
I deleted the boards because I was afraid someone was going to do something stupid and as the "leader" I'd be held legally responsible. (Think Waco) Besides, looking for work, I didn't want my name attached to a new cult for potential employers to find.
That's pretty much it. Take it or leave it. My original point still remains.
Details about lazy loading: https://web.dev/native-lazy-loading/
Here is an extention I found to make it easy. I'm not sure if there are better options. I don't use phpbb. https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/lazyload/
When you download phpBB the hash of the zip you're downloading is right underneath the zip file:
https://www.phpbb.com/downloads/
When you download Tor you can see the PGP signature:
https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy.html.en
Obviously a signature is better than a straight up hash, but either way, it seems like this ought to be done too. When you download a zip from Wordpress you can easily view the signature.
Seems to me like Wordpress could just do that for automatic updates as well. Use PGP signatures. I mean, you can do signatures in any format but PGP seems to be the most popular one for this sort of thing. CMS would be another format but, for whatever reason, people just seem to prefer PGP.
The method that's being proposed here, in contrast, is a lightweight compared to PGP / CMS. The algorithms are fixed. What happens if, five years from now, a weakness is found in the Ed25519 curve? What happens if a newer / better curve is identified and becomes all hip and trendy? Is WordPress 4.7.x to 5.0.x signed with Ed25519 and Wordpress 5.0.x+ signed with BrandNewCurve? Are version ranges for the various algorithms going to have to be hard-coded in the code? Seems like a better approach would be... get the signature, look at the OID of the algorithm used to make the signature and then use that algorithm on the signature. That'd eliminate the need to hard-code the version ranges.
The main page (the one you have linked) looks like plain, static HTML.
The forum is clearly visible being a pre-configured system called phpBB - which uses PHP server side, a MySQL database server-side and HTML/CSS/JavaScript client side (the actual page you see).
The auth page is difficult to tell as it uses a "middleware" component (which hints to Python/Django - but that's wild guessing).
For the forum, you actually don't need anything besides a webserver with PHP and MySQL installed and the <strong>phpbb</strong> forum package. From there, the forum is administered with a back-end that can be reached through the browser - no programming involved unless you want to change the visual representation of the forum and/or add additional functions - in which case, you mostly would need PHP/JavaScript/HTML/CSS.
Generally, PHP and MySQL (or PostgreSQL) are the most commonly used backends for forums.
Yet, I would advise against creating your own forum when you're just starting to learn those languages/databases. There are too many security risks and concerns involved so that putting such a site online for public access is just simply asking for trouble.
Take a PHPBB3 package, install it on a webhost of your choice (most webhosts even offer one-click installers for that) and tinker with it.
PHPBB3 has been around for a long time, is thoroughly tested, frequently updated, highly (and easily) customizable, stable, and easy to alter.
I Think a phpBB Forum would be cool as well, we could divide the different types of posts into forums(E.G. General Discussion, Theories, etc) And this way it is automatically separated. It could link to the IRC, and you could have a set of posts stickied to all pages.
You're asking to build a mansion without even having some lumber or a foundation yet. With no experience, I'd suggest starting with an existing forum software that already implements users and admins and posts and profiles and almost certainly has some kind of badges and such that can be awarded. For instance PhpBB has a plugin for user flairs and badges
Rather than running a server from home on an old laptop, you might want to look into using a VPS. There is no shortage of cheap VPS providers, some for as little as $2.50/mo for the bottom-end machine. It would be a lot easier to spin up/down machines to test and play with, plus snapshots make for a quick and easy rollback when things go sideways. Just a thought, YMMV.
Mastodon by the way is not lightweight. It also involves a number of moving parts, so unless you are deploying a Docker image be aware that setup is not trivial. A phpBB forum should be a pretty straightforward deployment, though.
Are you in the EU?
If not, it doesn't apply to you. Don't worry about it/bother with it.
If you are, you could argue that a forum does not contain information likely to harm a person's "rights and freedoms," and that by nature, nothing in a forum should be construed as personally identifying as it can easily be falsified. Also, given the nature of what you're oing, you could very much argue that you overrule their right to erasure through the archiving exemptions.
See https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2473146 for details.
Interesting idea. Just brainstorming here, but maybe if you installed the auto groups extension (https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/auto_groups/). I think you'll have to find or create a custom rule that adds users who upload an avatar to a custom group. Set permissions so only that custom group has permission to post.
