PhpBB
Encyclopedia
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 free and open source software
.
Features of phpBB include support for multiple database engines (PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server), flat message structure (as opposed to threaded), hierarchical subforums, topic split/merge/lock, user groups, multiple attachments per post, full-text search, plugins and various notification options (e-mail, Jabber
instant messaging, ATOM feeds).
-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 version 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 16, 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. 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, so the version number for release was changed to 3.0.0, in keeping with the Linux kernel
versioning scheme, which phpBB followed at the time. 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 with the new prosilver style. This was a big surprise to most, as the style 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.
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."
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.
In September 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. However, the podcast only lasted for a few episodes and production ceased the following spring. Its successor is generally considered to be the new phpBB weblog, which launched in July 2008. The blog is written by phpBB team members (with occasional guest posts by community 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.
The phpBB teams underwent numerous changes in 2009. On January 1, the teams formally ended support for phpBB2. Many of the non-development teams released betas and release candidates of side projects during this time. The first beta of AutoMOD, an automatic installer of phpBB MODifications, was released by the MOD Team on December 22, 2008. The first release candidate of the Unified MOD Install Library (UMIL), a framework for allowing MOD authors to design simple database installation scripts, was released by the MOD Team on January 12, 2009. The first release candidate of the Support Toolkit, a package of tools to diagnose and fix common support-related issues with phpBB, was released by the Support Team on June 24.
On June 10, 2009. the phpBB Development Team broke with their precedent of keeping future development plans under wraps and publicly previewed a series of new features that would be coming in phpBB 3.0.6. After four RC releases, phpBB 3.0.6 was released on November 17. The most notable new features included a bare-bones quick reply editor (a feature which the teams had historically been firmly opposed to), support for ACM (cache
) plugins, ATOM feed support, and a plugin-based CAPTCHA
system, including built-in support for reCAPTCHA
among others. The modularization of phpBB's CAPTCHA also provided an API for MOD authors to write CAPTCHA plugins, allowing for greater diversification of the CAPTCHAs used in phpBB installations. The MOD Team also ran a competition to encourage CAPTCHA plugin development.
On July 29, 2009, the Development Team announced "significant changes" to the phpBB's development process and release cycle. Chief among these was the decision to abandon the former Linux kernel
versioning scheme, meaning that whether part of the version number was even or odd no longer was significant. As such, Ascraeus (the successor to 3.0.0 Olympus) is to become phpBB 3.1.0. (The original versioning scheme dictated that 3.1.x would be a development branch, meaning that Ascraeus would have been released as 3.2.0.) Subsequent feature releases of phpBB3 will be versioned as 3.2.0, 3.3.0, etc. phpBB 4.0.0 will represent a fundamentally redesigned version of phpBB. The strategy also committed the teams to continue supporting an older "stable" branch for at least 6–9 months after a newer "feature" branch was released. However, an exception was made for 3.0.6 which was already in development. Although it contained enough significant new features that it could have been considered a 3.1.0 release, it remained a part of the 3.0.x branch, which also meant that the teams did not have to simultaneously continue supporting 3.0.5 after 3.0.6's release.
In January 2010, Meik Sievertsen stepped down as Lead Developer, instead taking on the roles of developer and "Server Manager". Nils Adermann was then promoted to Lead Developer.
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, the developers and other team members felt that it no longer met their quality coding standards, and announced plans for the retirement/end of support of 2.0.x within a few months of 3.0.0's release. phpBB2 was never officially supported under PHP 5. Although many users had no problems running it after making a few changes to PHP 5's default configuration settings, the teams chose not to offer support for this configuration.
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. 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 are compatible with 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, and many bulletin board themes since have borrowed many cues and design elements from subSilver.
Some of phpBB2's major features included the following:
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 Git repository.
plugins, ATOM
feeds, support for new cache
plugins (XCache, Alternative PHP Cache, eAccelerator
, Memcache, and a "null" no-cache plugin), and quick reply (an often-requested feature by a subset of phpBB users) among other minor feature additions. phpBB 3.0.6 has had four RC releases and its final release was on November 17, 2009.
