PHPBB 3.0.3 Arrives! Update Your Forum
On November 12, 2008 The phpBB team announced release of of phpBB 3.03 package, the latest stable version of one of the most popular web forum platforms. The new release brought two major new features and a plethora of stability and bug fixes, as well as performance tweaks. Its previous package version, 3.0.2, was released four months ago on July 10, 2008.
One of those two major new features of phpBB 3.0.3 is the template inheritance, which greatly favors customization. The second one, called post-based queue, makes posts made by posters with a post count lower than a threshold (set in the ACP) to be automatically placed on the moderation queue. There are other features packed inside the phpBB 3.03 release:
- Allow hard disabling of the template editor.
- Allow setting custom language path through $user->set_custom_lang_path(). $user->lang_path now also do not include the user language, but only the path.
- Ability to define nullar/singular/plural language entries
- Ability to mimic sprintf() calls with $user->lang() with the ability to correctly assign nullar/singular/plural language entries.
- Added ‘max_recipients’ setting for private messages. This setting allows admins to define the maximum number of recipients per private message with a board-wide setting and a group-specific setting.
- Added new permission setting for sending private messages to groups. Now there are two permissions to define sending private messages to multiple recipients and private messages to groups.
- Allow specific connection to different server for jabber functionality by providing a valid JID as username. This also allows the use of talk.google.com as jabber server will gmail.com JIDs.
Feedbacks from most web developers and site owners who use phpBB platform has been generally warm as seen on phpBB’s official forum.
In his blog, Mark Barnes, a phpBB MOD team member and self-proclaimed technology evangelist, recommends that “If you are starting a new board, you’ll want the 3.0.3 full package.”
On the other hand, Willy Raharjo, an Indonesian IT Lecturer and Software Engineer, comments in his blog post about phpBB 3.0.3 that “The new mechanism works better with modified file (mostly if we install MODs), so the upgrade process is slightly easier than before. In the past, I have to check all the MODs after upgrading, but now, I don’t have to anymore, as the MODs are still preserved and the updater merged the new changes into the old one, so no full replacement needed.”
However, people who experienced minor issues in upgrading their forums found the Automatic Update Package as best solution, which can easily be downloaded from phpBB’s site.
I highly recommend that you upgrade your existing phpBB installations to this version or use this release if you want to setup a new phpBB forum. It is much better-featured, safer, and faster.
