Information AboutPhpbb |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT PHPBB | |
| free internet forum software | |
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phpBB is a popular Internet Forum package written in the PHP programming language. The name "phpBB" is an abbreviation of ''PHP Bulletin Board''. Available under the GNU General Public License , phpBB is Free Software . HISTORY 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's CVS repository was moved to the SourceForge , and work on 1.0.0 began. A fully-functional, pre-release version of phpBB was made available on July 1 2000 .http://forums.devshed.com/showthread.php?threadid=4914 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), Johnathan Haase (now a former team member) and Frank Feingold joined the team. phpBB 1.x is no longer supported by the phpBB teams, and very few websites still use it. 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, dubbed the "Super Furry" version, was released on April 4 2002 , three days later than intended. phpBB forum post covering history from 2000–2002 Though initial releases supported PHP 3, recent versions of phpBB 2.0 require PHP version 4.0.3 or above. phpBB2 is not officially supported with PHP 5. Nonetheless, phpBB developers have altered the code to function better in such environments.http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=211009 phpBB statement regarding PHP5 phpBB 3.0.x began in early 2007 . phpBB3 RC1 Release Announcement The phpBB teams have indicated that once the final release of phpBB 3.0.0 goes public, they will continue to support phpBB2 and phpBB3 simultaneously, although it is unknown how long this will last. Following the final release of phpBB 3.0.0, it is likely that the 3.0.x line will also be restricted to bug and security fixes only, and the development team will begin work developing phpBB 3.2. In March 2007 , the phpBB teams had planned to undergo a short round of server maintenance, March 2007 Server Maintenance Announcement 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. New website launch announcement 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 "theFinn" 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 . Community Choice Awards 2007 Winners CCA Winners Blog Post on SourceForge.net phpBB also won a "Thingamagoop" from Bleep Labs , and bragging rights for a full year. phpBB's post on winning the Community Choice Award PHPBB2 phpBB2 is the older of the two packages supported by the phpBB teams. It contains far fewer features than its younger counterpart, phpBB3, and also includes an older codebase, supporting PHP 4.0.3 and later. Although most users report no problems running it on PHP 5, the phpBB teams currently do not officially offer support for this configuration. However, 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. Some administrators still run phpBB2 because they have installed so many MODs that they cannot upgrade their board without resetting it. 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, and many bulletin board themes since have borrowed many cues and design elements from subSilver. The latest release in the 2.0.x line is 2.0.22 which was released on December 23 2006 . phpBB 2.0.22 Release Announcement Releases in the 2.0.x line are now restricted to bug and security fixes only. Some of phpBB2's major features include the following:
Support for phpBB2 can be obtained in the official phpBB2 Support forum . Full documentation , flash tutorials , and a knowledge base are also available. PHPBB3 phpBB3 is the next major release of the phpBB bulletin board system. It is currently in Release Candidate cycle, and although it is close to final release, it is not fully stable. However, the phpBB teams are now offering full support for the use of phpBB3 on public bulletin boards. It contains many more features than its older sibling, phpBB2, and it also provides administrators with much more control over every aspect of the forum software, from how it displays to what user and group permissions are. However, this increased functionality makes the admin interface much more complex, and new users have found it 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 Frames and reduced use of 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. A phpBB3 port of the subSilver theme is included with the phpBB3 package and dubbed subsilver2, however an administrator must install it on the board themselves before it is accessible to users. The latest in the 3.x line is phpBB 3.0 Release Candidate 5, released on August 24 2007 . phpBB3 requires PHP 4.3.3 or later and is fully compatible with PHP 5. Some code is also present to allow the software to run on PHP 6.0.0-dev, however this is not supported. Some of phpBB3's major features include:
The phpBB website includes a non-exhaustive list of phpBB3 features . Support for phpBB3 can be obtained in the official phpBB3 Support forum . Full documentation , flash tutorials , and a knowledge base are also available. FUTURE DEVELOPMENT The phpBB teams are currently focusing on completing phpBB3 and releasing it to the public. Once they have finished, the Development Team will begin working on phpBB 3.1.x, the development line for phpBB 3.2. Planned features have not yet been announced. The phpBB teams maintain a website for phpBB development at Area51 . MODS MODs are code modifications created by the phpBB community. The term is capitalised to distinguish modifications from Forum Moderator s. Modifications referred to in this manner are not authored by the phpBB developers, and do not enjoy the same level of support as unmodified official code. The phpBB MOD Team accepts modifications from community sources for validation, and modifications which meet the MOD Team's standards are made available for download from the phpBB MOD Database . Other sites also provide phpBB2 and phpBB3 modifications for download. Some of the sites have their own standards which they validate to, and other sites do not do any validation, however the phpBB teams do not offer support for boards using MODs downloaded from sites other than phpBB.com. SECURITY In December 2004, a large number of Web sites were defaced by the .http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=267563 phpBB 2.0.13 release announcement However, the phpBB Team usually responds to security reports as soon as possible, and releases a new version quickly. The phpBB Group has also learned from a series of security issues, and phpBB 2.0.18 was released following a codebase security audit.http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=336756 phpBB 2.0.18 release announcement Additionally, many things have been changed in phpBB2 to avoid problems in the future, including many features backported from the phpBB3 codebase. Among those are a re-authentication system for the administration panel (introduced after a cookie verification issue allowed attackers to gain administrator accesshttp://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=292017 Explanation of changes in phpBB 2.0.15), a visual confirmation system ( CAPTCHA ) to prevent bots from registering, as well as the substitution of the highlighting code, which was the cause for critical vulnerabilities in phpBB 2.0.10 and 2.0.15. In order to keep boards as secure as possible, administrators are urged by the teams to keep their board updated to the latest version. On November 23 2005 , the phpBB Group announced a new Incident Investigation Team (IIT), a sub-team of their Support Team, which is responsible for assisting users in the cleanup and repair of an attacked phpBB installation and investigating reports of new exploits. Announcing the Incident Investigation Team from the phpBB.com community forums The team announced a tracker the following January where administrators of attacked bulletin boards could report an attack and receive support from the IIT.http://www.phpbb.com/incidents/ The CAPTCHA system in phpBB2 has proven vulnerable to automated registrations, with numerous phpBB-based forums being swamped by spam registrations. Due to the feature freeze, the antispam solutions have to be installed separately. The phpBB team has published recommendationshttp://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=427852 Preventing SPAM - Bots and Humans on protecting the boards from spam. At the moment, the best method is to use a question-answer challenge, implemented by Textual Confirmation or Registration Auth Code MODs. PhpBB3 has a much stronger CAPTCHA system, however during the phpBB3 development/beta phase it was frequently criticised for being difficult to read.[21 The development team, however, has been working on improving its readability prior to phpBB3's final release. SEE ALSO REFERENCES FURTHER READING
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