The Development Team has begun working on phpBB 3.1, formerly phpBB 3.2. (Before July 29, 2009, phpBB followed the original Linux kernel versioning scheme, in which the middle number represents a development version if it is odd and a stable version if it is even). The developers previewed their planned feature list at Londonvasion, and new features include a complete overhaul of the Moderator Control Panel (MCP) and moderation capabilities, implementation of AJAX
where it is applicable and helpful, a trigger-based event system, a completely rewritten BBCode
system, RSS
feed support, enhancements to custom profile fields, enhancements to private messaging, a new authentication
system with OpenID
support, and numerous other small changes and features. The phpBB teams maintain a website for phpBB development named Area51. In keeping with the tradition to codename every new phpBB3 release after Martian mountains, phpBB 3.1 will be code-named "Ascraeus," named after Ascraeus Mons
, the second-tallest mountain on Mars
. (Olympus Mons
, which 3.0 was named after, is the tallest.)
In addition to development of phpBB 3.1, other phpBB teams also are in the process of developing numerous other tools for use by the community. Development for these tools was followed on the phpBB Code Forge, which contained the Subversion repositories for these tools and the main phpBB development trunk. In March 2010, phpBB moved source code versioning from Subversion to Git
.
-based document format developed by the phpBB MOD Team that is used to describe the steps required to modify the source code of a web application in order to install a modification. Although it can theoretically be utilised for any web application, it was developed for and is primarily used by MODs for phpBB. The phpBB MOD Team requires that all phpBB3 MODs submitted to its MOD Database utilise the specifications and packing standards of the latest version of MODX, though most other phpBB MOD database sites do not make this an absolute requirement. The primary purpose of using an XML-based format is to better allow automatic installation tools (see below) to read and complete the installation instructions. However, MODX files can also be viewed in a web browser
using an included XSL
. The latest revision of the MODX spec is 1.2.3, released on September 27, 2009. is Resources and documentation on MODX can be found in phpBB's MODX Resource Centre.
Final version of AutoMOD is 1.0.0, released on June 7, 2010. AutoMOD can be downloaded from the AutoMOD information page and support can be obtained in the AutoMOD support forum.
AutoMOD is the successor to EasyMOD, a tool for phpBB2 which was also developed by the phpBB MOD Team and performed essentially the same task. The latest version of EasyMOD is 0.4.0, released on June 30, 2008. Support and downloads for EasyMOD can be obtained in the EasyMOD support forum.
. UMIL is GPL licensed and the latest version is 1.0.1. It can be downloaded from the UMIL page. To create a UMI-file automatically, a MOD author can use the Unified MOD Installation File creation tool.
worm, which used vulnerabilities in outdated versions of phpBB2 to overwrite PHP and HTML pages. Although these were the result of outdated versions of PHP and phpBB, incidents like these have caused the security of phpBB to be disputed. There have also been a few times where new releases of phpBB have come out a few days apart, although the last occurrence of this was in early 2005. However, the phpBB Team usually responds to security reports as soon as possible, and releases a new version quickly. The phpBB Group, attempting to learn from previous failures, performed a codebase security audit before the release of 2.0.18. The phpBB3 codebase received an external security audit in September 2007, which was done by SektionEins. The sixth release candidate of phpBB3 was published following the results of the security audit.
Additionally, many things have been changed in phpBB2 to avoid problems in the future, including many features backported from the phpBB3 codebase. Among those is a re-authentication system for the administration panel (introduced after a cookie verification issue allowed attackers to gain administrator access).
In November 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. The team announced a tracker the following January where administrators of attacked bulletin boards could report an attack and receive support from the IIT.
The CAPTCHA
system in phpBB2 has proven vulnerable to automated registrations, with numerous phpBB-based forums being swamped by forum spam
. phpBB3 has improved its anti-spam options available to forum administrators, including a new CAPTCHA system, suspensions, user logging and other various features. The phpBB team has published recommendations on protecting the boards from spam. Currently the best method is to use a Q&A (question-answer) challenge, which was introduced into phpBB 3.0.6. phpBB3 has a much stronger CAPTCHA system, however during the phpBB3 development/beta phase it was frequently criticised for being difficult to read. The development team has been working on improving its readability prior to phpBB3's final release.
Additionally, the teams have announced that each minor release of phpBB3 (3.0.1, 3.0.2, etc.) will be preceded by individual release candidates in an effort to prevent instances where subsequent releases would be only days apart (as happened a couple of times during the 2.0.x line).
