In the 2.2 you will include a set of new features that people have asked for for a long time, including subforums, fileupload etc. Since the development has taken a long time, I am sure the quality of the new features will be very high (as usual).
How important is new features for the 2.2? and in what way do you deside which feature will be included, and who's not?
This would be quite interesting to know. It could be that you see many people choose boards that are loaded with features, and you want to stop some of that by adding more feaures to the 2.2. OR You don't care that much about other boards, and will foremost only include features that you think is important and useful to the users (and spend the time polishing these features). OR a combination of the two.
phpBB is also known to be easy to learn, both by admins and the users. When more features is added, I guess the board will be more demanding to administrate (both by admins and the users). Some users have no or little experience in discussing online, and may be scared of a control panel that looks like it comes from a 747
When you are designing the user control panel (and admin panel), are you then thinking that these could be used by novices? and which group is your main target (novice, normal or pro), and why is it so?
Many websites (like webshops) are so complicated to use, that people give up and goes somewhere else. But some experienced people like these complicated sites since many of them also have a lot of advanced features.
Some sites though, have a normal mode and a advanced mode, just because they know of this problem, and thereby keep both groups.
This post was not for discussing how complicated the phpBB 2.2 is, that could you do HERE