phpBB 3.0.RC1. First impressions.

So, it happened, then what was talked about so long and stubbornly in the developer community, the phpBB project, which is probably the most popular (and equally prone to errors and vulnerabilities), was provided by the first release candidate of the third version of the forum engine. The release candidate was preached by the heels of the beta, the first of which was announced on June 17 last year . So, what gave these 11 months of development? I will try to answer this question

Minimum requirements

• Web server or web hosting with any operating system that supports PHP
• SQL database system, one of:
  • MySQL 3.23 or higher (MySQLi supported)
  • PostgreSQL 7.3+
  • SQLite 2.8.2+
  • Firebird 2.0+
  • MS SQL Server 2000 or higher (directly or through ODBC)
  • Oracle
• PHP 4.3.3+ (> = 4.3.3,> 4.4.x,> 5.xx,> 6.0-dev (compatible)) with support for the database you are going to use. The getimagesize () function must be enabled
  The following are some optional PHP configuration requirements for additional modules.
  
  • Zlib Compression support
  • Remote FTP support
  • XML support
  • Imagemagick support
  • GD support
  
  
  
  As you can see, the minimum requirements are quite standard and feasible (with MySQL in the form of data storage), probably for any tariff plan of any hosting provider. At best, experience shows that there may be problems with the inclusion of the zlib Compression library and the Imagemagick library. Some, for security reasons, prefer to turn off the PHP directive allow_url_fopen. And this threatens us: the impossibility of compressing the output of the forum (no zlib), editing images on the fly (lack of Imagemagick) and updating the engine through the admin panel (allow_url_fopen prohibition).
  ')
  Go ahead.
  
  

  Installation

  
  
  At the beginning there was a greeting, as well as a license and a couple of links where you can get support for problems or errors. In general, everything is standard, but the first thought after “And here is a new design theme :)” is: “Where is the choice of my native language?”
  
  
  Next - more interesting ... It could be :) Again, "Greeting", now with a description of the installation process. Then again we return to the minimum installation requirements, once again praise the developers for supporting not only MySQL, but for full support for multibyte encodings and successfully click Next in the absence of support for the GD library. The following three installation sheets are passed in one go, because they are standard for any installation. As a result, we save the database data in the configuration file, and the administrator account in the current session. The penultimate installation point is: “Advanced Settings”, which for some reason contains the E-Mail and server URL settings, but does not set up the simplest two (and for many and the most important things on the forum): Name and slogan. And thanks to this, after overcoming the last item “Setting tables in a database”, we have a forum called “yourdomain.com” and the slogan “A _little_ text to describe your forum”. As for me, stupid and not user-friendly.
  
  So set. There are no difficulties, innovation is also almost zero, maximum - getting used to the new theme of design.
  
  

  Running phpBB 3.0.RC1

  
  
  First of all, we are being redirected to, again, an updated administrative control panel with a large red screen screaming that it would be nice to delete the installation folder. There is no desire to deal with the control panel, except to click on the tabs and see what appears there. And of course, click on the folding / showing side menu ...
  
  
  On the forum itself, too, there is little to find a new one. So for yourself it is already possible to make the first conclusion: do not expect anything globally new version of phpBiBi :) after entering another control panel, now the user (from the main page of the site), and then also from the theme page in the moderation panel - it becomes sad: it’s not that it’s not taken so or that in other forums engines things are different, but just for me personally it makes a bit of a dead end. At the top are two panels, and even one panel at the bottom. And all some administrative, moderator, user. Damn, my leg will break. So then sit back and think at night, and where would I move the topic from one section to another: in mod. panel or admin panel?
  
  
  Trying to create a theme. It seems to be all standard, but still there remain questions, especially from the Save and Submit buttons. Out of habit, I (Save the leftmost button) click Save and don’t believe my eyes when I don’t see my topic in the updated section. Then, with the help of the browser, I go back and already understand that I had to click on Submit, but this record should be searched for somewhere in the draft. This draft was placed in the user’s panel and for it — a special thank you to the creators: for how often it happens that you want to open a theme, but you don’t get your thoughts together;
  
  A separate point of my dissatisfaction is the lack of tags for the created / edited topics and forums. And this is in the era of the Tag Cloud. Eh, here and disputes are born ala Forums vs. Social networks.
  
  Once again I go to the user panel, notice the last link “Friends & Foes”, affirmatively shake my head, because in vBulletine, similar functionality (presence of the Friends / Enemies circle) was implemented in the second branch :)
  
  

  Results

  
  On this I will finish. So what did I see in the first phpBB release candidate? To be honest, I only once again affirmed the need to develop a related project that would combine the advantages of Forums and Social Networks. Also, once again I was distributed by this “tabular” structure of sections and topics, but also pleased by the decision on “right-sided” alignment of user information. In general, I can advise fans of the phpBB engine to look at updating my forum (since data conversion capabilities are provided for by default), and others - wander through the pages of the phpBB community and decide whether you will try the 3rd branch of this project or not.
  
  Shl . Lovers of validity is dedicated to: Pages generated by phpBB 3 - Valid xHTML 1.0 Strict.
  zyy . All screenshots are clickable.
  zyyy . Yeah. It appears on Habrahabr in allowed tags that the style attribute is not even going to be parsed. Instead, we get a simple wtf attribute.