In light of the success of their London meetup and in an effort to help with bridging the gap between team members and community members, on October 12, 2008, NeoThermic announced the creation of a new board on phpBB.com, "phpBB Events and Meetings." The phpBB community has been long plagued with members that have a lack of willingness to meet up like other projects such as WordPress
. Encouraging casual meet ups, the success of the board is quite debatable due to its nature and difficulty for people to get involved to make meetups work. The majority of meetups posted there never get past asking if there is any interest in meeting up, however there are some such as an OSCON
meetup in San Jose California, Germany, Indonesia, and Scotland, among many others.
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
package written in the PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
scripting language
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
. The name "phpBB" is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board. Available under the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
, phpBB is free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
.
Features of phpBB include support for multiple database engines (PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server), flat message structure (as opposed to threaded), hierarchical subforums, topic split/merge/lock, user groups, multiple attachments per post, full-text search, plugins and various notification options (e-mail, Jabber
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol
Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML . The protocol was originally named Jabber, and was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999 for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging , presence...
instant messaging, ATOM feeds).
History
phpBB was started by James Atkinson as a simple UBBUBB.classic
UBB.classic was an Internet forum software package originally written by Ted O'Neill of Social Strata, Inc. in 1996. It was written in Perl and used a flat file database...
-like forum for his own website on June 17, 2000. Nathan Codding and John Abela joined the development team after phpBB's CVS
Concurrent Versions System
The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...
repository was moved to SourceForge.net
SourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
, and work on version 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 16, 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
Paul S. Owen
Paul S. Owen was a co-project manager and lead developer of the phpBB project. He joined development in December 2000 soon after version 1.0.0 of phpBB was released...
(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
Codebase
The term codebase, or code base, is used in software development to mean the whole collection of source code used to build a particular application or component. Typically, the codebase includes only human-written source code files, and not, e.g., source code files generated by other tools or...
. 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.
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
versioning scheme, which phpBB followed at the time. 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 with the new prosilver style. This was a big surprise to most, as the style 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.
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
SourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
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
Marie Curie Cancer Care
Marie Curie Cancer Care is a charitable organisation in the United Kingdom which provides nursing care, free of charge, to terminally ill people, giving them the chance to choose to be cared for at home...
. phpBB also won a "Thingamagoop" from Bleep Labs, and "bragging rights for a full year."
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.
In September 2007, the teams launched an official phpBB podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
. 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. However, the podcast only lasted for a few episodes and production ceased the following spring. Its successor is generally considered to be the new phpBB weblog, which launched in July 2008. The blog is written by phpBB team members (with occasional guest posts by community 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.
The phpBB teams underwent numerous changes in 2009. On January 1, the teams formally ended support for phpBB2. Many of the non-development teams released betas and release candidates of side projects during this time. The first beta of AutoMOD, an automatic installer of phpBB MODifications, was released by the MOD Team on December 22, 2008. The first release candidate of the Unified MOD Install Library (UMIL), a framework for allowing MOD authors to design simple database installation scripts, was released by the MOD Team on January 12, 2009. The first release candidate of the Support Toolkit, a package of tools to diagnose and fix common support-related issues with phpBB, was released by the Support Team on June 24.
On June 10, 2009. the phpBB Development Team broke with their precedent of keeping future development plans under wraps and publicly previewed a series of new features that would be coming in phpBB 3.0.6. After four RC releases, phpBB 3.0.6 was released on November 17. The most notable new features included a bare-bones quick reply editor (a feature which the teams had historically been firmly opposed to), support for ACM (cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
) plugins, ATOM feed support, and a plugin-based CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade...
system, including built-in support for reCAPTCHA
ReCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA is a system originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University's main Pittsburgh campus. It uses CAPTCHA to help digitize the text of books while protecting websites from bots attempting to access restricted areas. On September 16, 2009, Google acquired reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA is currently...
among others. The modularization of phpBB's CAPTCHA also provided an API for MOD authors to write CAPTCHA plugins, allowing for greater diversification of the CAPTCHAs used in phpBB installations. The MOD Team also ran a competition to encourage CAPTCHA plugin development.
