The LambCutlet Disorganisation

Let’s do the Bertie dance! :D It’s been a long 2 months since the last beta, though today we’re proud to announce the availability of phpBB 3.0Beta5! This fifth beta release marks the last leg of the beta testing phase as the next milestone shall (hopefully) be Release Candidate 1, which will result in the first version of the long awaited phpBB 3.0 that will be suitable for production environments. Patience is Virtue!

New for Beta5 is the UCF, which will be used for converting non-phpBB 3.0.x to the 3.0.x format. Right now, we’ve only got the phpBB 2.0.x module bundled for testing though modules for other forums systems will follow once we hit phpBB 3.0RC1… so fear not, you will be able to migrate from Simple Machines Forum (1.0.x), Invision Power Board (1.0.x & 2.0.x), UBB.threads (6.0.x) and others to the awesomeness incarnate that is phpBB 3.0.x! ;)

Next up is the re-worked permissions interface within the ACP which is cleaner with less clutter and yet provide more visual feedback when the various settings are changed. Also, the i18n/L10n community will want to familiarise themselves with the language system so that they can provide translations via the new language packaging system with the roll-out of phpBB 3.0 on phpBB.com.

Advanced users are encouraged to download the beta, give it a good thrashing and getting those bug reports down. I’m particularly interested in bugs related to right-to-left scripts such as عربي (Arabic), עִבְרִית (Hebrew) or اردو (Urdu) since I’ve checked in changes which should hopefully resolve all layout issues on the user-facing forums and back-end ACP.

Happy beta testing and onwards to Release Candidate 1! ;)

Woowee… everyone’s favourite cut of spring lamb served so rare it still goes “baaah!” with a side-dish of my ramblings is back! However it wasn’t with the redesigned relaunch as I’d wish due to the fact I’ve been rather busy with everything else in this so called life.

Still, today is the domain’s 6th birthday, which coincidently is another Sunday just as it was on the 7th of January, 2001 (fancy that!) and figured it was a good time to bring the site back online anyway. Also, triple thanks with crème fraîche on top to those that donated some much appreciated cash to assist with the server purchase and move!

For those that did donate and your name isn’t linkified yet want it to be, just forward me that PayPal invoice of yours with the destination link you want and I’ll get it sorted out as soon as possible. The irony that also didn’t pass me whilst the site was down were my Google AdSense earnings, which turned out to be the highest they’ve ever been. So much for targeted contextual advertising on this blog and my extensive gallery of everything, which within my “Offline indefinately” post, I said:

[…] my “World Domination 2005” set which covers my travels last year from Blighty to Reykjavik and southern Iceland; British Columbia, Canada at Vancouver and Victoria; Hawaii; down-under in Brisbane, Melbourne and Northern Territory; Singapore and to date as far as 香港 (Hong Kong)

You boys and girls will still have to keep yourselves assumed with what’s there, as whilst I’ve decided against deleting the whole fucking lot, the photographs from 中國大陸雲南省 (Yunnan Province, Mainland China); 澳門 (Macau); دبي (Dubai), الإمارات العربيّة المتّحدة (United Arab Emirates); Berlin, Deutschland; Wien, Österreich and lastly Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland will be due sometime in 2007. :D