Official support for phpBB2 ended on January 1, 2009, and the 2.0.x support forums have been locked. Furthermore all development for phpBB2, including security patches, has ceased as of February 1, 2009.[27] Other information pertaining to phpBB2 on the phpBB.com website will be removed over the coming months and phpBB2 will likely be fully phased out by the second half of 2009. However, a number of unofficial support sites for phpBB2 have formed to fill the void and will likely continue supporting phpBB2 indefinitely.

Many administrators still prefer to run phpBB2 because it provides a much simpler administration interface and has a thriving ecosystem of MODs (modifications) and styles that allow admins many options for customising the software to their liking. Others still run phpBB2 because they have installed many MODs, none of which can function in phpBB3.

The default theme in phpBB2 is named subSilver, and was designed by Tom “subBlue” Beddard. At the time that it premiered in 2001, it was a revolutionary new design for bulletin boards[citation needed], and many bulletin board themes since have borrowed many cues and design elements from subSilver.

Some of phpBB2′s major features included the following:

• A templated style system intended to allow easy customisation that keeps the PHP code separate from the HTML.
• Support for internationalisation through a language pack system; 48 translations are available for phpBB2 as of 2007.
• Compatibility with multiple database management systems including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Access,
• Easy customisations, including MODs and styles.

The last official release of the 2.0.x line is 2.0.23, released on February 17, 2008. However, the code for phpBB 2.0.24 still remains, unreleased, in the SVN repository.

About PhpBB

phpBB is a popular Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is a free software. phpBB was started by James Atkinson as a simple UBB-like forum for his own website …

Some of phpBB3′s major features include:

• Modular design for the Admin Control Panel, Moderator Control Panel, and User Control Panel
• Support for multiple database management systems, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Firebird, OpenLink Virtuoso, and other ODBC-accessible DBMS
• Support for unlimited levels of subforums
• Ability to create custom-defined BBCode
• Ability to create custom profile fields
• Permissions system

phpBB3 also provides administrators with much more control over every aspect of the forum software, such as how it is displayed to management of user and group permissions. Consequently, this increased functionality makes the administrative interface much more complex, and new users have found it somewhat more intimidating than phpBB2.

phpBB3′s default theme is called prosilver. During phpBB3′s long development process, prosilver was kept a heavily guarded secret from the public in order to prevent premature copying of the theme and so that it would not spoil the “wow” factor upon the final release of phpBB 3.0.0; however, the unexpected website downtime of March 2007 prompted the teams to change plans and unveil the new theme early. prosilver includes a number of new design concepts over its predecessor subSilver, including a new admin panel without HTML frames and reduced use of HTML tables. One of the more contentious decisions has been to move the user info panel on the viewtopic page to the right in order to provide more focus on the post content phpBB3 does not allow the use of HTML tags in comments. An alternate default theme called subsilver2 comes bundled with phpBB, which is based on the default theme from phpBB2 called subSilver. However, an administrator must install it on the board manually before it is accessible to users.

The phpBB Development Team quietly pushes out release candidates of minor updates of phpBB3 for “quality assurance testing” prior to general release. These candidates are intended to prevent the possibility of significant bugs being produced by minor updates, thus causing a subsequent critical update to be released within days of the original. (This scenario happened twice during the 2.0.x line and once during phpBB’s release candidate stage in 2007.) A mailing list is open to anyone interested in testing these “quality assurance” releases when they are available.

The latest in the 3.0.x line is phpBB 3.0.4, the “one year anniversary” version, code named “Olympus”, released on December 12 2008. phpBB3 requires PHP 4.3.3 or later and is fully compatible with PHP 5.

Other Information

• phpBB is a popular Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name “phpBB” is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. Available under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is a free software. phpBB was started by James Atkinson as a simple UBB-like forum for his own website …

Links

• Download phpBB Olympus

phpBB was started by James Atkinson as a simple UBB-like forum for his own website on June 17, 2000. Nathan Codding and John Abela joined the development team after phpBB’s CVS repository was moved to SourceForge.net, and work on 1.0.0 began. A fully functional, pre-release version of phpBB was made available in July.

phpBB 1.0.0 was released on December 9, 2000, with subsequent improvements to the 1.x codebase coming in two more major installments. The final release in the 1.x line was phpBB 1.4.4, released on November 6, 2001. During the lifetime of the 1.x series, Bart van Bragt, Paul S. Owen (former co-manager of the project), Jonathan Haase and Frank Feingold joined the team. phpBB 1.x is no longer supported and virtually no websites continue to use it.

