phpBB3

phpBB3 is the current stable version of phpBB. Following over three years of development and an eighteen-month beta/release candidate stage, it went gold on December 13, 2007.

Some of phpBB3's major features include:

• Modular design for the Admin Control Panel, Moderator Control Panel, and User Control Panel
• Support for multiple database management systems, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Firebird, OpenLink Virtuoso, and other ODBC-accessible DBMS
• Support for unlimited levels of sub-forums
• Ability to create custom-defined BBcode
• Ability to create custom profile fields
• Permissions system

phpBB3 also provides administrators with much more control over every aspect of the forum software, such as how it is displayed to management of user and group permissions. Consequently, this increased functionality makes the administrative interface much more complex, and new users have found it somewhat more intimidating than phpBB2.

phpBB3's default theme is called prosilver. During phpBB3's long development process, prosilver was kept a heavily guarded secret from the public in order to prevent premature copying of the theme and so that it would not spoil the "wow" factor upon the final release of phpBB 3.0.0; however, the unexpected website downtime of March 2007 prompted the teams to change plans and unveil the new theme early. prosilver includes a number of new design concepts over its predecessor subSilver, including a new admin panel without HTML frames and reduced use of HTML tables. One of the more contentious decisions has been to move the user info panel on the viewtopic page to the right in order to provide more focus on the post content.[citation needed] phpBB3 does not allow the use of HTML tags in comments. An alternate default theme called subsilver2 comes bundled with phpBB, which is based on the default theme from phpBB2 called subSilver. However, an administrator must install it on the board manually before it is accessible to users.

The phpBB Development Team quietly pushes out release candidates of minor updates of phpBB3 for "quality assurance testing" prior to general release. These candidates are intended to prevent the possibility of significant bugs being produced by minor updates, thus causing a subsequent critical update to be released within days of the original. (This scenario happened twice during the 2.0.x line and once during phpBB's release candidate stage in 2007.) A mailing list is open to anyone interested in testing these "quality assurance" releases when they are available.

The latest in the 3.0.x line (code named "Olympus") is phpBB 3.0.5, the "quite furry" edition, released on May 31, 2009. phpBB3 requires PHP 4.3.3 or later and is fully compatible with PHP 5.