Be careful with this one. This reeks. This person is not spreading knowledge, or wisdom, or anything good. Be wary. I think it is very possible that this is intended as disinfo, and was created and inserted into Icke's forum after the fact. No problem at all to create a new post, change the date and time, add some other comments to make it look legit.
https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/change_post_time/
This guy is trying to do sorcery on you, take away your clarity. Do NOT take in all his BS related to the Mandela effect. Their MO is to take some truth, mix it up with a bunch of nonsense, try to present it as something mysterious. Not worth your time.
This may help. It explains what bbcode is and how it's used. I'm not sure all of the functions listed on this page work with steam, but you can try! https://www.phpbb.com/community/faq.php?mode=bbcode The image related stuff is at the bottom.
You might be over your head with Discourse. In skimming the documentation it definitely doesn't seem like something I'd want to tackle as a first project of this nature. Unless there is something particular about Discourse you need, you might want to consider other options for the sake of not making it too difficult on yourself.
When I was first learning web development, my first real website was similar to what you're saying--a few static pages of a website + a forum. At the time I just knew HTML/CSS which I used to build the static pages and I learned a little about PHP and MySQL from the process of setting up the forums using those things (and then maintaining them over time). It's very possible, just takes some patience and understanding that you might have to compromise on some things at first because you might not have the skills to get everything exactly as you want it immediately. I've used phpBB and SMF for forums, which are not particularly difficult to set up--the documentation and installers are pretty good at holding your hand and yelling at you if something isn't right.
phpBB has a live demo that you can try out for what I had in mind.
I'm sadly behind the times on Wordpress at the moment, but I'm sure you can find some sort of plugin for it.
Freehostia offers a free web site option, and an automatic installer for both Wordpress and phpBB (and other programs you may want to explore). I'd start with them (or a similar site -- I bring up Freehostia because a friend used it for her starter web site (one of the paid tiers) when she first opened her business, and it seemed fairly reliable for her needs). Install a few things, try them out, see what you like.
Let me know if you need a hand.
Wasn't meant to sound blunt, sorry!
I'm a phpBB team member and have contributed a lot to the core: callumacrae
Depends what you mean by jQuery author. I haven't contributed to the core (although I have contributed to related projects such as jQuery Mobile and jQuery++), but I have written about jQuery: my book, <em>JavaScript from jQuery</em>
Since programming doesn't seem to be your forte just yet, why don't you try and follow the setup guide for something like phpBB?
https://www.phpbb.com/support/documents.php?mode=install&version=3
Well I think that Lemmy is probably one of your best options! It gives you the ability to host your on instance on your own server. This means that the host has the ability to guide the culture of the forum.
From a quick search I did find some others though.
Did this answer your question? or am I missing something?
Yes.. that's one of the may reasons I closed up.. Barely any donations that came in.. people felt entitled, and also felt that hey your the one that wanted a site. It's yours. Never had a great base like It-leaked, and KL had where people didn't mind donating. I don't have any sources at all which blows. but, if you want old school release I got you there.
https://www.phpbb.com/community/ be like this.. def won't be like KL style they used a vbulletin
I get your privacy/security concerns, but a couple thoughts:
- Blackmagic Design may not be held to the same stringent security standards as big-name post-production facilities, but they're normally pretty good at keeping up to date with software and drivers for Resolve, so that they'd be running an older version of their forum software would be kinda surprising.
- From a quick google, the version of phpBB a board is running isn't available unless you're an admin of the board. Also, if you got that version number from the CHANGELOG.html file, it may not have been updated when the board was updated.
I'm not sure WordPress is really the best way to go about your needs. At the core, WordPress is a blog, so you'd end up having to get some plugins and modifications to turn it into a forum.. and even then, the traces of the blog elements would still remain.
I used phpBB ( https://www.phpbb.com/ ) a LOT almost a decade ago. Looks like it might still have that sort of "old style"/traditional kind of forum that you mention in a comment. I personally found it fairly simple back then, though I can't really say what the backend looks like now. But you can indeed lock it so that only registered users can access/see the forum.
Another option would be to set up separate forum software, such as phpBB for example.
Then using a plugin such as WP w3all phpBB you can make it a rather seamless experience for users. Users created on one of them are synced to the other, and users only have to log in once to be able to access both the WP site as well as the forum.
Download: https://www.phpbb.com/downloads/
User guide: https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/ug/
User guide on installation: https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3.3/ug/quickstart/installation/#img_quick_installation_intro
I don't know how well this would be received, but what about a phpBB? I know you said you had no interest in learning php, which, fair, but from a cursory inspection phpBB appears pretty plug and play with modules and such freely available. I also know that it can serve reasonably well as a discussion forum since I used to spend many many moons posting on the Nationstates forums.
