Decisions.....

[kersti]

OK, being a developer in a large organisation myself I LOVE the no release date...

However, that said... I'm about to set up two new boards and have a dilema to consider... do I mod these up to get lovely features and then have to go through the pain of trying to upgrade when 2.2 is officially released or should I sit tight and wait.

I guess what I'd like to see is a vague ballpark - I really don't care about exact dates etc, but I'd love some indication about whether or not it's worth modding existing/new oards now or not...

[Wert]

If you'd made even the simplest attempt to search the forums you'd know that answer is "sometime this year".

And no, there isn't a more "ballpark" figure than that.

[kersti]

No need to get your knickers twisted...

I have searched the forums, thus I know that it's sometime this year just as I know that a definate release date will not be stated - I believe I covered that in my opening statament as well as reiterating that no, I am not asking for a release date - what I was really after was an indication of whether others have decided to hold off at this point or not.

[SHS`]

OK, being a developer in a large organisation myself I LOVE the no release date...

However, that said... I'm about to set up two new boards and have a dilema to consider... do I mod these up to get lovely features and then have to go through the pain of trying to upgrade when 2.2 is officially released or should I sit tight and wait.

I guess what I'd like to see is a vague ballpark - I really don't care about exact dates etc, but I'd love some indication about whether or not it's worth modding existing/new oards now or not...

The only pain you get when you crossgrade a forked 2.1.x forum to whatever shape the final 2.2.0 takes will be how well you planned your work in forking the codebase to do what you wanted it to do.

If you dropped in a mass of kludges, then there probably would be quite a bit of crossgrading pain.

If you planned the implimentation and the impact of your descisions and anticipated the developers descsions well... then your crossgrade will more than likely be completely painless.

Simple project management and impact acessment.

[q3utom]

basically wait

[Graham]

My personal suggestion would be that you should look at what you want to achieve with your forum and decide based on that.

There will be an upgrade path from vanilla 2.0.8 so for a straight forum, go with 2.0.x and then look into upgrades in the future.

With MODs the upgrade path is less clear - some MOD authors will provide an upgrade route to 2.2.x, some you may have to deal with yourself.

But to bear in mind, 2.0.x is likely to be supported for a while after 2.2.x is released anyway so there is no problem with staying with that if you want to.

[geocator]

You should also look at the MODs you wish to install. Depending on the database changes and your level of SQL expertise it may not be a big deal. For example the aprove posts mod only adds new tables, that is easy to upgrade. However the sub-forum MOD will likely be more difficult.

[warmweer]

what I was really after was an indication of whether others have decided to hold off at this point or not.

My approach to this (which I suspect is the way many mod authors/users see it), is to play around with the CVS, first of all trying to get it to work (sometimes things are broken), comparing to previous versions, changing a few things here and there, all in a good cause : namely to try and understand the scripts so that you don't start from zero once the release is there.

In this way I've succeeded in "upgrading" my own "mods", but ... the next CVS will require a new upgrading. The whole point is to not think that this or that part is finished and ready for modding, but to prepare oneself for work to come. Modding as this stage is a waste of time if you expect it to work in 2 months time, but is very useful considering the time you won't have to spend anymore learning how the scripts will work together (generally).

In short, mod all you want for yourself and the fun of it, but don't start boiling the eggs just yet

[CuriousGeorge]

I ran into a similar dilema as this a few years ago prior to the 2.x release (I believe it was 1.4). I was starting a new site and wanted to use phpBB. The 2.0 core wasn't stable enough for regular use, and it didnt look like it would be for 6-8 months. I didn't know weather to provide just a bare-bones board until the 2.0 release was final, or try to add some features to my 1.x install and then worrying about the upgrade.

I was told by plenty of people that a few of the main mods would be ported over to the 2.0 release. Most of them were, but it wasn't for a few months after the final beta was distributed.

Here's what I did then, and what I'll probably do now while I wait for the 2.2 release. I try to keep away from 'site centric' mods. For instance, hyperion weblogs or custom gaming mods. While these are really nice features, they probably won't be ported to the new release for quite some time. As for other mods, like administrative options, or stuff that just affects the code base, and doesn't mess with the database, those you can go buck-wild installing, because when you upgrade, you'll just lose those features. It's the mods that change the way the program interacst with the database you'll have trouble with. The other ones will simply be 'gone.' Some of them will be programmed into the new release, others you'll have to wait until they get re-written.

Actually, as a general rule of thumb, I just try and keep my site as simple as possibly, but that might just be me

[MHobbit]

I've made a couple of phpBB forums now, and some were heavily MODded. I thought about it, and half of those MODs were only luxury ones that I haven't needed yet. So, I'm taking the easy way out and keeping my forum as clean as possible, unMODded now.