PunBB
Encyclopedia
PunBB is a lightweight PHP-based internet discussion board system. It is released under the GNU General Public License
. The project's primary goal is to be a faster, smaller and less graphic alternative to discussion boards such as phpBB
, Invision Power Board
or vBulletin
.
Currently many open-source and commercial projects' discussion boards are powered by PunBB. Until September 2011, Facebook
's Developers were using Facebook Developer's Forum for discussions and bug reports, which was powered by PunBB. Starting with the PunBB version 1.3 support of extensions developed in-house and by the third parties is included.
. A few days later the company moved the project from punbb.org domain to its projects' umbrella domain at punbb.informer.com. Recently, the work on version 1.3 was resumed and minor changes, as well as, some bug fixes were introduced in the code's subsequent updates. In March 2011 the company released version 1.3.5 and in September 2011 version 1.3.6 became available to public. The third quarter of 2011 gave birth to a significantly revised version of the engine, 1.4.0, which is currently the latest one.
and thus requires the PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PunBB also requires a database in which all forum data is stored. It supports MySQL
, PostgreSQL
and SQLite
.
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. The project's primary goal is to be a faster, smaller and less graphic alternative to discussion boards such as phpBB
PhpBB
phpBB is a popular Internet forum package written in the PHP scripting language. The name "phpBB" is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board...
, Invision Power Board
Invision Power Board
Invision Power Board is an Internet forum software produced by Invision Power Services, Inc...
or vBulletin
VBulletin
vBulletin is a proprietary Internet forum software produced by Jelsoft Enterprises and vBulletin Solutions, both subsidiaries of Internet Brands. It is written in PHP and uses a MySQL database server.-History:...
.
Currently many open-source and commercial projects' discussion boards are powered by PunBB. Until September 2011, Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
's Developers were using Facebook Developer's Forum for discussions and bug reports, which was powered by PunBB. Starting with the PunBB version 1.3 support of extensions developed in-house and by the third parties is included.
History
PunBB was founded by Rickard Andersson as a personal project to create an alernative to either over-featured or too graphic discussion boards. In August 2003, the first stable version was released under the GNU General Public License. The developer released version 1.2 in January 2005 and immediately began work on version 1.3. However, in the summer of 2007 the project's code and rights were sold to Informer Technologies, Inc. The company did not institute any major changes at first other than removing the ability to donate money to the project. The work on version 1.3 continued and in the beginning of 2008 the beta version was released. In April 2008, Rickard Andersson decided to leave the project due to personal reasons. As a result, some developers followed suit, and initiated the development of their own fork, currently known as FluxBBFluxBB
FluxBB is a lightweight free software PHP-based internet discussion board system. FluxBB is a fork of the PunBB project, created in response to developers protesting the increasing emphasis of a partnership with a corporate organization on the PunBB project...
. A few days later the company moved the project from punbb.org domain to its projects' umbrella domain at punbb.informer.com. Recently, the work on version 1.3 was resumed and minor changes, as well as, some bug fixes were introduced in the code's subsequent updates. In March 2011 the company released version 1.3.5 and in September 2011 version 1.3.6 became available to public. The third quarter of 2011 gave birth to a significantly revised version of the engine, 1.4.0, which is currently the latest one.
Requirements
PunBB is written in PHPPHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and thus requires the PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PunBB also requires a database in which all forum data is stored. It supports MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
and SQLite
SQLite
SQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard...
.
Release History
| Pre-release beta versions | Supported stable branch | Future versions |
| Version | Release Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | August 07, 2003 | The project's first stable release. |
| 1.1 | January 03, 2004 | |
| 1.2 | January 08, 2005 | Featured improved speed, security measures, as well as, the new markup. |
| 1.3 Beta | January 30, 2008 | Extensions development. |
| 1.3 RC | June 17, 2008 | 1.3 Release Candidate |
| 1.3.1 | November 26, 2008 | Minor bugs fixed; fixed an XSS XSS XSS may refer to:*Cross-site scripting, a vulnerability in web applications which attackers may exploit to steal users' information*XSS file, a Microsoft Visual Studio Dataset Designer Surface Data file*Assan language, has the ISO 639-3 code xss... vulnerability in moderate.php; Markup issues are fixed, language files are reviewed; Both outdated and obscure notifications are modified. |
| 1.3.2 | December 08, 2008 | Minor bugs fixed; fixed an XSS XSS XSS may refer to:*Cross-site scripting, a vulnerability in web applications which attackers may exploit to steal users' information*XSS file, a Microsoft Visual Studio Dataset Designer Surface Data file*Assan language, has the ISO 639-3 code xss... vulnerability in login.php; fixed a possible SQL SQL SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems .... -injection in the the admin settings page with permission config values; addressed a possible SQL-injection in the the admin users page. |
| 1.3.3 | April 17, 2009 | A number of bugs has been fixed (CSS CSS -Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code... & markup Markup There is more than one usage of the word markup.For generic discussions of markup in various contexts, see:* Markup language, a notation used to annotate a document's content to give information regarding the structure of the text or instructions for how it is to be displayed* Markup , a term for... , defects in language files, correct response header placement upon errors, hook rearrangements, parsing posts in feeds, correct language pack detection during the final stage of the install process); security flaws addressed; it is now possible to limit searches to topic subjects or message bodies; users are not allowed to change their e-mails without entering their passwords first. |
| 1.3.4 | May 20, 2009 | A fix for the the possible XSS vulnerability in profile.php during the password and e-mail change. |
| 1.2.22 | September 01, 2009 | A possible XSS exploit in admin_prune.php was fixed. |
| 1.2.23 | August 11, 2010 | A vulnerability in cookie authorization via "unserialize" function was fixed. |
| 1.3.5 | March 21, 2011 | Addressed bugs in CSS; added missing lang entries in language files; corrected the path and alerts on install; corrected deprecated function calls; hidden guest email; increased visit timeout; implemented deleting of non-activated users during the registration process; fixed typos; added paginal navigation on admin users and bans pages; added validation timezone and report length, added hooks. |
| 1.4 Beta 1 | June 22, 2011 | PunBB 1.4 First beta release. |
| 1.4 Beta 2 | June 30, 2011 | PunBB 1.4 Second beta release. |
| 1.4 Beta 3 | July 10, 2011 | PunBB 1.4 Third beta release. |
| 1.4 RC 1 | July 23, 2011 | PunBB 1.4 First release candidate. |
| 1.4 RC 2 | August 14, 2011 | PunBB 1.4 Second release candidate. |
| 1.3.6 | September 22, 2011 | Introduced a fix for XSS vulnerabilities; fixed error in bans on admin/bans.php and profile.php; fixed invalid closing tag on profile.php. |
| 1.4 | November 7, 2011 | Introduced support for international domain names, MySQL InnoDB and SQLite3; fixed censoring for Cyrillic and Unicode; implemented faster sampling of messages in large topics; simplified Login, Registration, and Search forms; asynchrous javascript loading, based on LABjs; dropped PHP 4 support (minimum required PHP version is 5.0); additional features for extension developers; added subscription to topics and message sending on CTRL+Enter. |
| Next | 2012 |