The open source Web forum application, phpBB, is available in a new version. phpBB 3.0.6 introduces not only bug fixes and stability improvements but also some major new features.
We are very pleased to announce the availability of the phpBB "Fast and Furrious" 3.0.6 package. This release fixes numerous bugs, introduces some major features, as well as improves stability and performance. Furthermore, the internal updater has been updated to detect and solve most conflicts, resulting in a reduction of necessary manual interaction by administrators.
Please note that we urge you to update. phpBB 3.0.6 fixes bugs being quite important for a smooth operation of your forums. With this release our support team will only give support for phpBB 3.0.6, updates to phpBB 3.0.6 and conversions to phpBB 3.0.6. Submissions to our trackers for older versions will not be accepted, please make sure you update/upgrade before you submit a bug report.
Some of the new features that have been implemented in phpBB 3.0.6 include:
- Better spam control using improved captcha options and backported 3.2 captcha plugins:
- Classic and GD CAPTCHA
- reCaptcha
- Q&A CAPTCHA
- 3D Wave
- Introduced new ACM (Cache) plugins. Your options include:
- null (to disable caching completely)
- memcache
- APC
- XCache
- eAccelerator
- ATOM Feeds
- Quick Reply editor in viewtopic
- Users can report Private Messages to moderators which are then visible in a new MCP module
- Ability to copy permissions from one forum to several other forums.
- Send anonymous statistical information to phpBB on installation and update (optional)
For additional details, you can see the original release announcement at phpBB.com.
Comments
Upgrading PHPbb
I like PHPbb except for one thing, upgrading it, compared to other mainstream CMS's like Joomla and Wordpress its a pain to upgrade and in these modern times of security vunerabilities being found almost daily and fixes, and updates being needed frequently a simple upgrade process for a webmaster/sysadmin in needed.
I spent a good 3 hours with a customer upgrading PHPbb and although we completed the upgrade successfully it was not a simple process requiring much Googling of forums's and reading of documentation.
In hind site, exporting the database, completely reinstalling PHPbb and then importing it again would probably have been cleaner.
Internal Updater.
As an addition to my last posting I am glad to hear that the internal updater has been updated to detect and solve most conflicts, resulting in a reduction of necessary manual interaction by administrators.