Wow, here we are at the world’s first phpBB hosted conference. Woot! Things are a bit hectic starting, which is probably to be expected since many of us haven’t done this sort of thing before. We’re in a really nice hotel facility that Marshalrusty checked out for us. It turns out that many of the team members are just as crazy as I am.

That’s scary.

Right now cherokee red is being plastered with Bertie stickers since nobody brought an actual Bertie suit. I am sure there will be pictures at phpbb.com later on.

Meanwhile as the entertainment is going on we’re trying to get our hardware set up to video the event as well as making sure the wireless (which I am using as I type this) is up and available for everyone. I think Marshalrusty will be kicking off the ceremonies soon, and Acyd Burn will be running through the first talk which is about the history and background of phpBB.

Should be great. Stay tuned for more details as the day progresses.

Today we had team meetings, which means for the most part I can’t say anything or I’ll have to pull a James Bond on you. (Hey, we’re in London, I have to make a Bond reference, it’s like the law or something. ) I can say that there are some interesting things that were discussed that I believe will be well received by the general community.

I can also say that the wireless access from our meeting room today was less than optimal. I am really hoping that the meeting room tomorrow will have much better results so I can add blog posts throughout the day, which is what I had intended to do. I guess if you don’t see anything further from me until tomorrow night, one of two things has happened. Either the network access failed, or Bond has taken me out.

My flight was good, and I’ve already managed to hook up with NeoThermic, Marshalrusty, lurttinen, AdamR, and bunch of other folks. We talked about camera stuff. Today is going to be a bit hectic as I am still trying to finish out some work (real work) as well as enjoy meeting the folks that I’ve interacted with for the past six years.

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.

I have two main projects going on in real life. I have three main projects going on related phpBB, and a few minor ones as well. I have a lawn that hasn’t been mowed in a month. I have a sprinkler system that has a leak. I have a car with an inspection sticker that is over a month out of date.

And I have a ticket to London, leaving on a flight in a few hours. At least I have my priorities straight…

Until I leave for Londonvasion, 2008. I’m excited to go for several reasons. First, I get to meet (in person) more of the phpBB team members. Second, I get to go to London. I’ve been there once before, but didn’t have much time to tour. Hm. Well, I won’t have much time to tour this time either, but I’ll do some.

But the best part will be the actual presentations on Sunday. We’re supposed to be able to get wireless access at the hotel where the conference is being held, and I plan to do some “live blogs” from the event. I’ve tried doing it before, and it’s hard to be inconspicuous. I type really fast, and that tends to make a decent bit of noise, and some folks around me get irritated. So I will either have to type in stealth mode or I’ll do my blogging between events.

In honor of the occasion, I’ve added a brand new blog category: Londonvasion 2008. That way you can easily pull up the posts related to the event.

We’ll see how it goes.

This is essentially a repeat of something I posted at phpbb.com, but it was too fun to leave in just one place.

Bertie Watch 3.0 is Over! Here’s the scene from my house for the past few days…

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One of the boards that I help administer is seeing a new form of spam that I call fake signatures. It’s very irritating, but quite creative. The people (or person?) doing this are joining the board and getting past the checkbox challenge, so I assume they’re human. They are posting what at first glance looks like legitimate content. But there are symptoms. More…