On July 29, 2009, the Development Team announced "significant changes" to the phpBB's development process and release cycle. Chief among these was the decision to abandon the former Linux kernel
Linux kernel
The Linux kernel is an operating system kernel used by the Linux family of Unix-like operating systems. It is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software....
versioning scheme, meaning that whether part of the version number was even or odd no longer was significant. As such, Ascraeus (the successor to 3.0.0 Olympus) is to become phpBB 3.1.0. (The original versioning scheme dictated that 3.1.x would be a development branch, meaning that Ascraeus would have been released as 3.2.0.) Subsequent feature releases of phpBB3 will be versioned as 3.2.0, 3.3.0, etc. phpBB 4.0.0 will represent a fundamentally redesigned version of phpBB. The strategy also committed the teams to continue supporting an older "stable" branch for at least 6–9 months after a newer "feature" branch was released. However, an exception was made for 3.0.6 which was already in development. Although it contained enough significant new features that it could have been considered a 3.1.0 release, it remained a part of the 3.0.x branch, which also meant that the teams did not have to simultaneously continue supporting 3.0.5 after 3.0.6's release.
In January 2010, Meik Sievertsen stepped down as Lead Developer, instead taking on the roles of developer and "Server Manager". Nils Adermann was then promoted to Lead Developer.
phpBB2
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
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, the developers and other team members felt that it no longer met their quality coding standards, and announced plans for the retirement/end of support of 2.0.x within a few months of 3.0.0's release. phpBB2 was never officially supported under PHP 5. Although many users had no problems running it after making a few changes to PHP 5's default configuration settings, the teams chose not to offer support for this configuration.
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. 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 are compatible with 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, 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 PHPPHPPHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
code separate from the HTMLHTMLHyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
. - Support for internationalisation through a language pack system; 48 translations are available for phpBB2 as of 2007.
- Compatibility with multiple database management systemDatabase management systemA database management system is a software package with computer programs that control the creation, maintenance, and use of a database. It allows organizations to conveniently develop databases for various applications by database administrators and other specialists. A database is an integrated...
s including MySQLMySQLMySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, PostgreSQLPostgreSQLPostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
, Microsoft SQL ServerMicrosoft SQL ServerMicrosoft SQL Server is a relational database server, developed by Microsoft: It is a software product whose primary function is to store and retrieve data as requested by other software applications, be it those on the same computer or those running on another computer across a network...
, and Microsoft AccessMicrosoft AccessMicrosoft Office Access, previously known as Microsoft Access, is a relational database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is a member of the Microsoft Office suite of...
, - Code and interface customisations, termed 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 Git repository.
Future development
On June 10, 2009, phpBB's Development Team revealed that the next phpBB3 release, 3.0.6, would include a significant number of new features. This is unusual for a minor release which is typically limited to bug and security fixes. New features would include support for new CAPTCHACAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade...
plugins, ATOM
Atom
The atom is a basic unit of matter that consists of a dense central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of negatively charged electrons. The atomic nucleus contains a mix of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons...
feeds, support for new cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
plugins (XCache, Alternative PHP Cache, eAccelerator
EAccelerator
eAccelerator is a PHP accelerator derived from the MMCache extension for the PHP programming language. eAccelerator provides a bytecode cache. eAccelerator is open source and thereby free to use and distribute. Old and unmaintained versions also provided an encoder.Every time a PHP script is...
, Memcache, and a "null" no-cache plugin), and quick reply (an often-requested feature by a subset of phpBB users) among other minor feature additions. phpBB 3.0.6 has had four RC releases and its final release was on November 17, 2009.
The Development Team has begun working on phpBB 3.1, formerly phpBB 3.2. (Before July 29, 2009, phpBB followed the original Linux kernel versioning scheme, in which the middle number represents a development version if it is odd and a stable version if it is even). The developers previewed their planned feature list at Londonvasion, and new features include a complete overhaul of the Moderator Control Panel (MCP) and moderation capabilities, implementation of AJAX
Ajax
- Mythology :* Ajax , son of Telamon, ruler of Salamis and a hero in the Trojan War, also known as "Ajax the Great"* Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, ruler of Locris and the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War.- People :...
where it is applicable and helpful, a trigger-based event system, a completely rewritten BBCode
BBCode
BBCode or Bulletin Board Code is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards. The available tags are usually indicated by square brackets surrounding a keyword, and they are parsed by the message board system before being translated into a markup language that web...
system, RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
feed support, enhancements to custom profile fields, enhancements to private messaging, a new authentication
Authentication
Authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or entity...
system with OpenID
OpenID
OpenID is an open standard that describes how users can be authenticated in a decentralized manner, eliminating the need for services to provide their own ad hoc systems and allowing users to consolidate their digital identities...
support, and numerous other small changes and features. The phpBB teams maintain a website for phpBB development named Area51. In keeping with the tradition to codename every new phpBB3 release after Martian mountains, phpBB 3.1 will be code-named "Ascraeus," named after Ascraeus Mons
Ascraeus Mons
Ascraeus Mons is a large shield volcano located in the Tharsis region of the planet Mars. It is the northernmost and tallest of three shield volcanoes collectively known as the Tharsis Montes. The volcano's location corresponds to the classical albedo feature Ascraeus Lacus.Ascraeus Mons was...