In February 2001, phpBB 2.0.x began development entirely from scratch; the developer’s ambitions for phpBB had outgrown the original codebase. Doug Kelly joined the team shortly afterwards. After a year of development and extensive testing, phpBB 2.0.0, dubbed the “Super Furry” version, was released on April 4, 2002, three days later than intended.

Work on phpBB 3.0.x began in late 2002. It was originally intended to be released as phpBB 2.2, and the first planned feature list was announced on May 25, 2003.[4] However, as development progressed, the developers realised that phpBB 2.1.x (the development release cycle for 2.2) had eliminated virtually all compatibility with the 2.0.x line, the version number for release was changed to 3.0.0, in keeping with the Linux kernel versioning scheme. In September 2005, Paul Owen resigned as the Development Team Leader and Meik Sievertsen was promoted to the role.

In March 2007, the phpBB teams had planned to undergo a short round of server maintenance, however the server crashed during the outage, suffering a double-disk failure and causing phpBB.com to be down for the full week. (The phpBB teams indicated that phpBB, the software, was not the cause of the outage.) However, due to the unexpected outage, the teams decided to change their original plans and launch their brand new website, powered by phpBB3 and the new prosilver theme. This was a big surprise to most, as the theme had been a heavily guarded secret, never before seen by the public, and was originally not intended to be revealed until the final release of phpBB 3.0.0. Initial feedback was split, with many applauding the new theme and others criticising a number of new design decisions, particularly the decision to display the user info on the right side of the viewtopic page (phpBB2′s subSilver theme had displayed it on the left).

On April 30, 2007, phpBB founder and co-Project Manager James Atkinson officially resigned from his duties towards phpBB, citing personal circumstances. With the announcement also came the announcement that phpBB was now newly independent, and that the team leaders would be collectively taking charge of the decisions in the future of the project. At the end of May, an announcement was made that Jonathan “SHS`” Stanley, the other co-Project Manager, was stepping down as well for personal reasons.

On July 7, 2007, the teams announced that phpBB had been nominated as a finalist for the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards in the category of “Best Project for Communications”. At the end of the month, SourceForge.net announced that phpBB had won the award for “Best Project for Communications”, and in honour of the award, SourceForge.net donated $1000 in phpBB’s name to Marie Curie Cancer Care. phpBB also won a “Thingamagoop” from Bleep Labs, and “bragging rights for a full year.”

On September 6, 2007, the teams launched an official phpBB podcast. It was recorded by a rotating group of phpBB team members with occasional guests, and discussed a number of phpBB-related topics, as well as answering questions e-mailed in from listeners.

The first beta of phpBB3 was released in June 2006, and the first release candidate was released in May 2007. The phpBB3 codebase received an external security audit in September, which was done by SektionEins. Finally, phpBB 3.0.0 “Olympus” (also dubbed the Gold release) was published on December 13, 2007.

The teams launched a new phpBB weblog in July 2008. The blog is written by phpBB team members on various topics related to phpBB and provide users with a unique inside look at the activities of the phpBB teams.

The phpBB teams held their first-ever phpBB users conference in London on July 20, 2008, which was titled “Londonvasion 2008.” Londonvasion featured presentations by phpBB team members on various topics important to the phpBB community, MOD authors, and developers. Londonvasion provided a unique opportunity to socialise with members of the phpBB teams. The event also represented the first time that most members of the teams had a chance to meet each other in person.

More on PhpBB

• phpBB2 was the predecessor of the present-day phpBB3. Developed during 2001-2002, the source code was written primarily to run on PHP 3.0 and 4.0 (version 2.0.13 upped the minimum requirement to PHP 4.0.3 due to a necessary security fix), and by the time that phpBB3 was released in late 2007, …
• phpBB3 is the current stable version of phpBB. Following over three years of development and an eighteen-month beta/release candidate stage, it went gold on December 13, 2007. Some of phpBB3′s major features include: Modular design for the Admin Control Panel, Moderator Control Panel, and User Control Panel Support for multiple database management systems, …

Other Information

• Developed by  The phpBB Group
• Stable release  3.0.4  (December 12, 2008)
• Written in  PHP
• Available in  Multilingual
• Type  Internet forum
• License  GNU General Public License

Links

• Website  http://www.phpbb.com/
• Downloads
• PhpBB Mods
• PhpBB Knowledgebase
• PhpBB wiki