phpBB 2.2 M-2 completion ... and M-3

[psoTFX]

As some may have already seen we completed what we're classing as the second milestone of phpBB 2.2, M-2 yesterday. We have four milestones in total and thus are "half way there" so to speak.

Remember, we maintain a development board @ http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB22/ which can give you an idea of what is happening day to day. We also maintain a gallery for areas hidden from users (unless you install a snapshot!). This can be access from the area51 index @ http://area51.phpbb.com/

Now, I'd like to give everyone an overview now of some of the things phpBB 2.2 offers compared to phpBB 2.0 ... remember, this is an overview, not an exhaustive list:

Administration

• Overhauled Administration Control Panel with new, consistent look
• Removal of templated admin, change to hard coded HTML to improve consistency and reduce issues with support and new moules
• Configuration split into several seperate forms offering numerous new functions
• Load management to fine tune the board for higher (or lower) processing situations
• Completely revamped style system
• Ability to manipulate templates online
• Fine control of theming, based on CSS but with a friendly front end (raw css mode retained for those that prefer it)
• Ability to export archives containing all relevant style or style element data (archives can be compressed if suitable support exists in PHP)
• Ability to remotely install new styles (subject to filesystem permissions and safe mode off)
• Updated permission system offering numerous options to finely control what a user can do, what an admin can do and what a moderator can do
• Updated group system
• Multiple group leaders (formerly moderators)
• Ability to add, remove, demote, promote users to and from groups in the admin control panel
• Ability to assign username colouration to groups rather than being based on user_level (no longer exists)
• Ability to assign ranks to all group members
• Ability to assign a single "default usergroup" for users from which colour and rank assignments are derived
• Updated forum management
• Ability to more precisely control features such as auto-pruning
• Passworded forums for those quick n dirty moments
• Per forum styles
• Authentication plugins allowing for alternative user login verification, e.g. LDAP, Apache auth, etc.
• Attachment option management
• Allow filetypes
• Group filetypes
• Create thumbnails of oversized images
• Limit attachment number and size
• Display images inline or via link
• Ban usernames, email addresses and IPs for limited time or until specified date
• Exclude usernames, email addresses and IP's from banning
• Give reason for banning
• Comprehensive logging of administration, moderation and critical actions

Index, viewforum, viewtopic

• Unlimited subforum nesting
• Optional "Birthday" display
• Admin definable "users online" time
• Improved display and consistency for show online
• Forum as link to remote or local destination with click through counter
• Global announcements (display in all forums)
• Optional topic and post icons
• Topic posted to marking
• Database and cookie stored topic read marking
• Forum watching (subscription) as well as topic watching
• Per user definable "Display topics from" output for viewforum
• viewforum searchbox
• Optional online/offline indication in viwtopic
• Report post to moderator
• Rate post good/bad (used for Karma calculations)
• Additional quick mod features such as make stick, make global, split, merge, etc.
• Printable view
• Email topic url to friend (with additional note)
• Jump to first unread post (or last post if all read)
• Moderation of individual users or groups of users posts in each forum
• Post count incrementation on per user/group per forum basis

Posting

• Optional topic/post icon
• Admin definable character limit for messages
• Additional bbcode functionality
• Lock topic when replying
• Lock post to prevent editing
• Multiple attachments per post with comments
• Ability to alter and add attachments when editing post
• Multiple option polling
• User definable "number of selectable options"
• Updated poll option entry method
• Ability to quote message from topic review (template support dependant)
• Improved backend message parsing engine
• Significantly reduced posting times when editing post options but making no changes to message

Moderation

• New front end
• Quick listing of unmoderated posts, most recent reports, moderator log, etc.
• Improved detail output for given post
• Lock post from editing from MCP
• Ability to approve or disprove posts up for moderation
• Review reports, discard reports, discard reported post
• Topic merge of selected posts to selected topic
• Permission based alteration of forum details, name, description, etc.
• Comprehensive logging of moderator actions
• Updated topic moderation such as change topic icon, etc.
• Improved, more solid backend

User Options

• User Control Panel replacing old profile screen
• Modular "plug-in" style system
• New front end
• Quick listing of statistics and important (global) announcements
• List of watched (subscribed) forums and topics
• Seperated profile, preferences, signature, avatar forms
• Increase number of profile options, jabber instant messaging support
• Improved number of preference options
• New post viewing options; do not view avatars, smilies, etc.
• Permission based limitations on username, email and password changing
• Birthday field
• Daylight Savings switch
• Improved signature entry, mimics posting screen
• Preview signature before submit
• Seperate avatar form
• Offsite/linked avatar size verification upon submit

Profiles

• Permission based viewing of profiles, memberslist, etc.
• Further information for profile views; signature, most active, last active, etc.
• Overhauled user search facility with many options
• Supports form elements which accept multiple usernames
• Improved instant messaging interfaces particularly for Jabber
• Quick registration system with visual confirmation

Backend improvements

• "Intelligent" caching of global data and any desired SQL query
• Updated templating system with conditional statements
• Built-in compilation of templates to reduce system load
• Consolidation of numerous source files
• Increasing use of modular components

That is a brief overview of the changes ... there are many more and backend changes go much further

I'll now give a brief overview of some of the things planned (they may not all appear) for Milestone-3 (M-3). This is from our internal list (viewable by all team members) which has existed for several months now and thus predates many other boards "unique" or "brand new" features

• Further modularisation of MCP and ACP
• Buddy/ignore list
• Overhaul of User admin
• Force user reactivation
• Password change reminders
• Admin definable profile fields
• Admin definable BBCode
• User facing group control panel updates
• Support for search engine spidering sessions
• Further MCP additions
• User warning/auto-ban system
• Change topic author
• Prune topics to given forum (trash can/archive to forum type support)
• Updated search system
• Search topic
• Possible support for builtin fulltext capabilities of DB
• Improved search feedback to user, list ignored common words, stop words, etc.
• Bump topic
• Critical failure logging
• Mass forum operations, e.g. lock all forums in a category
• Improvements in Jabber integration
• Further improvements in styling and feedback

Following M-3 one further milestone is planned. This will introduce some potentially quite neat modular automation capabilities (if it works out ), updated private mesagging with message "histories", forwarding, etc.