Update phpBB2 to phpBB3

July 18, 2009

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Spam was getting the best of us on an established forum, so we upgraded from phpBB2 to phpBB3 in hopes that the newer forum software would better protect the boards from nasty posts.

phpBB3 does do a much better job (so far) than its predecessor. Hooray! Let’s hope it’s not short-lived success.

Directions for converting the forum software are thorough enough – I’m glad I wasn’t left with more questions than when I started.

Note that the first step is to install a brand new phpBB3 forum in a different location than the existing forum – so go up to the top of the page and start from there. During installation you’ll feel like someone is holding your hand – the directions were step-by-step and quite easy to follow.

Renaming the directories, in order to have the new forum replace the old, worked like a charm.

Oh yeah, don’t forget to delete the install folder when you’re sure everything went smoothly.

Immediately, about 40% of the users were dropped when comparing those in phpBB2 to those still present in phpBB3. I hope that spam suppression works better in phpBB3 – so far so good!

Anybody use Akismet with phpBB3? Do we need it -yet?

Posted in Software, Webmastering