Knowledge Base

A knowledge base for phpBB: articles organised in categories, with attachments, Markdown or BBCode text, revisions, an approval workflow, search, and its own permission system, all managed from the ACP.

Screenshots

The flat article index (the default)	Hierarchical category browsing
An article	Knowledge Base block in the board search

More screenshots, including the article form, the approval queue and the ACP settings: docs/images/screenshots.

Installation

1. Copy the extension to: /ext/phpbbmodders/knowledgebase
2. In the Administration Control Panel, navigate to: Customise → Manage extensions
3. Enable the Knowledge Base extension
4. Configure it under Extensions → Knowledge Base

The Knowledge Base follows each member's board style. It starts as a flat article index (one list of every article, with a category dropdown); hierarchical category browsing and an optional colour stylesheet (a bundled one, or your own CSS file) are set on the same ACP page; see the styling guide.

A search of the board also shows the matching articles in a Knowledge Base block above the forum results, with an Also search the Knowledge Base option in the advanced search. Switch the block off, or set how many articles it lists, under Extensions > Knowledge Base > Search.

Upgrading from the original sheer/knowledgebase extension? See Upgrading from the original: your data carries over.

Attachments are stored under store/phpbbmodders_knowledgebase/files/ in the board's own folder, with the rest of phpBB's data, so they stay when the extension's folder is replaced to upgrade it. The folder is made when the extension is enabled and has its own .htaccess. That only works on Apache - nginx ignores .htaccess entirely, and phpBB's installation notes already ask nginx users to block the store/ folder. If yours does not, add an explicit deny rule for it in your server config, e.g.:

location ~ ^/store/ {
	deny all;
	return 403;
}

Common problems

"The Knowledge Base's upload folders ... could not be made writable automatically"

A red message at the top of Extensions > Knowledge Base > Configuration. The extension keeps attachments, and uploads that are still in progress, in store/phpbbmodders_knowledgebase/files/ and its plupload/ folder, inside phpBB's own store/ folder. It makes them when it is enabled, and again whenever that page opens. It cannot when the web server's user is not allowed to write in store/, which phpBB needs on every board, or in store/phpbbmodders_knowledgebase/ when someone else made that folder first (for example to put a custom stylesheet in it).

Give store/ to the user your web server or PHP runs as (www-data on Debian and Ubuntu, apache on Fedora and CentOS, nginx on some nginx setups), from the board's root folder:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data store
sudo chmod -R 775 store

Without shell access, set the store folder and everything in it to 775 with your FTP program (777 only if your host allows nothing else). Reload the Configuration page: the message goes away as soon as the folders can be made. Attachments that earlier versions kept in ext/phpbbmodders/knowledgebase/files/ are moved across when the extension is updated; any that could not be moved stay in that folder and keep the old problem, so run the commands above and disable and enable the extension again.

Automated testing

See Testing for local regression tests and disposable MySQL/PostgreSQL fixtures. The current GitHub workflow runs coding and extension validation checks, not these regression tests.

TODO

Ideas not yet built, practical and speculative alike: docs/TODO.md.

Acknowledgments

Based on the original knowledgebase extension by sutrus (Zdenek Kamenik), itself building on earlier work by Sheer's Knowledge Base extension.

• Code review, bug fixes, and documentation assisted by Claude.
• Code review, bug fixes, and documentation assisted by Codex.

License

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v2