phpBB Forum Software

Web Page: https://wiki.phpbb.com/GSoC/2013/Ideas

Mailing List:

phpBB (BB for Bulletin Board) is the world's most popular free and open source forum solution. The phpBB project is maintained by a 40-strong core team, with regular contributions from a global user and developer community. Originally released in 2000, the latest version of phpBB has since evolved to include support for multiple database engines (PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server), user groups, an extendable permissions system, hierarchical subforums, file attachments, a variety of notification options (e-mail, Jabber, ATOM feeds), and an extensive database of styles and modifications.

Projects

• An API for phpBB An API for phpBB that enables developers to easily create applications that uses phpBB forums for various purposes.
• Authentication Plugin Refactoring and OAuth Authentication This is a project that has two distinct parts. The first is to complete the work that was started in Google Summer of Code 2012 on the project Authentication Plugin Refactoring by refactoring the authentication system. The second part is to implement an OAuth provider to interact with the new authentication system to support login and registration that allows user to log in with a multitude of OAuth providers such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
• Example Extension Implementing a Karma System In version 3.1, phpBB introduces extensions as a way to add functionality to a forum, enabling third party contributors to modify behavior without altering phpBB core files. To stimulate the development of extensions, it is desirable that some real-world examples are available for these contributors. In this proposal, I explain how I intend to write a karma (or: reputation) system extension as a Google Summer of Code project.
• Getting phpBB 3.1 to releasable state Under the guidance of the 3.1 Release Manager, this project will involve getting phpBB 3.1 to a releasable state. The primary tasks of this project are: 1) Fixing bugs marked as Blocker or Major and affecting phpBB 3.1 2) Implementing features that are deemed required for phpBB 3.1 after the community feedback
• Session Backend Abstraction & Integration into Existing Cache Framework I integrated phpBB sessions into its caching framework to ease the load on the relational database. This project gave system administrators more flexibility on the deployment of phpBB. The relational database, freed from this responsibility, has more resources to handle other requests in many different configurations, enabling a more performant, more stable, more scalable phpBB.