Long-term BaO members may remember that for quite a while indeed I've referred to the forthcoming big upgrade to the board's software, phpBB, and we've been patiently waiting...and waiting a bit more..and then...err.. waiting just that little a bit more again. In fact, if I can remember right, it's around Christmas 2 years ago that the first expectations of a release were starting to feel like they were in the air.Originally as they were working on it, the phpBB people called it phpBB version 2.2 but because it was such a huge upgrade and big difference they decided to rename it phpBB 3, and later gave it the codename Olympus (something to do with a big mountain to climb maybe?).
It's been a much longer wait than I'd expected but finally today (oops, it's just past 12 midnight here in the UK...make that yesterday, 13 December 2007) at 5.00 pm GMT, Olympus has come out of "release candidate" versioning (a kind of post-beta stage but still possibly buggy) and gone "Gold" (fit for full operation).
Olympus has full support of sub-forums, much better searching, "friends and foes" (whatever they may be!), and...well, a whole bundle of sparkly new and improved stuff. You can read about some of the highlights of Olympus at this page.
I'll probably set up a test forum first some time in the next few weeks to see how BaO and the existing Modifications (some of my own and some written by others) are going to be transferred to, or re-written for Olympus.
Right now though, it's Ice cream
and popcorn 
for everyone. And a very 
, Olympus![edited to correct "...yesterday, 13 October 2007..." to "...yesterday, 13 December 2007..."]
It's actually here! Is the board going to look any different?
Took you long enough. 
Just kidding! 
*Starts to sing happy birthday to Olympus* 
