As I mentioned following the last software update, I will need to look at upgrading the Forum to the newer major phpBB release at some point in the future. This is going to be a major upgrade, and it is going to take a while for me to get the upgrade path planned properly, as simply performing the upgrade will break a sizeable chunk of the forum's functionality as it currently is. In short, this upgrade is not going to happen on the live system any time shortly in the future, as I will first have to plan the upgrade path, and work out which scripts and things to fix when I upgrade on the development site. Just so that I can make the transition to the new software as seamlessly as possible.
However, before I can do so, there are other updates that need to happen. A chunk of time back when JohnBoy asked me to assist with the forum admin, I performed the last major software upgrade from phpBB3.1.x to phpBB3.2.x. Unfortunately, at the time, the branch of phpBB we upgraded to did not support later versions of PHP. And so I had to do a little haxory to get the forum running with a very old version of phpBB - namely, PHP5.6.
The issue is that the newer major version of phpBB no longer provides support for PHP5.6, as it is deprecated. And I can not make a plan to upgrade the forum software to the newer versions without a development platform, which I cannot do as I cannot run the development site on the version of PHP we are currently running.
The version of phpBB we are now running does support current versions of PHP. So, in the interested of keeping the forum safe, updated and similar, I am going to be upgrading the version of PHP on the server on Sunday evening. In short, the forum will be unavailable for two hours from 20h00 on Sunday evening.
Once that is done, I can bring up both the live and development sites on the newer versions of PHP and then I can start planning the upgrade to the newer major release of phpBB.
The geeks amongst us will understand all of this. For those that aren't totally sure what all this phpBB and PHP acronyms are, but are inquisitive in nature... In a nutshell:
PHP is the scripting language that the forum runs on. https://www.php.net/
phpBB is a "Bulletin Board" (ie: Forum) written in the scripting panguage PHP. This is the "program" that provides the forum functionality. https://www.phpbb.com/
Anyways, the update should not take very long, and I've planned to do it at 20h00 on Sunday 2020-02-23 as this should have very little impact on users. I'm pretty sure the forum will only be down for a few minutes on Sunday, but I've mentioned a couple of hours in case I mess something up seriously. Sorry for the inconvenience. Appreciate the patience.
Thank you for your hard work at keeping the forum on the go and updated. I didn't understand a thing you wrote, but I understand that you will take a couple of hours on Sunday evening and we should have an upgraded forum and all that fancy tech stuff. I for one appreciate it. If it wasn't for you guy's doing what you do I'd still be trying to chisel drawings out on rock's. 
