Forum Post Assistant

Documentation
and Help

The Forum Post Assistant (FPA) script has been developed to assist Joomla!® forum posters to be able to post relevant system, instance, PHP and troubleshooting information directly in to a pre-formatted forum post. This will save a few hours of posting back and forth, asking for, and explaining how to acquire useful information in order for other forum users to help troubleshoot a problem.

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Quick Start Guide

A quick 8-point guide to get you started with FPA. This guide assumes that your are already familiar with common internet tools and applications.

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Administrator Guide

A more comprehensive guide covering all FPA features & functions which may be useful for inexperienced users, but may include more information than the average user requires.

alarm_on Quick Start Guidechevron_right

The Quick Start Guide assumes that you are familiar with general internet and web-based activities such as, File Compression utilities, File Transfer software (FTP), Hosting Control Panels, Web Bowsers and Posting in the Joomla! Forum.

info The Forum Post Assistant is a manual installation process, it does not install using the Joomla! installer.

Step filter_1

cloud_download Download the FPA package

Download the latest FPA release from this site, or access any beta releases if preferred from the FPA Project on Github.

Step filter_2

unarchive Extract the FPA package

Extract the FPA package file (.tar.gz or .zip) with your Operating Systems utility or an installed compression application.

  • apps Required Resources
    Compression/Archive Utility, such as;
    Windows Extract Tool, Linux/Unix Tar/Zip Utility,
    WinZip, 7-Zip, PeaZip

Step filter_3

trending_up Upload the FPA script file

Locate the fpa-en.php file in the unarchived FPA Package folder and transfer or copy it to your sites web-root (/) directory.

The same location where you see the "administrator/" folder and configuration.php file.

Step filter_4

devices Run the FPA script

Go to your domain, appending the FPA script to the URL: https://www.domain.tld.cc/fpa-en.php.

Review the FPA on-screen report, it may have highlighted your problem already.

  • apps Required Resources
    Internet Connection
    Web-Browser

emoji_objectsTIP: WinSCP Users - uncheck/disable "Preserve Timestamp" in the session options to avoid auto-delete issues.

Step filter_5

view_list Generate FPA post data

Click the Click Here To Generate Post button, or choose options and then click the Generate Post button to build the Forum Post data.

  • apps Required Resources
    Internet Connection
    Web-Browser

Step filter_6

file_copy Prepare your forum post

Copy the Forum Post BBCode Output from FPA. Login to your Joomla! Forum account and create a new forum post or a reply to an existing post.

  • apps Required Resources
    Internet Connection
    Web-Browser
    Joomla! Forum Account

emoji_objectsTIP: If privacy is a concern, please sanitise the post data before publicly posting to the forum.

Step filter_7

settings Forum post settings

Click 'Full Editor & Preview' and go to the Options tab. Select 'Disable smilies'. Make sure that 'Disable BBCode' is not selected.

  • apps Required Resources
    Internet Connection
    Web-Browser
    Joomla! Forum Account

Step filter_8

forum Post the FPA output data

Paste the previously copied FPA content in to your post or reply and click the 'Submit' button.

  • apps Required Resources
    Internet Connection
    Web-Browser
    Joomla! Forum Account

FPA Project Notices & Errata

Developers & Contributors

The FPA script has been developed by, and is copyright of the following contributors;

Russell Winter, Phil DeGruy, Claire Mandville, Sveinung Larsen & Bernard Toplak. Visit the FPA Github Project.

bug_report Found A Bug?
Report An FPA Bugchevron_right Report A Docs Bugchevron_right
Documentation Licensing

Forum Post Assistant documentation is developed by, and copyright the FPA Project and published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. NO WARRANTIES ARE GIVEN. The FPA Project and it's members are not responsible for any ommisisons, errors or innacuracies.

You may Share and Adapt our documentation with Attribution under ShareAlike licensing with No additional restrictions applied, even commercially.

FPA Licensing & Disclaimer

Forum Post Assistant script comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software; and covered under the GNU GPLv2 or later license.

You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. For details read the LICENSE file included in the download package with this script. A copy of the license may also be obtained at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.