It makes it easy to separate topics into boards, forums, and threads, which could be nice for Motte discussions. Admittedly it doesn't incentivize effortposting, but I don't know of any forum setups that do incentivize effortposting.
There if a lot of preexisting forum software. I frequent another site that uses phpbb. It's old school and doesn't support threading and upvoting, but it works well for ongoing discussions.
For me it was PHPbb and the ADR mod
Had a friend who ran a fun community there, and it was tons of fun and excitement working with it all.
Assuming you're using phpBB, it's an issue with the config. Here is a support page with options on how to fix it. Could be as simple as adding a letter in the config file or you may need to FTP files over depending on how the board is configured.
> I would also have questions about the privacy policy. All it says is they retain username and email address and data protection laws applicable to country that posts them. But they dont state the country (and ive yet to find a single piece of forum software that does not log ip addresses
I didn't get a chance to write one yet, that's just the phpBB placeholder privacy policy. There is no logging on the entire server, I took precautions to be sure of this. As for phpBB logging, I'm using this: https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/ip_anonymised/
I also don't verify emails or anything at registration, so people can join anonymously through a VPN or TOR.
.onion address will be setup in the near future.
- Step 1: Find out what version phpBB it was running back then
- Download that old version. https://www.phpbb.com/files/archive/
- Get it up and running with that version somewhere easy like on a localhost LAMP server. You need an old version of PHP (5.x?) to do this. PHP 7 will not work.
- Find the upgrade tools to moving from old version of phpBB to 3.2.x. https://www.phpbb.com/downloads/3.2/update (If updating from phpBB 3.1.x then please see this guide for the recommended updating method).
- Migrate the server to PHP 7.2 (7.3 not supported yet).
- Export/Backup the database.
- Install LAMP server on Pi with PHP 7.2
- Import the database you just backed up.
- Install phpBB 3.2.x on Pi.
- Pull out hair at whatever step I missed or messed up on.
This software has always been buggy and it seems like they never fix anything. I changed back to another password manager a couple months ago and wanted to let this account sit around in case something was wrong with my file import. Just went to delete the old account today and I can't.
Their damn forum is using PhpBB 3.0.10 .. they forgot to delete the changelog file from the phpbb installation: https://forums.lastpass.com/docs/CHANGELOG.html
That version of PhpBB is from January 2012! Imagine how many vulnerabilities there are in that software. (release announcement)
That tells me something about how they respect security, and frankly, I just don't trust them with my data anymore. This is a password manager for crying out loud.. it holds the keys to damn near everything in your life. Inexcusable.
/rant
it could take you years to learn the languages you'd need to write an actual forum. php, html, css, js, mysql. Other odds and ends. If youre just trying to get something up and running you'd be better off with a free wordpress account and install a forum or buy hosting and install https://www.phpbb.com/ and your hosting may be able to hook up the backend for you. I've been using all of these languages professionally for over 10 years and im still learning.
Have you considered that wordpress maybe not be the best option then. An easier and more forum features such as moderation, user levels, paid subscriptions for different levels of forum access, Private messaging, user profiles, etc... would be better suited if you use PHPbb, an open source forum software/,script. Plus you can customize anyway you want and there are thousands of themes you can customize as well.
You can find more about it at https://www.phpbb.com/
You can also get it installed easy with sites like Infiniti host or pro free host with unlimited disk space and bandwidth for free. Any hosting site with cPanel or vista panel has softaliocus with is a one click script installer. You just click phpbb and install the script and you are done.
Well, your forum is running PhpBB, so you may want to google on how to add Google Analytics code to that, to see if it may be a setting in the system, or if there is a plugin.
For sites like this, or ones powered by CMS such as Wordpress, etc, you are NOT working with static files that are the same thing that you see when you do View -> Source, they are pieced together from many different sections of their systems.
Best if you can't find something by googling would be to download the complete codebase, and then use a program that can search in all .php files in the root directory (and subs) of the files, looking for key items in nearby structure, not the actual content, not actual links, or URL's (as these may be dynamically generated, and not in actual template files.
So you wold have to figure out what parts of a theme you can see, and possibily find where in that chuck it is outputting the GA code you want to replace, then, trace back through code to find where it is pulling that from, perhaps from a database record, so you can find where to look to update.
Granted, this is something that goes way faster and easier if you have a knack for following code and tracing code. (An actual IDE would make it way easier). For someone like me, I have always had good luck at finding things, but if you are not too familiar with code, then this may just be completely confusing.
