It’s been about three and a half months now since phpBB3’s gold release rocked the galaxy, and so now the hype has simmered down and the devs have rested up and the first big wave of post-release bug reports have rolled in. So now, three and a half months after the release, the Development Team has been working hard on the inevitable 3.0.1 release.

Confirming what David has promised us for these past few months, the Dev Team will be quietly issuing “quality assurance” release candidates of every minor release in an effort to avoid repeating instances of having to issue a new release within days of a previous one (as happened twice in the 2.0.x line and once during phpBB3’s RC stage). Anyone can help themselves to these release candidates (and the QA “Quack and Assassinate” Team will be forced to dive through them), and they will likely materialize into a full version of phpBB 3.0.1 by the end of the week. There will be a mailing list to subscribe to if you want to help test out release candidates when they come out (they will not normally be published on the announcements forum to the general community). As a reminder, while the RCs are not fully complete, the chances are that they will fix more problems than they cause; the purpose of the QA testing is to ensure that they don’t introduce any significant new problems.

So far, the list of changes for 3.0.1 features fifty bugfixes–it’s obvious that the dev teams have been busy, in addition to their recent release of 2.0.23 plus working on the development of Ascraeus.

We have been planning something special for this Saturday’s episode of phpBB Weekly, and thus, we will not be able to discuss phpBB 3.0.1 on our show this week. However, this is just a note to you to keep an eye out for the new release and update! (You know, I hear that the new auto-updater is like super-easy and totally rocks!) If you’re interested in helping to test out the release candidates, feel free to help yourself.

phpBB 3.0.RC6, probably the most hyped release candidate of phpBB so far (and definitely the one release that we’ve talked about more than any other on our show), was just released this afternoon. (Or, if you’re in Europe/Asia, it was released last night.) What’s so significant about this particular release is that it arguably includes the most changes/new features to the phpBB3 codebase since UTF-8 support arrived in Beta3, back last November. (David covered many of these features on episode #033, and we also discussed a few of these on today’s episode #034, which will be released really soon.)

It was also revealed that the phpBB3 codebase security audit was done by independent software security company SektionEins. Their website indicates that they specialize in security audits for web applications, in particular for those based on PHP. Their site also lists a number of stats about Internet attacks, and on episode #034 we talked a bit about some common vulnerabilities that web applications suffer. One of the reasons that phpBB has a bad reputation for security is because many hosts are using much much older versions of phpBB2 that have serious vulnerabilities in them. The phpBB teams over the years have been very good at getting new, fixed releases out in a timely matter, and the majority of the fault for these exploits are forum admins who don’t keep phpBB2 up-to-date, but nevertheless, the phpBB teams have been unfairly blamed many times for these. By having a codebase audit prior to Olympus going gold, phpBB3 will hopefully have a better lifetime than phpBB2 did.

However, Acyd Burn mentioned that the security audit turned up zero SQL injection vulnerabilities and zero Command Code Execution (CCE) vulnerabilities, which is excellent news and really exemplifies some of phpBB3’s superiority to phpBB2 when it comes to security. Considering that there’s over 200,000 lines of code in phpBB3, this is an excellent accomplishment and props for that goes to the Development Team. However, thanks to the security audit, RC-6 does bring along fixes for a few XSS vulnerabilities, a new password hashing mechanism, and a number of other new goodies.

Anyway, be sure that you run, don’t walk, over to the downloads page and download the RC-6 updater! The countdown to phpBB3 is getting nearer, can you feel the excitement?

UPDATE: Acyd Burn has announced that due to some problems with the RC-6 package, a new RC-7 package will be released later today. The teams will be providing auto-update packages for both RC-6 to RC-7 and RC-5 to RC-7. You probably should hold off until the new release this afternoon.
On phpBB Weekly #035, David will probably talk a bit about what happened to necessitate the RC-7 release.

If you are experiencing problems on your board with the RC-6/RC-7 update, read this article which details many problems with MODs and Styles due to the update.

MOD Team leader wGEric announced today that the MOD Team will be holding an all-day, IRC MOD Authors Convention from 0000 UTC on June 30th till 0000 UTC on July 1st. They did something similar a year ago, except that this year, they actually are dividing the day into 2 hour blocks to talk about various subjects. A number of MOD Team members will be available at any moment of the day to discuss MODding with members of the community in IRC.

That day, as you know, is also going to be phpBB Weekly #022, starting at 1600 UTC, so what I want to know is should I do anything special in terms of covering the MOD Authors Convention on the podcast? Leave any suggestions or comments on this entry. (If the MOD team has any suggestions in terms of covering the Convention, they can also feel free to comment! I know that you listen to the show, guys.)

See you next Saturday in #phpbb-mod!

Well, it was announced this morning that the other shoe dropped. The other phpBB Project Manager Jonathan “SHS`” Stanley, who was originally the Moderator Team Leader and in late 2005 promoted to his current position, has today stepped down. Although theFinn was the one who got phpBB started, Jon was the one who really kept the behind the scenes of phpBB strong. Every time the website or server needed to be rebuilt, SHS` was the one working on it, and he wouldn’t stop until it was done. (dhn mentioned how he spent 14 hour days during the March 2007 server outage.) I’ve seen him on IRC sometimes when he hadn’t slept for 50 hours because of working on the servers! I have no idea how he could do that.

All of the advertising on the site has been made possible by him. Many of the language packs and corrections in phpBB3 have been made possible by him. If it wasn’t for him, Bertie Bear wouldn’t exist (which depending on some people’s opinion may be a good thing or bad thing). And I’ll never forget this little morsel. And, as dhn said, SHS` was responsible for some other plans that we’ll hear about soon…

So goodbye SHS`, and thanks for all you’ve done for phpBB. You really are deserving of that custom rank which says “Kidnapped by Bertie!”

But now, with both of the Project Managers disappearing in the timespan of a month, I’m sure that there might be some people wondering if phpBB is coming to an end. The answer: absolutely not. Don’t compare this to captians leaving a sinking ship because the ship is not sinking. phpBB is an all-volunteer project, and in the case of SHS`, he’s been spending more time on phpBB than a full-time job would require.

phpBB still has 42 energized and excellent team members behind it. The only difference will be in the leadership: all of the decisions on which direction to take phpBB will be made collectively by the 7 team leaders. phpBB is still running strong, and will continue to run strong through the final release of phpBB3 and beyond.

Also, dhn hinted that an announcement saying “A return” would be coming in the next few days, which means that somebody might be coming back. As for who it is, I’m actually placing my bets on psoTFX…

I often have the sneaking suspicion that the phpBB teams are starting to post their announcements on Saturday afternoons intentionally so that I won’t cover it on the show. (Just kidding guys, I love you, really!) Anyway, SHS` posted today that the site will be going down to backup the posts table. I’m going to stir up the rumor mill a bit, but doesn’t that bring up a striking suspicion that a new release is on the way? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Anyway, keep an eye on the site. If there’s any announcements, I’ll be covering them in-depth during episode #017 on May 12th…