PhpBB: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Summary

phpBB is a popular free/open source forum system using the PHP scripting language and a variety of database management systems:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• MSSQL
• Microsoft Access (for small loads)
• Oracle (with modification)

Besides the database support, phpBB's greatest advantages are:

• A complete, easy-to-use templating system allowing rapid customisation
• Full internationalisation support, with 54 translations available at the time of writing (possibly the most translated forum software available)
• Large community of users providing gratis support
• Large community of users producing gratis, open source modifications to the official code

• 1.4.x (obsolete) - 1.4.4: November 6, 2001
• 2.0.x (stable) - 2.0.10: July 17, 2004
• 2.1.x (development) - 2.1.2: August 27, 2003

See also: Software Development

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 (both now former team members) joined the development team after phpBB went into sourceforge CVS, and work on 1.0.0 began. A fully-functional, pre-release version of phpBB was ready by July 1, 2000 [1].

phpBB 1.0.0 was released on December 16, 2000, with subsequent improvements to the 1.x codebase coming in two more major installments. (phpBB 1.2.0 was released on February 16, 2001 and 1.4.0 on April 25, 2001.) 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 (now lead developer), Johnathan Haase (now a former team member) and Frank Feingold joined the team.

phpBB 2.0.x was begun on February 17, 2001. It was developed entirely from scratch; the developer's ambitions for phpBB had outgrown the original codebase. Doug Kelly (now a former team member) joined the team shortly afterwards. After a year of development and extensive testing, phpBB 2.0.0, the "Super Furry" version, was released on April 4, 2002 (three days later than intended). The latest release in the 2.0.x line was 2.0.10 ("Murphy is furry"), on July 17, 2004. [2] Releases in the 2.0.x line are now restricted to bug and security fixes, and 2.0.x is the only line for which support is currently given.

See also: phpBB History (2000-2002)

With the new 2.0.x codebase in a stable state, the development team (now including Ludovic Arnaud and Meik Sievertsen) have begun building upon and altering the codebase to produce 2.1.x; when 2.1.x reaches production quality, it will be released as 2.2.0. The improvements in 2.1.x to date are comparable with the improvements between 1.4.x and 2.0.x, though 2.1.x is a continuation of the 2.x line while the 1.4.x to 2.0.x move represented a clean break.

Improvements Due in 2.2.x

The 2.1.x codebase is not yet feature frozen, and the developers are prone to keep some features up their sleeves. However, an incomplete list of additional (over 2.0.x) features expected for 2.2.0 follows.

• DBMS (DataBase Management System) support widened
  • Firebird
  • SQLite
• Friend/Foe lists
• Forum model overhauled
  • Forum rules can be given for each forum, either as text or a URI
  • Link forums added (redirecting to a specified URI)
  • Styles can be set on a per-forum basis
  • Subforum functionality added; subforums can be nested without limit.
    • Categories are now a type of forum; forums are added to them as subforums
• Performance significantly improved, partially by removing PHP3 compatability
• Permission system reworked
  • Automatic groups
    • "Administrators"
    • "Bots"
    • "Guests"
    • "Registered Users"
    • "Registered COPPA Users"
    • "Super Moderators"
    • "Unapproved Users"
    • "Unapproved COPPA Users"
  • Fully atomic permissions; control even the abilites of administrators
  • "Super Moderators" added, for easier creation of a board-wide moderation team
• Private messaging reworked
  • Custom message boxes
  • Draft messages
  • Filters
  • Multiple recipients
  • Tracked conversations
• Templating system overhauled
  • Caching of compiled templates
  • Images in a style can now be switched by changing the "imageset".
  • Online style editor added to the admin panel
    • Choose images to form an imageset
    • Edit CSS-based themes
    • Edit HTML-based templates, and store the changes on the filesystem or in the database
• Topic/post system overhauled
  • Add attachments
  • Copy topics
  • "Global" announcements, displayed in all forums
  • Icons for topics
  • Move (merge) multiple posts into another topic
  • Posts can be automatically placed in a "moderation queue" for approval
  • Report posts to moderators