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

Basic Plone system resources

To run Plone web site you need

* Some kind of machine (preferably Unix server, Windows works too) which is connected to Internet 24/7

* Ability to run arbitary daemon (background) processes on the server
* Ability to open arbitary ports. Zope wants to open its own port for incoming requests.
* Shell account for installing Plone + Zope and running control software

One could say that you need server root privileges to run Plone, though it’s technically possible without root privileges if the web hosting provider co-operates with you. Also, Plone gulps quite much RAM memory. Read more about it below. You might want to use virtual server, real server or Zope specific host company to run Plone web site, since most low end web hosting solutions don’t provide enough flexibility to run Plone. Google for “plone hosting” or “zope hosting”. One example company providing resourceful Zope hosting in Europe is Nidelven IT.

Plone performance measuring and caching

Plone doesn’t use any CPU when no pages are being loaded (in idle state).

When a page is being loaded, CPU usage maxes out to 100% per thread.

Because Plone CPU usage varies with the load, it’s useful to requets per seconds metric instead of CPU usage % to measure how much load the system can take.

Caching

Caching means that instead of regenerating the web page for each individual request, an old copy is kept lying around in memory/on disk and is served for consequent requests. Since the same once generated data is recycled, we improve performance by not going a long process of fetching data from a database, fitting it into page templates and finally converting to HTML.

Without caching, Plone is not suitable for heavy traffic sites (more than few visitors per minute).

Static caching

Here I use term ‘static caching’ for a method where the whole site is kept in the cache and real-time modified content is available for certain users only. This method is suitable for company web pages and other, closed, non-interactive content.

Pros

* Very easy to set-up
* Very efficient

Cons

* The site cannot have dynamic content (e.g. discussion) or other content which anyone could update

The easiest way to do static caching is to put a front end server at the front of Plone. The front end server takes all requests and caches them over a certain time period until it fetches new content from the server.

The most popular ways are using Apache web server’s mod_proxy module and Squid proxy.

With Apache 2 caching site content using mod_proxy, speed increase drastically (x 100). This is because pages are served directly from memory cache, instead of being regenerated each time a request is made. You should find plenty of tutorials from plone.org/documentation and Google how to put Apache 2 to the front of Zope to cache requets.

Also, Apache’s mod_deflate plug-in can used to GZip compress HTML, JS and CSS code before sending it over the wire. Most of desktop web browsers support GZip’ed content. This decreases bandwidth requirements, since HTML and other text based content compresses well.

Dynamic caching

Plone 2.5 ships with an add-on product called Cache Fu. Cache Fu allows fine tuned control of caching

* Caching only static items with a front end cache (Apache/Squid)
* Increasing Zope database performance by tuning internal database object caches
* Setting HTTP headers so that user web browsers itself cache the content propeply

Pros

* Propeply set up Cache Fu ensures that live content is always up-to-date (thus, the name dynamic caching), but static content is served at the maximum possible speed

Cons

* Setting up Cache Fu needs insight to HTTP request mechanisms and Plone internals

For more information see the documentation supplied with Cache Fu.

Note that Zope doesn’t reserve all memory on boot up. You need to browse around the site to make page loads and you can see memory usage increasing (until every page is load).

Spikes and Python memory management

When you upload a big content object (e.g. a high resolution image) Python memory usage spikes up since Python needs to allocate memory for processing the image. This image might not never freed back to the system and thus task manager utilities like top report Python to plenty of memory. However, this memory is not actively used and it’s swapped out. Read more about Python memory allocation.

Zope packing

Zope database stores information for all object revisions (each edit, delete) for undoing changes. Unless you want to have ability to track down each change, you can pack Zope database now and then to decrease it’s size. It can be done via Zope management interface control panel.

Source :

Jadu, the Web Content Management vendor, has released a product that will help bridge the gap between PHP and .NET software development languages. The company’s Phalanger PHP compiler will allow PHP applications to be compiled into the .NET framework.

This new product from Jadu will help bridge the gap between .NET, a common application framework found in corporate environments, and PHP, the most popular web programming language found on open source web services on the Internet. As a result, companies should be able to shave off application development costs.

Go to Source

Microsoft is making several announcements at the show, including new customer adoption for the Microsoft Interactive Media Manager (IMM) solution with Abertis Telecom; adoption of Microsoft Silverlight by European broadcasters and the upcoming inclusion of additional codecs such as H.264 and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) in the Silverlight plug-in; and developments for the Microsoft Mediaroom Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and multimedia software platform including the Microsoft Mediaroom Advertising Platform (MAP), Mediaroom Migration Program and an interactive TV application developed by emuse technologies using British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) content, which will be demonstrated for the first time at the show.

“The industry is in a race to see who can deliver the most exciting experience and monetize multiple digital distribution channels, while still managing their content and business as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible,” said Gabriele Di Piazza, managing director for the Media and Entertainment Business in the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “As well as facing the unique challenges created by the ever-expanding worlds of digital media and the Internet, media and entertainment companies need to ensure that the basic but critical operations are efficiently supporting and providing useful insights into their core business, rather than draining time and resources away from it. That’s why companies in this industry are focusing on content and business management just as much as on content creation and delivery.”

