phpBB 3 released

 

phpBB 3 has been released and can be down­loaded from the phpBB offi­cial site. Finally some­thing can be said about free soft­ware being just as good as paid ones. For years now phpBB has been con­sid­ered lower than other forum sys­tems (par­tic­u­larly paid ones) in terms of qual­ity. phpBB 3 marks an impor­tant upgrade to a freely avail­able sys­tem, sim­i­lar to going from Word­press 1.0 to Word­press 2.0. You may be won­der­ing why I’m harp­ing about this par­tic­u­lar release unlike other stuff like SMF — it’s because phpBB 3 is cer­tainly some­thing that has changed sig­nif­i­cantly from it’s older self.

For a start

phpBB does have an appeal­ing inter­face, prob­a­bly to match up with the oth­ers. So, you get all that lovely web 2.0 look that takes it to the pro­fes­sional level (hey, the theme is called “prosil­ver”). Of course, because phpBB is upgrad­ing its inter­face to a sleeker one, expect oth­ers to do the same. Nicer tem­plates which don sim­ple col­ors are likely to be the norm soon.phpBB not only has its out­sides changed, but the insides as well. Feature-wise, phpBB has given fea­tures to make it seem like the new IPB or VBul­letin - except that it is free and open-source. Cre­at­ing forums take only 2 clicks, and it is all auto­mated. Nest­ing forums in forums has become eas­ier to do, allow­ing you to have struc­tures found in some com­plex forums. There is also a warn­ing sys­tem — some­thing that was not present in most free forums, which allows mod­er­a­tors to record prob­lems posed by members.

Upgrading/Installing is a breeze

Mov­ing from phpBB 1 to phpBB 2 might be a lot dif­fer­ent from phpBB 2 to 3. The upgrade wiz­ard will import posts as quickly as pos­si­ble, so migra­tion is quite fast and nice. In addi­tion, the instal­la­tion wiz­ard also appears to be revamped in terms of looks, tak­ing on the same theme as the admin­is­tra­tion panel. A fresh instal­la­tion takes only 2 min­utes, pro­vided you have the right environment.

Though, there are still problems

Don’t for­get that phpBB 3 is still new out of the box — it can’t sup­port all mod­i­fi­ca­tions unless their authors make them to. For­tu­nately, there are some mod­i­fi­ca­tions that are already avail­able even while phpBB is in release can­di­date sta­tus. While phpBB 3 has gone gold, don’t for­get that it is just hours away from pre-release status.

Tagged as: phpbb, Update