, the second-tallest mountain on Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. (Olympus Mons
Olympus Mons
Olympus Mons is a large volcanic mountain on the planet Mars. At a height of almost , it is one of the tallest mountains in the Solar System, three times as tall as Mount Everest and more than twice the height of Mauna Kea the tallest mountain on Earth. Olympus Mons is the youngest of the large...
, which 3.0 was named after, is the tallest.)
In addition to development of phpBB 3.1, other phpBB teams also are in the process of developing numerous other tools for use by the community. Development for these tools was followed on the phpBB Code Forge, which contained the Subversion repositories for these tools and the main phpBB development trunk. In March 2010, phpBB moved source code versioning from Subversion to Git
Git (software)
Git is a distributed revision control system with an emphasis on speed. Git was initially designed and developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. Every Git working directory is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full revision tracking capabilities, not dependent on...
.
MODs
MODs are code modifications created by the phpBB community, often used to extend the functionality of or change the display of phpBB. The term is capitalised to distinguish code modifications from forum moderators, the latter of which is often abbreviated as mods. 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, headed by David Colón (known as DavidIQ in the community), 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. Documentation for phpBB3 MODding is provided by the MOD Team.MODX
MODX is an XMLXML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
-based document format developed by the phpBB MOD Team that is used to describe the steps required to modify the source code of a web application in order to install a modification. Although it can theoretically be utilised for any web application, it was developed for and is primarily used by MODs for phpBB. The phpBB MOD Team requires that all phpBB3 MODs submitted to its MOD Database utilise the specifications and packing standards of the latest version of MODX, though most other phpBB MOD database sites do not make this an absolute requirement. The primary purpose of using an XML-based format is to better allow automatic installation tools (see below) to read and complete the installation instructions. However, MODX files can also be viewed in a web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
using an included XSL
Extensible Stylesheet Language
In computing, the term Extensible Stylesheet Language is used to refer to a family oflanguages used to transform and render XML documents....
. The latest revision of the MODX spec is 1.2.3, released on September 27, 2009. is Resources and documentation on MODX can be found in phpBB's MODX Resource Centre.
AutoMOD
AutoMOD is a tool developed by the phpBB MOD Team that parses and automatically installs phpBB3 MODs distributed in the MODX format. Users simply have to upload the contents of a MOD download to their phpBB source directory and run AutoMOD, which will parse the MOD instructions and make the necessary file changes. Depending on the server configurations, it will either automatically merge the changes into place using FTP, or will create a compressed archive of the changed files for the user to copy into place. AutoMOD is also used by the MOD Team members during validation to ensure that the MODX files are valid and the MOD can be successfully installed on a vanilla phpBB installation.Final version of AutoMOD is 1.0.0, released on June 7, 2010. AutoMOD can be downloaded from the AutoMOD information page and support can be obtained in the AutoMOD support forum.
AutoMOD is the successor to EasyMOD, a tool for phpBB2 which was also developed by the phpBB MOD Team and performed essentially the same task. The latest version of EasyMOD is 0.4.0, released on June 30, 2008. Support and downloads for EasyMOD can be obtained in the EasyMOD support forum.
Unified MOD Installation Library (UMIL)
The Unified MOD Installation library is a library designed to simplify the installation and uninstallation of the database side of MODs., It is designed to be useful for configuring the forum for the new MOD, performing database actions such as adding and removing tables and columns, and purging the forum's cacheCache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
. UMIL is GPL licensed and the latest version is 1.0.1. It can be downloaded from the UMIL page. To create a UMI-file automatically, a MOD author can use the Unified MOD Installation File creation tool.
