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.
Some of phpBB3’s major features include:
- 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.
phpBB2
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.