Besides the database support, phpBB's greatest advantages are its full and easy to use templating system allowing complete customisation, and the internationalisation support, with 45 different non-english language packs currently released, from Chinese to Asturian.
Like many popular modern forum systems, phpBB started out as a UBB[?] clone, in mid 2000. phpBB 1.0.0 was released by December 2000, and the 1.x codebase was improved and enlarged until the release of version 1.4.4 in November 2001. The next release, 2.0.0, was developed from scratch and released in April 2002, and was distributed with a new default design, which, while considered overused by some, has influenced the designs of several competitors.
The current development (2.1.x, to be released as 2.2.0 when production quality) is building upon the new codebase to add the functionality omitted from previous versions, and optimise the code above the level that was allowed by the strict compatability rules placed on 2.0.x.
wikipedia.org dumped 2003-03-17 with terodump