I was on IRC the other night. (It doesn’t happen often, but I do check in every now and then.) It was a good time to be online as one of the phpBB3 developers was on the same channel. As the conversation rolled around it came out that I had not upgraded, and was not planning to upgrade for a while. He – understandably, perhaps – wanted to know why. So I told him.

I have spent the last few years playing around with phpBB2. I feel like I know it very well. If I want to change how something works, I know exactly where to go. That feels good. I have also spent a lot of time developing additional features for my boards. Some of those features (subforums) are of course available in phpBB3, but not all of them. And my biggest board is not upgradable (I tried) because of some of the major database changes that I have made. That means the upgrade for that board (nearly 350K posts, 25K+ users) is not going to be straight forward.

My real-life job has also been very demanding for the past month, and that will not change for the next few months. If I have any spare time I spend it maintaining and tweaking, not updating. Conservatively speaking I figure it will be next year before I do anything with phpBB3 at all. It’s not for lack of desire (I like playing with new things) but more a lack of time. I am happy with phpBB2. It has served me very well. And because of the extensive knowledge that I have I am very comfortable staying with phpBB2, at least for the next year.

For me, personally, it is just more convenient for me to stay than to go to the next level at this point.

That’s the way I see it today. It could change tomorrow.