Unable to reply while editing a post

[sinfulosd]

When you're replying to a post, you're presented a window down there to quote a reply, in case if you want to answer to something specific:

Screenshot 2026-06-29 205449.png

But when you're editing a post, in case if you want to include a reply (Just happened to be right now), you don't get to be presented the same window to reply to a quote

Screenshot 2026-06-29 205639.png

Is this intentional, or did I just submit a bug that is supposed to be fixed anytime now?

[Moonchild]

It's just not the way the post editing screen is designed. It's outside of the "reply/quote/new post" flow.
Not really much that can be done about it.

[athenian200]

Well, I know what you're talking about, but I just always accepted it as a limitation of phpBB. I do have a workaround, though.

I open a new tab with the thread in it, and I click on the post I want to quote there. It takes me to the new post creation screen. Then, I make sure to quote any other posts I want from there as well, if I want to quote more than one. Finally, I copy all the text from the new post creation screen, and go back to my tab that was editing an existing post, and paste all that into the post I was editing. Now I'm quoting people in a post I'm editing.

In a lot of cases, though, it's not even needed because I can just put quote tags around the relevant part of someone else's post and rarely need to quote the whole thing anyway. The only time I'd need the workaround is if I explicitly want my quote to link back to their post, if I just quote it with their name and some words it usually isn't needed to the same degree.

If you think this is a bug, you'd likely have to tell phpBB, not us. And even then, it might take us a while to get onto a newer version.

[Moonchild]

If you think this is a bug, you'd likely have to tell phpBB, not us. And even then, it might take us a while to get onto a newer version.

I have no real interest in moving to phpBB's latest as it breaks several things that just work on our forum.
So, even if they would be interested in it, it's unlikely to make it onto here.

[sinfulosd]

I have no real interest in moving to phpBB's latest as it breaks several things that just work on our forum.

Why not report every single bug that you encounter? Bugfixing is a main part of every software and I think they'd appreciate it if you'd point out all the breaking changes.
And excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't there be a risk of vulnerabilities being exploited if you use an older version of PhpBB?

[athenian200]

Why not report every single bug that you encounter? Bugfixing is a main part of every software and I think they'd appreciate it if you'd point out all the breaking changes.
And excuse my ignorance, but wouldn't there be a risk of vulnerabilities being exploited if you use an older version of PhpBB?

As far as I know, older forum software can be kept semi-secure if you keep updating it to work on newer and newer versions of PHP... most of the security risks would come with running an outdated version of PHP itself to keep the older software alive, if a person goes that route. Though don't quote me on that, I'm not 100% confident in my knowledge of the security side of things.

The thing about forum software is, there's not a whole lot to it really... a good chunk of the logic is contained in an SQL database, and a lot of the security side dealt with by server software. All the forum software does is sit server-side as a PHP layer that translates database entries into usable HTML for clients, and then in turn accepts submissions from clients and turns them into database entries the server can store.

Off-topic:
In theory, someone could probably write a desktop application that does what a forum does and which only requires the server to provide a database and handle authentication, maybe transmitting only the requested data after checking the user has permissions to see it, with all the rendering stuff handled client-side and no need to download assets or generate HTML server-side when a user makes a request. Sort of like a hybrid cross between a newsgroup and a forum, I guess.

[UCyborg]

I also made the habit of opening second tab to get the quotes from with all metadata, I just can't not quote that way with preserving metadata, my brain simply demands that level perfection in that regard.

[Bilbo47]

Off-topic:

... a desktop application that [acts as a forum front-end] and only requires the server to provide a database and handle authentication, maybe transmitting only the requested data after checking the user has permissions to see it, with all the rendering stuff handled client-side and no need to download assets or generate HTML server-side when a user makes a request.

Oooh, great idea! One's client can be used against all visited instances of PhpBB, so the theming is self-directed and not dependent on that server's theme. Set your forum switches only once, so all sites behave that way. Cool thinking

[Lucio Chiappetti]

Not sure I understand what the OP wants.
My habit in replying to posts (and the same when replying to e-mail) is either press the Reply button (with no quotes) ansd writing my reply (what I'm doing now) OR press the button with the big quotes. This reports the message within quote tags. I then delete the parts of the quotation I'm not using, and eventually split the quotation in more parts adding manually quote tags, and interleaving my replies. In the case I wish to write a reply with quiotations from different messages, I start a reply to each and copy the text and quote tags I'm interested in to a scratchpad. Then I abort the replies, and paste the various quotes from scratchpad.
With essy manual editing you can achieve whatever you want.

I use the same mechanism for e-mail (where quotations are replaced by > suffix)

[BenFenner]

The thing about forum software is, there's not a whole lot to it really...

As someone who has spent the last 10 years developing forum software, I find this sentence mildly/wildly offensive.