Hopefully with the solution will be something easy from search. I jsut did a quick search and found this:
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=729785
So with luck the old owner put it in properly, and didn't just hack files to throw things into main files.
How would I place that final product on a custom HTML page inside phpbb? That's the hard part. MEssing with phpBB breaks literally everything each time you update it and I'd rather now mess with phpbb code again, it's a "insert seven swear words here" to fix. But this https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/pages/ does allow custom html, so I was hoping I could add the map to thois and still have it work.
You could copy the embed code at the top right corner (click on embed image link) on the zoomable site (see screenshot), and paste it on the custom page in the forum.
Or use bbcode https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=693225
Example: [iframe]https://srv2.zoomable.ca/viewer.php?i=imga12ca0cdb153803e_ger_presentations_coe_glacial_landforms_puget_lowland[/iframe]
Now how do I put that on my forum as a custom html page? http://www.kwandrivia.net/ I'd put it as a link on the forum yang this extension https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/extension/pages.
I'd like to have a nice map people on the forum can use.
Among my ten best friends one uses FB at all. My other friends never joined. I have a fake FB account for developing.
I made a password protected phpbb message board for the ten of us. We share pics, comment on threads.. No ads. No leaked info. Easy.
As long as you don't have any hard links (as in, you haven't added any links yourself like 1234.com/phpbb/pagename.php in the HTML templates of any of the pages), you should just be able to move everything from the /phpbb folder to the root folder.
You may have to edit something in the phpBB settings such as forum URL (if that's a thing, not sure) and change "1234.com/phpbb/" to "1234.com/". I'm not sure if this is actually necessary or possible, as I haven't used phpBB in such a long time.
Edit: According to this, that setting (should) be found in: > ACP --> Server Settings --> Script Path --> Change to new directory
Doing it as a learning experience is fine, but such a site coded by a beginner should never go live on the internet. There are too many security concerns involved that a beginner will never be able to cover.
Most likely, you will need to learn backend programming. A backend language, like PHP, Ruby, Python, Java, etc. and databases like MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL.
You will need to learn about session management, about securing your site, etc.
My advice would be to start with a ready system, like PHPBB3 because that is established and constantly updated.
If I'm not mistaken, the source code and/or the API for reddit is public. You could look that up, and it probably comes with some instructions. I think Voat was built off the same code as reddit, with some changes.
If that is too complicated, you might be able to just use/integrate into your site an old school "forum". there are a bunch of free hosting sites for that, and probably some paid options as well. you could also setup and host your own using phpbb. the problem with old school forums is topics go to the top anytime someone replies to them, which isnt always ideal, and can be abused. that might be too simple or easy for your project though.
as for keeping it PG, you will probably have the same issue reddit does, you will need moderators to remove content, and suspend/ban users. if your site gets enough traffic, you will probably need some kind of spam fighting bots too.
Allright.
So the HTML and PHP wrappers are just for sharing HTML and PHP code with users. It converts the code to htmlentities so that it renders the code on an html page without executing it.
Apparently there is no way to alter background colors by way of HTML or background image using phpBB code unless you have access to the CSS.
That entire forum is in reverse type and is extremely hard to read and very tiresome to the eyes for extended periods of time. It's like sitting in an uncomfortable chair that looks cool for 8 hours. A lot of artsy types of people love the dark grey or black background. I see it A LOT with photographers and artists. It works in some cases, it works for short advertising blurbs with an impact but it is horrible for long running copy (or text).
Unless you have access to the CSS or have pull with the admins, you are stuck with that color palette.
This palette would work if you could use the second or third color as a background.
For the forums: I would suggest you to get a suitable VPS for like 20€/mo and run a Discourse forum here. It's much better than anything I've tried so far. It requires you to have some technical knowledge to set it up, but I'm pretty sure you will be able to get someone to configure it at r/slavelabour for few bucks.
If you're looking for the cheapest way, there's PHPBB, which will run on almost any mainstream website hosting. (and there are some free hosts as well)
It doesn't have to be hard. You could just through up a forum (using something like https://www.phpbb.com/) and that hits most of your points.
I guess I don't see how paying someone to do the work for you makes it a hobby or a project.
It looks like you need to learn a whole lot before you're ready to actually build a forum.
There are pre-made, secure and tested solutions like phpbb3 that you can install on nearly every webhost (incuding free ones). Then all you need to do is build (or find) a decent looking template, set up some categories, and be ready to do a lot of user management.
Forums are a bit of a different beast, but most of the big ones are free. It's been a while since I've looked at them, but I believe https://www.phpbb.com/ is still one of the big ones.
