Note to the phpBB Dev Team and Mod Community

[barshemm]

Hi everyone. Years ago I started learning php, by playing with phpBB. First I was installing mods, then tweaking mods and phpBB source, then building my own small community site built off of phpBB. I even released a version of it a few years ago, before I lost interest in the project due to work and personal life.

Recently, I've started working on my project again. Through work my php and general coding skills have increased, and basic advancements in AJAX and PHP itself have made it look like a fun project.

So... looking around at all the CMS projects and frameworks out there like Drupal, Xaraya, and even Python's Zope/Plone, I figured of course one of these would be a better starting point for creating a community.

After several months of banging my head against the wall getting frustrated with these systems, I started playing with phpBB again for a friend. I then noticed that between phpBB itself, and a lot of mods available, a larger portion of my site could be built using phpBB. Then I realized that all these other CMS systems, when they upgrade, never release just a list of changes from version to version like phpBB does. So if I made changes to the core systems, I would have a horrible time upgrading.

Now I could go so far as to even use ezmod to install mods and have my system up quicker, but i'm nosey so I install mods by hand, so I can review the code as I implement them. Of course, the standard system for mods makes this extremely easy as well.

As a development community that uses a base product to create a cariety of types of sites, I have to say that phpBB is the best I've found. I looked for better, and could not do it. It's kinda funny that a web forum is the best platform for creating complete website, but I think that's a tribute to the people who created the forum in the first place. Thank you to the development team of phpBB, and thank you to the entire modding community that has put out such a diversity of tools to be implemented in and around it.

[drathbun]

I'm sure that all of the developers (present, former, and future) appreciate your comments. There's actually a topic here for "thank you" posts.