Meik “Acyd Burn” Sievertsen, phpBB’s Development Team Leader has just announced that the bug tracker for phpBB3 née Olympus is now open:
phpBB “Olympus”, otherwise known as phpBB 3.0.0 is nearing its initial beta release and we decided to open our bug tracker for reporting issues with CVS now. The aim of the opening of the bug tracker is so that advanced users already having a current CVS copy working or those able to cope with installing and maintianing a CVS copy, may now report problems they encountered.
We want to identify problems with “Olympus” now, before we release a public beta. This has the advantage of us being able to change the code without providing an update path and in turn then hopefully being able to provide an update path during the betas.
For Alphageeks and Übergeeks the above shouldn’t been an issue, though for those not quite at that level, yet salivating over the shiny new and forthcoming phpBB Olympus, the technical side of things are:
- PHP version
- Olympus supports versions ≥ 4.3.3, which includes 5.0.x & 5.1.x. Currently, 6.0-dev is just “compatible” for now and supportedness depends on PHP’s roadmap.
- Supported DBMS
- Though developed using MySQL, the wonders of a DBAL means phpBB Olympus already supports a wide number of databases:
- Firebird (firebird) - Firebird 1.5+/Interbase 7.1+
- MSSQL (mssql) - MSSQL 2000+
- MSSQL through ODBC (mssql_odbc) - MSSQL 2000+
- MySQL (mysql) - MySQL 3.23+/4.0+/4.1+
- MySQL4 (mysql4) - MySQL 4.0+/4.1+/5.0+
- MySQLi (mysqli) - MySQL 4.1+/5.0+
- Oracle (oracle)
- PostgreSQL (postgres) - PostgreSQL 7.3+
- SQLite (sqlite)
Of course, after beavering away at the development of phpBB Olympus for such a long time, there are brand new features as well as enhancements with respect to the current 2.0.x for users, moderators and administrators!
Shiny, brand-spanking new stuff are:
- Attachments
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- Attachments in posts and PMs
- Automatic image thumbnails
- Attach images, documents, video streams, archives
- Multiple attachments allowed
- Display attachments inline
- Unlimited Subforums
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- Create unlimited subforums
- Display active topics of all subforums
- Custom BBCodes
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- Create your own BBCodes
- Add buttons to posting screen
- Custom Profile Fields
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- Add new fields on user profiles
- Display them at registration
- Display them on the profile view
- Hide new profile fields
- Support different data types
- User Control Panel
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- Manage subscribed topics & forums
- Manage bookmarked topics
- Manage saved drafts
- Manage private messages
- Manage usergroups
- Manage friends and foes
- Manage attachments
- New Moderating Tools
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- Moderation queue
- Topic merging
- Topic copying
- Locking of single posts
- Topic history
- Caching and performance
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- Templates are cached
- Permissions are cached
- Forum config is cached
- Database queries are cached
- Friends and Foes
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- Add other members as friends or foes
- Posts by foes are hidden
- Friends are shown in friends list
- Warnings and Reports
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- Users can report topics and posts
- Moderators can warn users
- More Improvements For Users
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- Bookmark topics
- Subscribe to forums
- Jabber/xmpp support for notifications
- Mail or print topics
- “You got beaten at posting notification”
- More Improvements For Admins
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- Global announcements
- Display forum rules on forum page
- Prune inactive users
- User, moderator, admin and error logs
- Language pack editing
- User notes
- Detect search spiders
Improvements come in the way of:
- Private Messages
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- Send to multiple recipients
- Send to groups
- Send Blind Carbon Copies (BCC)
- Forward messages
- Friends list works as address book
- Attach files to PMs
- PM Drafts
- Conversation view
- PM folders
- PM filters
- Export Messages
- Registration
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- Enable/disable COPPA
- Limit registration attempts
- Set min/max username length
- Set min/max password length
- Limit username chars
- Set password complexity requirements
- Force password change
- Allow/disallow e-mail address re-usage
- Search
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- Search inside topics
- Select multiple forums and categories to search
- Search within topic titles only
- Search within first post of a topic only
- Set search flood interval to limit server load
- Select search backend (mysql/phpbb)
- Admin Control Panel
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- More flexible and accessible tab layout
- Modular system allows for easy extensions
- Allow/disallow access to different functions
- New founder status for the board creator
- Completely re-structured for better handling
- Moderator Control Panel
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- Manage the moderation queue
- List of warnings and reports
- Forum, topic, and post detail views
- Polls
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- Multiple options per user
- Allow/disallow vote change
- Usergroups
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- Multiple group leaders
- Set display colour for group members
- Set group rank
- Set group avatar
- Profile View
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- More user statistics on profile view
- Signature on profile view
- Usergroups on profile view
- Permissions
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- More powerful and flexible permission system
- Simple permissions through roles
- Fine-tune admin and moderator access
- Super moderators
- User Management
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- Advanced user editing interface
- Edit user preferences
- Edit group memberships
- Show and edit all attachments of a user
- View permissions directly
- More Improvements
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- Moderator and admin control panels
- Set temporary bans
- Comments for bans
- Manage group memberships in the ACP
- Search members by all attributes
The most impressive thing is even though these lists are long, the listed changes are non-exhaustive! Furthermore, phpBB Olympus is able to add these new features yet be faster and easier on the server compared to the 2.0.x line.
Anyway, Beta1 is not that far off now and there shall be a few more suprises of different sorts between now, Beta1 and the final release of phpBB “Olympus” 3.0.0! Happy pre-Beta testing and see you at the phpBB Development Board that is Area51! ;)