Security
In December 2004, a large number of Web sites were defaced by the SantySanty
Santy is a computer worm created in Perl to exploit a vulnerability in phpBB software which used Google to spread across the internet.Within 24 hours of its release by X_Spec on 20 December 2004, a large number of websites were attacked by Santy. The worm holds a record of spreading worldwide...
worm, which used vulnerabilities in outdated versions of phpBB2 to overwrite PHP and HTML pages. Although these were the result of outdated versions of PHP and phpBB, incidents like these have caused the security of phpBB to be disputed. There have also been a few times where new releases of phpBB have come out a few days apart, although the last occurrence of this was in early 2005. However, the phpBB Team usually responds to security reports as soon as possible, and releases a new version quickly. The phpBB Group, attempting to learn from previous failures, performed a codebase security audit before the release of 2.0.18. The phpBB3 codebase received an external security audit in September 2007, which was done by SektionEins. The sixth release candidate of phpBB3 was published following the results of the security audit.
Additionally, many things have been changed in phpBB2 to avoid problems in the future, including many features backported from the phpBB3 codebase. Among those is a re-authentication system for the administration panel (introduced after a cookie verification issue allowed attackers to gain administrator access).
In November 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. The team announced a tracker the following January where administrators of attacked bulletin boards could report an attack and receive support from the IIT.
The CAPTCHA
CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a person. The process usually involves one computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to generate and grade...
system in phpBB2 has proven vulnerable to automated registrations, with numerous phpBB-based forums being swamped by forum spam
Forum spam
Forum spam is the creating of messages that are advertisements, abusive, or otherwise unwanted on Internet forums. It is generally done by automated spambots.- Types of spam :...
. phpBB3 has improved its anti-spam options available to forum administrators, including a new CAPTCHA system, suspensions, user logging and other various features. The phpBB team has published recommendations on protecting the boards from spam. Currently the best method is to use a Q&A (question-answer) challenge, which was introduced into phpBB 3.0.6. phpBB3 has a much stronger CAPTCHA system, however during the phpBB3 development/beta phase it was frequently criticised for being difficult to read. The development team has been working on improving its readability prior to phpBB3's final release.
Additionally, the teams have announced that each minor release of phpBB3 (3.0.1, 3.0.2, etc.) will be preceded by individual release candidates in an effort to prevent instances where subsequent releases would be only days apart (as happened a couple of times during the 2.0.x line).
phpBB community
phpBB is also home to large community of individuals who contribute greatly to the overall project. Full of members dedicated to the open source movement, the community's user driven content such as MODs and styles available offers any phpBB user the ability the customize their board any way they see fit to do so.In light of the success of their London meetup and in an effort to help with bridging the gap between team members and community members, on October 12, 2008, NeoThermic announced the creation of a new board on phpBB.com, "phpBB Events and Meetings." The phpBB community has been long plagued with members that have a lack of willingness to meet up like other projects such as WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It is often customized into a content management system . It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet's "top 1...
. Encouraging casual meet ups, the success of the board is quite debatable due to its nature and difficulty for people to get involved to make meetups work. The majority of meetups posted there never get past asking if there is any interest in meeting up, however there are some such as an OSCON
O'Reilly Open Source Convention
The O'Reilly Open Source Convention is an annual convention for the discussion of free and open source software. It is organized by the publisher O'Reilly Media and is held each summer in the United States.-Notable events:...
meetup in San Jose California, Germany, Indonesia, and Scotland, among many others.
See also
- Comparison of Internet forum softwareComparison of Internet forum softwareThis article outlines the general features commonly found in various Internet forum software packages.-Subarticles:This article is a comparison of some of the major features of the various Internet forum software packages currently available. This page highlights major features that the manager of...
- Comparison of Internet forum software (PHP)Comparison of Internet forum software (PHP)This is a comparison of the features of various Internet forum packages written in PHP.- General information :Basic general information about the forums: creator/company, license/price etc.- Features :- Data storage :...
Further reading
- Stefanov, Stoyan, Jeremy Rogers, 2006. phpBB: A User Guide, Packt Publishing. ISBN 1904811914
- Douglass, Robert T., Mike Little, Jared W. Smith, 2005. Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress, Apress. ISBN 1590595629
- Stefanov Stoyan, Jeremy Rogers, Mike Lothar, 2005. Building Online Communities with phpBB 2, Packt Publishing. ISBN 1904811132
External links
- phpBB website
- phpBB at OpenSourceCMS – Demonstration of phpBB along with user reviews and comments
- phpBB Review – Review, live demonstration and screenshots of phpBB
- phpBB at GitHubGithubGitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. GitHub offers both commercial plans and free accounts for open source projects...