Hands-On At All New PHPBB v3
PHPBB is an open source software provider for creating web communities and forums. Today, I installed the all new PHPBB v3.0 RC5 in my site Buy n Sell Forum which was a really great experience. PHPBB v3.0 has lots of new features and enhancements over its predecessor PHPBB v2.0.
PHPBB v3.0 is packed with a fully automated installer. You don't have to do changes in the configuration files or manually change the file permissions. The installer does it all for you. Once you point the web browser to the folder containing the PHPBB index folder, the software will detect automatically for the requirement of a new installation and will redirect you to the installation process. The installer checks everything for you and determines whether all the minimum requirement are available or not. Next, you provide the database and admin login information and your forum will be ready for you.
PHPBB v3.0, as I stated earlier, has a lots more features than it's predecessor. The admin panel has a real long list of controls and features. Well, the first thing you will notice is the ability to make sub forums. Yes, I know it was even possible with PHPBB v2.0 with some hacks but why to go for it when PHPBB v3.0 has it inbuilt. Well, creating a new forum was a bit tricky and a lot more difficult for the new users. Every new forum requires groups permission to be set up manually otherwise they will not show up. However, they have a cool feature of copy forum permissions that makes it much simpler once the first forum have been assigned the right permissions.
Next you will see added features for search engine spiders. PHPBB v3.0 provides you with full controls with which you can set the way search engines looks at your forum. By default, there is a list of 50 popular spiders including Google already made for you. However, you can always expand the list with new ones.
PHPBB v3.0 also has inbuilt support for attachments. Besides these, there are many other features some of them includes adding your own BBCodes, Enhanced E-mail system, Group Leaders etc.
Overall PHPBB v3.0 is all set to give a tough competition to vBulletin. However, PHPBB v3.0 Final Release is yet to be made and after which most of the modifications are expected to start coming into the Modification Library which will make it more powerful, after all it's the modifications that gives a board the power to attract more users.
