It has been a very long time coming. Many people have asked for it, and after spending lots of time on planning, coding, development, and modifications, we’re close to having our phpBB3 solution in place!

Some might say that we’re a bit behind on the bandwagon, given that phpBB3 was released two years ago. Those people may be right. However, the initial set up of GrabAForum, and the way it works with its current users, required a different set up to be presented effectively.

Well, those changes will be going into effect very soon! Emails will be going out to all current phpBB2 users regarding how they will have to access their website. The information in that email will be very similar to an email sent out months ago, so for most forum admins, this won’t be new information.

With these upgrades and changes at hand, what is to be expected with regards to our current users?

First, care is being taken to ensure that all current users will not have a disruption in their forum. The only change will be the URL to access it. No features will be modified as a result of this move.

Secondly, we will be offering a free option for forum admins to upgrade to phpBB3, if they so wish. We will do our best to help users learn to adjust to the new control panel if they so wish, but we would ask that any forum admin that takes us up on this offer should get specific phpBB help from phpBB.com directly.

Lastly, while it still is a very easy platform to use, we will most likely be disabling the creation of new phpBB2 forums once we have phpBB3 operating and offered to the public. Current forums will remain active.

We definitely are looking forward to these changes! Some more will be changed as we get closer to this release point. Stay tuned!

Undoubtedly, many of you are waiting on a change at this site.  Its a change that has been mentioned before!  I’m talking about upgrading!

What is going to be upgraded?  Thats a good question, you may ask.  For some time, I had been looking forward to  phpBB3.  While phpBB2 wasn’t bad to work with, version 3 looked like it would have some fancy improvements.  As soon as phpBB3 was released, I was all over it!  The majority of the forums I ran I upgraded right away.  And I wasn’t disappointed!

So what does this have to do with GrabAForum.com?  While having user forums on phpBB2 has been all fine and dandy, everyone deserves something better.  So why aren’t we updated already?

Basically, the move will take quite a bit of work.  It may not take much time,  but it will take lots of care.  We have many member forums that would need to be updated, plus we’d have to update the backend as well.

What changes would come from this upgrade?  Two main ones come to mind:

1. Forum Templates
2. Forum URLs

Essentially, while there are many forum templates that look good with phpBB2, the sad truth is that they can’t be used for phpBB3.  The good news, though, is that over the past few months, quite a few template makers have created phpBB3 versions of their templates.  This means that we can and will have quite a few templates for you to choose from.

The other change would be in how the forums are accessed.  Right now, all forums are accessed via http://www.grabaforum.com/forumname.   With this update, access would change over into http://forumname.grabaforum.com/.  But don’t worry!  We’ll let you know way in advance before we do this!

Even with these two points to consider, moving to phpBB3 will be a great change for GrabAForum!

Before I write here, I think I’ll take the time to make some introductions.

My name is Josh, though I go by the name of Jeren quite often online.  As such, you’ll find my posts here and on the support forum to be under the name ‘Jeren’.  To tell a little about myself, I’m a software engineer for a network performance monitoring company.  I also am a web site designer and developer and have some experience in the web hosting field.

That said, now I can write!

I remember my early days of forum communities.  My first experience was on a phpBB2 forum (going back to version 2.0.6, I believe).  Over the past six years, in fact, most of my online communities experiences have been with phpBB2 (and more recently, phpBB3).  To be honest, looking back on how phpBB2 used to be, I’m quite glad I’ve stuck around and used it.

I also remember my days of using ezBoard.  For a while, it did seem ez.   Yet, it also seemed quite bulky compared to how phpBB2 operated.  I suppose that was one reason why I always stuck to phpBB.

Now, seeing GrabAForum, I see a site that can provide one of the most successful message board software services to people.  All you need to do is sign up!  Thats it!  Then you can have your own phpBB board!  If only I had found sites like this years ago…

For the most part, I’ve seen message boards used for online fiction and role-playing.  However, they also make good environments for gaming clans and guilds, as well as technical support areas.  Given the versatility of  phpBB, I’m sure GAF has its variety of uses (in fact, the category choices speak for themselves!).

As I get settled into GAF, I look forward to seeing how you, the user, use your phpBB set up and, most importantly, how GAF can be improved to make it a better site for all of us!