Five years of phpBB work for one publisher

Six separate phpBB contracts with the same client between 2016 and 2021. It started with a single extension install and ended with a version upgrade that had to carry a whole set of modified extensions along with it.

The objective

The client ran a large forum and kept coming back for whatever it needed next. The first job was one extension install. Over the following five years the same board needed extension updates, template changes, HTTPS, a WordPress site bridged onto the same domain, and eventually a full version upgrade.

The upgrade was the hard part. Their extensions had been changed away from their released versions, so a normal upgrade would have either thrown those changes away or broken the board.

What I did

I installed and updated extensions as they asked, including the times the released extension didn't do what they wanted and I had to change the code myself.

I moved the site to HTTPS with a certificate through Cloudflare and cleared up the mixed content and redirect problems that came with it.

I built a WordPress site on the same domain as the forum and bridged the two together.

For the upgrade, I went through each modified extension, rebuilt the changes against the new phpBB version, and tested the whole thing on a copy before I touched the live board.

The result

The board went from an old version with fragile custom code to a current one with all the same features intact. The client came back six times over five years, then hired me for their Linux server work as well.