Heavily customized fork of TinyIB imageboard software. Improved in some features, degraded in others.

Key differences:

• No images and other files support (here's why)
• Better look and feel. No extra shiny designs, just a consistent layout both on desktop and mobile
• Fixes for bugs and legacy behaviour, overall code improvement

See also:

• Why no images
• Why PHP
• List of changes
• Original README

Must have:

• PHP 8.3+

Optional:

• GD Image Processing Library
  • Required when CAPTCHA is set to 'gd'
• cURL Library
  • Required when CAPTCHA is set to 'hcaptcha' or 'recaptcha'
• SQLite3 Database Extension
  • Required when DB mode is set to 'sqlite3'
• PHP Data Objects Database Extension
  • Required when DB mode is set to 'pdo'

Note: optional libraries and extensions listed above are usually already installed and enabled by default on shared hostings or ships with PHP packages

1. Make sure your hosting or server meets requirements above
2. Create a new working directory to run the software
3. Obtain this source code by git or just downloading full ZIP archive
4. Copy settings.default.php to settings.php
5. Review and configure settings, follow comments
6. Start PHP (if you need to) and navigate to your-site.org/board.php

It is possible to run TinyIB for development under Windows:

Obtain a PHP:

• (recommended) From Scoop installer: scoop install main/php
• (manually) From official site: windows.php.net/download

Find a php.ini configuration:

• C:\Users\$Env:UserName\scoop\persist\php\cli\php.ini (when installed via Scoop)
• C:\php\php.ini or somewhere else, use file search or something (for other cases)

Uncomment gd extension to run a 'gd' CAPTCHA:

extension=gd ; This line should NOT start with semicolor ;

In TinyIB directory, create settings.php by copying settings.default.php, and then set these values:

• AE_TRIPCODE_SEED
• AE_ADMIN_PASSWORD

Run the command from TinyIB directory:

php.exe -S localhost:8080

Navigate to http://localhost:8080/board.php in a web browser.

That's right and here's why:

• It's relatively difficult to maintain files-uploading code, with all of its MIME handling, thumbnails, metadata extracting, etc. At least in the original TinyIB code. Seriously, it's a LOT of code
• In most of modern imageboards, images (and other file) uploading is, ironically, a pointless feature. Go to any imageboard and see for yourself - why all these pictures? To express a reaction or share a funny meme? Seems useless to me, sorry
• Someone can easily upload a NSFW (or worse, CP) image and get a site taken down via abuse report. Sad but it's a common practice in some places
• On the top of that, one can always use an external images (or other files) source like Imgur, ImgBB, Catbox, lots of them

Yes, I hate PHP too, but here's the thing: it's still the easiest tech to just drop and run your site. There are tons of providers that host PHP, paid ones, free ones, any rate and pricing.

There are services like Heroku or Fly.io but even those aren't as easy as "drop a file" PHP way. Besides that, such services are still an exception rather than the rule. Most hosting providers offer just a VPS that you have to set up manually.

VPS is cool, but seems like overkill for a small (even tiny) anonymous discussion board. So yes, for now we're still stuck with a PHP.

TinyIB is created by Trevor Slocum. You can obtain a copy of TinyIB source code at codeberg.org/tslocum/tinyib.

This code is loosely based on older well-known imageboards software such as GazouBBS (画像BBS) and Futaba Channel (ふたばちゃんねる).