Who, what, where, when and why?
In short, PunBB is a fast and lightweight PHP powered discussion board. It is released under the GNU Public License. Its primary goal is to be a faster, smaller and less graphic alternative to otherwise excellent discussion boards such as phpBB, Invision Power Board or vBulletin. PunBB has fewer features than many other discussion boards, but is generally faster and outputs smaller pages.
There is no definitive list of all the websites that are currently using PunBB, but there is a list of the largest PunBB boards on the web. It's called PunBBig.
PunBB 1.0 reached what was considered a stable state on 2003-08-07.
The idea of PunBB was first born when I wanted to install a discussion board on a website I was tinkering with. After an exhaustive search, all the boards I found were either over-featured or too graphic for my needs. I wanted a package that
I looked and I looked, but it was nowhere to be found. Thus, I started working on PunBB, or just Pun as it was called back then.
Developing software to "please the masses" isn't difficult. Just cram in every possible feature you can think of and most people will love it. Some people, however, will hate it and look for alternatives. The problem with developing for that other group of people is having to make decisions on whether to implement a feature or not. What is a "must-have" and what is not?
Some features that have so far not been implemented are: private messaging, file attachments in posts, polls, linking to off-site avatars, advanced text formatting controls, subforums etc etc. Some of these features might still get implemented, just not in the near future.
/Rickard
Smilies supplied by Rasmus Schultz, please inform the author should you use smilies outside of PunBB.