July 17, 2008What To Do About Version Two?
Comments (5) Other than building rhyming titles for blog posts, what should we (the community) be trying to do about the phpBB Group decision to drop support for phpBB2? I don’t think I will surprise anyone by announcing that I am still a fan of version 2. 
I think there is a lot of life left in the “classic” version and I plan to keep using it for at least another year. I’m using it on a board that is currently averaging over 100,000 page views daily and it’s humming along.
So from that perspective, there is no issue with continuing to use the code. But what happens to the community? Where does that go?
I currently have two domains set up specifically for my phpBB activities. This site (the one you are reading now) is the host for my blog, and for a private board that I use to manage my projects and client communications. I have another site (http://www.phpbb2mods.com) that I took over some years ago and made an effort to get started and then it stalled while I tried to figure out exactly what direction I wanted to take with the board. I even contemplated merging the two boards. That has not happened.
Over the past few weeks I have spent more time thinking about the situation, and what I can do to help. There are some topics at phpbb.com that talk about the future of the community, but because of the standard rules there we really can’t talk too much about specific sites. So what I plan to do is finalize some ideas that I have over the next few weeks, brush the cobwebs off of the phpbb2mods.com site, and see if I can’t get something started now, before the version 2 forums are closed and removed.
It would have been nice to get this done prior to Londonvasion, but like many things related to phpBB, they get done when they’re done. 
Comments (5)
I think one of the important things to achieve will be to group together as many knowledgeable and interested people on one new board. It’d be a pity if several, or more, new phpBB2 support boards start running simultaneously.
Is it a good idea to ask on the “motherboard” who, if any, is interested in continuing to be involved with “top-notch” support and development/maintenance?
I for myself am interested in doing all that I can to contribute to the creation of such a new project.
Comment by Dogs and things — July 17, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
Dogs and things, I absolutely agree with you. What I hope to offer is a place to hold that discussion. If it turns out that the same place becomes what you describe that’s fine too. If it turns out that there is another better place then I have no problem supporting something else.
When I started what has become my largest board so far, it was done because everyone was talking about needing to do something, but nobody was actually doing anything. So I hope to do something, if for no other reason than to get something started.
Comment by Dave Rathbun — July 18, 2008 @ 7:20 am
This whole problem, and the mention about how multiple boards would be a pity, is yet another reason why the phpBB Decision to lock the v2 boards was dumb.
If there was some site which was “King of phpBB 2″, and was already established as such, had many good members, then this would not be a problem. So, the problem is that there is no such board besides phpbb.com. The closest I can think of is phpbbhacks.com.
Heck, even Nintendo has forums where you can talk about the orinial NES and Super NES,and you can still, after all these years, get your machines fixed and buy replacement parts.
Apple Computer has support forums and resources for machines which are ten years or older. You can even research Knowledge Base articles which were written as far back as the 1980’s.
Anyway, I think that you, drathbun, if you want to start this phpBB 2 site, it should be phpbb2mods.com Makes sense, hey? Most people who talk about phpBB 2 these days have modified boards, so I think you should use that site, and then keep this doctor site the same as always.
Comment by Dog Cow — July 18, 2008 @ 12:59 pm
The problem is that the “king of phpbb2″ up until this month was phpbb.com.
Now that they have closed the MOD Writers and MOD Requests forums, and they’ve closed the MODs in Development to any new topics (only open for replies) they’re no longer the king. So the concept is to find a replacement now, rather than waiting until January when the version 2 support forums will also be closed to new posts.
I have some ideas that I might try to run by some of the other team members while here at Londonvasion to see what their thoughts might be. Stay tuned for details.
Comment by Dave Rathbun — July 18, 2008 @ 1:39 pm
phpBBhacks is not phpBB2 only, which in my opinion would be the way to go, phpBB2 only.
Lumpy started a board, phpbbusers-dot-com, where he and Jim-uk are present as well as a few others.
He says he´ll try to achieve access to the content of the phpBB2 related forums on phpbb-dot-com and permission to use that content on his new board, if I didn´t understand him wrongly. Highly unlikely that permission will be granted, me thinks.
Let´s see what you can come up with on that Londonvasion Dave.
Comment by Dogs and things — July 18, 2008 @ 2:06 pm