Basically you would set it up as a separate application from your wordpress install. That way you would have your wordpress website, with all the static pages (and blog if you wish), and then have a separate forum section. It would be on you to style them in the same way, and set them up to run next to each other.
Although doing this does add a little to the technical bar, most starter website packages have an auto installer for both Wordpress and phpBB, which makes the whole process much easier.
If you're using PHP, why bother re-inventing the wheel?
phpBB is an open source forum written in PHP that has all the functionality of a forum which comes with a login form and administrator panel along with many other features.
They will have also (hopefully) taken care of all the security and email validation etc so you don't have to worry about it
If you want to build a forum, then you would probably need to use a server side programming language. More complicated websites featuring things like forums or blogs are usually achieved by having a program that runs on the server and generates the html pages dynamically. That is why for instance, when you go to reddit, the page is updated with new posts automatically, nobody has to manually update html files. If you want to start learning about server side programming you could take a look at PHP: http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp alternatively you could try to incorporate some third party forum software such as https://www.phpbb.com
I use phpbb it is open source and free. I barely know what I am doing and I was able to successfully implement it on one of my sites so it is not too hard to get going.
Your hosting will need to have the ability to do databses.
When I was making the decision there was another popular option that I forgot what it was called. It was around $100 or so if I remember right though. Someone here will know what it is.
> At least there is a growing public record and awareness that this site is a misogynistic poo pile full of manbaby chunks.
Don't let the door hit your ass then.
Parting gift: software for your own forum (er... echo chamber) where you can dictate the rules.
Probably use something pre-made like PHPBB. It is a pre-made bulletin board/forum solution that can be extended by plug-ins. It uses PHP as a language and MySQL as database in the back end.
> It was rejected on "policy" and not on "principle" there is a difference
Yet you wield no admin power here so it can't be your "official forum"
> Farcraft™ was already legally taken
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
> There are only 2 kinds of posters
Very few things are black and white
> official Farcraft™ forum
Been over this, If you're so desperate to have an official forum, Why not set up a PHPBB install on your domain?
> If you post with the posture of an enemy, I will NOT be treating you as a friend.
Actually, I'm indifferent right now; You can tell me why I should care about "Farcraft™" but accept not everyone will see it as the flawless revolutionary technology you seem to (And that doesn't automatically make them "enemies")
Take an existing forum like PHPBB.
Creating your own forum is not a simple task.
The actual forum and layout are not the problems, but the back end code is.
You need:
- Database management
- Session management
- Security (login security, secure password storage, protection against SQL injection, protection against hacking, etc.)
With only knowledge of HTML5 and a bit of CSS3 you are far from able to even create a dynamic site, save a forum.
For a forum you need at least knowledge of databases, a back end language, a lot about the way HTML pages work together, session handling, security, and much more.
PHPBB3 has worked just fine for me at Nevergrind Forums. It's perfect for discussion within your community, bug reports, feedback, etc.
First of all if you're new to all this then I'd suggest running tournaments through a forum first and gaining experience before you invest in a full blown automated solution.
Have a look at phpBB (https://www.phpbb.com/).
It's free and if you get a host with cPanel (most of them these days) you can install the whole site with a click of a button and there's plenty of free themes too. It'll cost you next to nothing to get started, you can get your feet wet, start building a community and build from there.
There are plenty of plugins for things like live chat, paid memberships and loads more.
Would you be using Joomla though? There are some decent forum frameworks out there (PHPBB for example: https://www.phpbb.com/about/?sid=b923d640260d1107a0246b9af98173fe), or even if we just use phpMyAdmin as a backend for now, and program our website in PHP; and MySQL should be easily compatible if we decide on something else in the long run?
encrypted messaging is almost impossible from what I have read on a forum system, since the forum software has to access the database and would therefor have to have your keys and make it vulnerable. Here is a small discussion about it https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2126812
I think what we need right now is more delegation of work so that we can grow and cultivate the community while the roster grows. This includes:
Forums: would like a place to post links, organize events, talk about WvW strats, or just hang out and get to know everyone in the community better
Officers/class leaders: There is already a small pool of dedicated leaders, I think the pool should grow slightly to compensate for the sheer amount of people in the guild. I know some officers in mumble sometimes grown at the time it takes to weed through new applicants and guild duties limiting the actual 'play' time you have (cough you Porthos).
I will gladly volunteer to setup and administer a forum http://simple-press.com/ or https://www.phpbb.com/downloads/ As well as helping on the application process.
As far as the application process, I think all of your options have their pros and cons, I am partial to options 2 or 4.
Xandivh