January 7, 2009phpBB2 Retirement Schedule
Welcome back from the holidays, I hope everyone had a good year. I did, and am looking forward to the challenges that 2009 brings. One of those challenges is, of course, how to deal with the retirement of phpBB2.
As promised, the support forums at phpbb.com for version 2.x were closed this month. The formal announcement is here if you want to read the full text. The important part is (in my opinion) this paragraph:
The phpBB2 support forums have been locked and will remain available in this “archived” state for a number of months, purely for reference purposes. Most phpBB2 resources have been removed from the Support Section of the site and further pruning will take place within the next few weeks. phpBB2 Knowledge Base articles will be reposted in the archived forum.
There is no specified end date for the 2.x support forums given, but the implication is quite clear: at some point even the locked forums will be dropped or at least hidden from public view.
The 2.x MOD Writers and MOD Requests forums were locked several months ago. The MOD Development 2.x forum remains open for replies to existing topics, but no new topics can be started. On February 1st even that forum will be closed. So where does that leave me?
I am in the process of porting the phpBB Doctor MOD Catalog over to phpBB2 Refugees and will be moving all of my MOD development and support to that site, at least for public MODs. Private MODs for paying clients will continue to be hosted on the board on this site. I am going to update each of my MOD topics (both dev and released) at .com to link to the new topics once I get them set up so people will know where to find me.
The Styles and MODs forums are guaranteed to remain visible until May 1, 2009, as stated in this topic. After that point they may (their words, emphasis added by me) be removed from public view.