On a serious note, I get that you're mostly talking about this from a security stand-point. Even then though, there is a lot to consider in the raw PHP code itself irrespective of the PHP version and such. It is blindingly easy to write horribly insecure PHP in hundreds of subtle or glaringly obvious ways. Just look at the most famous PHP application there is for countless examples. Trust me, you can write a simple PHP web application and suffer from crippling security issues that would make Windows 95 look secure by comparison.

a good chunk of the logic is contained in an SQL database

I do not believe that to be true. This makes very little sense. There is likely almost zero logic contained in the database. It is there for storage after-all. If you're putting logic in the DB you're in trouble. I get that the schema and design and architecture of the DB does encompass some logic, and other subtle things that are real logic even if also purely storage, but what you've said here really just makes no sense.

and a lot of the security side dealt with by server software.

For that network layer, sure. But for the next network layer, it's all the application code, and there are countless security mistakes to be made there as well.

All the forum software does is sit server-side as a PHP layer that translates database entries into usable HTML for clients, and then in turn accepts submissions from clients and turns them into database entries the server can store.

That is correct, in the same way it is correct to say that all life on Earth does is sit organic-side as a carbon-based layer that translates energry from one form to another, and then in turn propagates itself. [There's really nothing to it! ]

[Moonchild]

While the simplified idea that the PHP code is just interfacing HTML to a storage back-end (and providing novel ways to query the database and present data from it) is correct, I definitely wouldn't want web clients to be allowed to talk to a database back-end directly. While you can have considerable code inside a database (sorry Ben! but modern databases are a lot more than just data storage), having the PHP/html layer between the user and the database is quite necessary, if for nothing else but to sanitize the requests.

Given that though, a piece of forum software does indeed have a fairly straightforward task and it's not even as much of an issue running an older version of it (or PHP for that matter) if it's sufficiently mature. There are e.g. still plenty of phpBB v2 instances out there and that hasn't seen any updates for I don't know how long. PHP is interesting in that any vulnerability in it is only exploitable insofar as the vulnerable methods are actually exposed via php code to clients.

[athenian200]

That is correct, in the same way it is correct to say that all life on Earth does is sit organic-side as a carbon-based layer that translates energry from one form to another, and then in turn propagates itself. [There's really nothing to it! ]

Off-topic:
Well, to be fair, I was kind of oversimplifying my idea because. The real idea would essentially be more like a modern version of NNTP. And designing an entire protocol that dictates how forum clients have to authenticate themselves to interact with a database within certain limits rather than just making raw queries would be IETF-level work. Work that a lot of people wouldn't want to do because things like Mastodon and the AT Protocol already exist and are good enough for "modern audiences," plus my version of it wouldn't include a web-based interface and would be designed to avoid generated HTML and server-side PHP scripts, basically cut down on web traffic by only transmitting some kind of JSON in response to properly validated requests and letting the client handle rendering.

Not saying it's realistic, but it's something I think could have existed if social media had never been a thing. However, few enough people prefer forums that those left who do are stuck messing around with server-side PHP like it's the early 2000s. It's just another one of those areas where I see ways a more traditional design could have been improved if enough people cared, but instead we seem stuck between modern designs that cater to people with totally different tastes, and just keeping the old stuff hobbling along doing things the way it always has, changing only when forced for security reasons. Let's face it, I'm one of those people that wants to see older concepts taken to new places and done in different ways... I'm weird like that, don't mind me.

The point is, this isn't actually dismissing your 10 years of experience. If you are developing a web-facing forum designed to be used with a web browser today... all of that experience is valid, and nothing new is coming down the pipe anytime soon if ever. If I wanted someone to give me best practices on how to maintain a forum as it exists today, I'd call you. If I wanted someone to come up with a new protocol that could reduce server load and move a lot of stuff into a dedicated client while still providing forum-like functionality 5 to 10 years from now, that's just fundamentally not the same project.

[moonbat]

Off-topic:

things like Mastodon and the AT Protocol already exist and are good enough for "modern audiences,"

I'm assuming this is a (well deserved) dig at modern audiences; I could never understand how Twitter and its open source descendants that these are - could ever possibly be a substitute for proper forums and blogs.

[BenFenner]

While you can have considerable code inside a database (sorry Ben! but modern databases are a lot more than just data storage), having the PHP/html layer between the user and the database is quite necessary, if for nothing else but to sanitize the requests.

Regarding logic/code in the DB:
Yes, of course that is a thing. And I was being much too general in my comment. What I should have said is that if you're working with 2000s-era forum software and you find this paradigm* then something crazy is going on.

*Heavy logic in the DB (many triggers, and more?) or stored code in the DB (lines of PHP code to be executed other than a background/aysnch process queue).