PHP Programming Language - Cultural View

phpBB 231
phpBB3
phpBB3 is the current stable version of phpBB.
Following over three years of development and
an eighteen-month beta/release candidate stage,
it went gold on December 13, 2007. [31]
Some of phpBB3's major features include: [32]
• Modular design for the Admin Control Panel,
Moderator Control Panel, and User Control
Panel
• Support for multiple database management
systems, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL
Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Firebird,
OpenLink Virtuoso, and other
ODBC-accessible DBMS
• Support for unlimited levels of subforums
• Ability to create custom-defined BBCode
• Ability to create custom profile fields
• Permissions system
phpBB3 also provides administrators with much
more control over every aspect of the forum
software, such as how it is displayed to
management of user and group permissions.
Consequently, this increased functionality makes
the administrative interface much more complex,
and new users have found it somewhat more intimidating than phpBB2.
Administration Control Panel
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; [33] 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 HTML frames and reduced use of
HTML 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. phpBB3 does not allow the use of HTML tags in
comments. [34] An alternate default theme called subsilver2 comes bundled with phpBB, which is based on the
default theme from phpBB2 called subSilver. However, an administrator must install it on the board manually before
it is accessible to users.
The phpBB Development Team quietly pushes out release candidates of minor updates of phpBB3 for "quality
assurance testing" prior to general release. [35] These candidates are intended to prevent the possibility of significant
bugs being produced by minor updates, thus causing a subsequent critical update to be released within days of the
original. (This scenario happened twice during the 2.0.x line and once during phpBB's release candidate stage in
2007.) A mailing list is open to anyone interested in testing these "quality assurance" releases when they are
available.
The latest stable release in the 3.0.x line (code named "Olympus") is phpBB 3.0.7, the "Run bugs, run! Bertie is
coming!" edition, released on February 28, 2010. [36] This version was superseded by 3.0.7-PL1 approximately a
week later, on March 5, 2010, after the initial public release of 3.0.7 was found to introduce a security issue. [37]
phpBB3 requires PHP 4.3.3 or later and is fully compatible with PHP 5.