Invision Power Board v1.3.1 Archive (w/ Working Docker)

Introduction

This is a archive of Invision Power Board I found sitting round in one of my backups. For archival and educational sake I decided to upload it here along with a working docker instance. Fun fact, this is technically the last free version of Invision before it became a paid product back in 2003. With that being said, this code isn't mine, I didn't write it, and I do not own it. It's here for you all to enjoy a blast from the past and to be able to do so on modern hardware.

⚠️ Security Warning ⚠️

This is very much legacy software written in PHP 4 syntax and only runs correctly under MySQL 4 You should not for any reason run this software on a production server. I don't even know why you would to be completely honest. If you're looking for bulletin board software there are plenty of modern day and updated platforms you can use such as:

Modern Types:

• Flarum https://flarum.org/
• Discoruse: https://www.discourse.org/

Classic Types:

• phpBB https://www.phpbb.com/
• MyBB https://mybb.com/
• vBulletin https://www.vbulletin.com/ (Non-Free)
• Invision https://invisioncommunity.com/ (Non-Free)

Developer Notes

The contents of /public have been modified to work with PHP 5.4 to remove call-time pass-by-reference. Furthermore, the docker adds a prepend file to php.ini to add back in variables that were removed in this version. You can find this prepend file in the docker/http/php folder as prepend.php. Upgrading to PHP 7 or 8 isn't an option without a lot of refactoring.

The MySQL 4 instance was built with the help of this archive: https://github.com/andrebossi/mysql4. However, it has been heavily modified to fit the use case of this archive. Upgrading to MySQL 5 or above (or Maria) isn't an option without a major refactor of the queries used and switching the DB engines away from MyISAM. They also did a lot of integer assignments with empty strings <.<;

Directory Items

• /docker - Contains docker build items
• /src - Contains unmodified source files from the original archive including install documentation and tools.
• /public - The invision board source files for the docker instance. (Modified, More Later)
• package.json - NPM/NodeJS package file used strictly for easy commands.

Install Requirements

• Docker
• Docker Compose
• (Optional) NodeJS / NPM

Building and Starting Instance

Option 1: Yarn

yarn docker:up

Option 2: NPM

npm run docker:up

Option 3: Shell Commands

docker build -t invision:mysql ./docker/mysql && docker build -t invision:http ./docker/http && docker-compose up -d

Installation

1. Go to http://127.0.0.1/sm_install.php
2. Start the installer
3. Use the following values for the configuration:

• Script URL: http://127.0.0.1
• SQL Host:
  • If you have legacy docker-compose invision_mysql_1
  • If you have modern docker-compose invision-mysql-1
  • If you don't know, do a docker ps and check the NAMES column.
• SQL Database Name: ivboard
• SQL Username: root
• SQL Password: Aq1Sw2De3
• Admin Username: admin
• Admin Password: password
• Email Address: root@localhost

4. Click proceed and keep clicking through until you get to the login screen.
5. Great Success! You should have an instance of invision board running.

Screenshots