Digital media delivery requires media and entertainment companies to manage a variety of complex customer and partner engagements. Microsoft provides the tools to help them manage their assets across the many different facets of their business, including broadcast resources, licenses, program schedules and libraries; traditional and digital advertising; supply chain management; and customer relationship tracking.

Digital Content Creation and Management

Microsoft solutions enable media companies to create rich media content and, in doing so, to better manage production workflows across multiple systems and departments. Abertis Telecom S.A. and Microsoft are working together on the development of a new service for management and distribution of TV content over the Internet on Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation. This platform, created as an Abertis Telecom initiative, is specially created for management of distribution of digital terrestrial television channels and content over the Internet, with an innovative presentation environment. The Abertis Telecom service is utilizing Microsoft IMM as the backend workflow solution to acquire and manage digital content.

Digital Content Delivery and Monetization

Microsoft announced that Microsoft Silverlight, a cross-browser multiplatform plug-in for delivering media experiences and rich interactive applications on the Web, continues to gain momentum. Silverlight adoption by major media, broadcasting and content companies has continued to grow, including innovative new VOD offerings from TF1, RTL, France Television, iTV and MSN UK, and live and on-demand sports channels from L’EquipeTV and Setanta. Microsoft also will preview H.264 and AAC playback support in Silverlight, together with Microsoft Expression Encoder H.264 authoring and Windows Server 2008 for delivery.
“Using Silverlight, we are very excited to be able to offer the same advanced features and high-quality video to customers both on Windows and Mac browsers,” said Pierre Brossard, CEO of TF1. “Through visual and tactile navigation of content and playback in a Silverlight rich media environment, the TF1 Vision service will provide a true online interactive VOD experience available to the vast majority of broadband users. In addition, through Microsoft’s announced support for mp4 standard formats in Silverlight, we’ll be able to easily repurpose existing libraries of H.264 and AAC content and extend the future reach of our service to an ever-growing market of mp4-capable devices.”
Microsoft is also announcing developments for its Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV and multimedia platform including the following:

• Mediaroom Advertising Platform. This new adjunct offering lets service providers deploying Microsoft Mediaroom offer targeted, measurable and interactive advertising spots all from one comprehensive platform.
• Microsoft Mediaroom Migration Program. This new program helps IPTV operators migrate to Mediaroom from first-generation platforms.
• An interactive application developed by emuse technologies uses content from the BBC. IBC2008 is the platform for first public viewing of a new application that shows how the BBC’s original journalistic content, including news, sports and weather could look using the Mediaroom platform.

FAST, a Microsoft subsidiary, is demonstrating the flexible and scalable FAST Enterprise Search Platform (ESP), which allows organizations to create unique user experiences and change the way people interact with information by uncovering new revenue streams, improving business decisions and increasing productivity. FAST is working with the U.K. national news organization Times Online to index, search and ultimately monetize 200 years’ worth of The Times content online, from 1785 to 1985, including 20 million articles, photographs, advertisements and letters to the editor from such figures as Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx. The system has a high-quality response time, aiming for two seconds per search, as well as the ability to completely re-index the archive within 24 hours to accommodate new content or topic structures.

Finally, following the release of the Windows Media Center TV Pack this summer, Microsoft is now announcing the delivery of a new worldwide platform for broadcast TV on the PC, Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA), which enables the PC-TV hardware ecosystem to integrate virtually any free or premium TV service into Windows Media Center while satisfying the TV industry’s requirements for strong content protection for pay TV. Leading companies rallying behind PBDA at the show include AVerMedia Inc., Buffalo, Hauppauge Computer Works Inc., I-O Data Device Inc., NEC Electronics Corp., NXP Semiconductors and ViXS Systems Inc. Continuing to underscore Microsoft’s commitment to broadcast TV on the PC, Windows Media Center and Hauppauge also will demonstrate the U.K.’s first Freeview-certified PC tuner solution, which utilizes the new PBDA platform.

Microsoft at IBC2008

The Microsoft exhibit at IBC2008 will feature a full range of solutions from Microsoft and its partners, spanning content creation and management, media business management and monetization, and digital content delivery. Siemens IT Solutions and Services will demonstrate an industry-specific approach based on the Microsoft business intelligence (BI) platform, to provide a full view of the core creative and business control activities within a broadcast organization. S4M (Solutions for Media) will showcase its all-in-one broadcast management system based on Microsoft’s latest business management software, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. In addition to those products and solutions, there will be demonstrations of Microsoft Expression Studio and Microsoft Atlas Publisher Suite, as well as offerings from partners including Avanade, focusing on a media supply chain management solution based on Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Performance Point, and Conchango, (an EMC Corp. company) demonstrating an end-to-end video publishing platform combining different Microsoft technologies such as Silverlight and Internet Information Services (IIS). On the TXT Polymedia media stand, TXT will also demonstrate its Media in a Box solution, a new online video publishing solution based on the Microsoft technology platform.