Introducing phpBB 3.1 Ascraeus

October 28, 2014 will be an exciting day for the phpBB community with the release of version 3.1 of phpBB, Ascraeus. Version 3.1 will include a better and more “pluggable” architecture for phpBB, making modifications easy to install and remove. If you are familiar with WordPress, version 3.1 should work similarly with no file modifications necessary to install a modification. You can read more about the release here. This is the first new version of phpBB since phpBB 3.0 was released in December 2007.

As was true with the release of phpBB 3.0, it will take a while for new styles and modifications to be written and approved for this version of phpBB. There is a lot for everyone in the community to learn.

Support for phpBB 3.1

I will introduce support services for phpBB 3.1 gradually as my competency increases. See my services page and future posts here for details. I will start with installation and conversion services from version 3.0. In general since phpBB 3.1 automates many things that had to be done manually, I expect some decline in need for support services.

Digests and Smartfeed mods for phpBB 3.1

I do plan to write versions of my Digests and Smartfeed mods for phpBB 3.1. However, it won’t happen overnight. The Digests mod is a very complex mod so it will likely take a lot of work to port it over. It’s hard to give a time estimate on when a version of digests will be ready. My guess is it will be about a year after release of phpBB 3.1. The Smartfeed mod may be obsolete. I will need to examine the features for feeds in phpBB 3.1 to see if it can handle similar functionality. If not I will support it in time. Smartfeed is the simpler mod so I will probably start with it and use the lessons learned from it when porting the Digests mod.

While I am semi-retired, I still have limited time for this work. I provide Smartfeed and Digests as a service to the community so it will come after any requests for services and other activities that keep me busy. I don’t make money off these mods, unless someone wants me to install these mods for them. Consequently, paid work will be done first.

Simply subscribe to this blog for news of the development status for these mods.