For those who aren’t aware, phpbb is the amazing and free forum software widely used on the internet. The 2.x releases have been around for years and the community has been working hard for a 3.0 release (with about 9 Release Candidates after months of beta releases) for what seems like forever.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the release candidates, but I actually missed the 3.0 release amid the holiday season. v3 was released on December 18, 2007 and is available for download. The changelog is so immense that I can’t even begin to digest the details, but a lot of the gripes I had with the 2.x releases are completely gone and the system is a lot more maintainable and usable for the average administrator.

You can be sure that the moment I have some time, I’ll be upgrading Mac Fanatic’s message boards to the new release. Ability to easily upload files and so much more is very exciting. I’m super excited about better user management and spam control.

Give phpbb a try here.