I agree on all fronts. I was with them for ages...YEARS...and my forum looked like the default and I felt I could never ask for help. I've been with SMF for 6 months and my forum looks like it could be a new version, it's highly customised, and I feel safe to ask for help (or ask stupid questions lol)....However, their code IS sexy lol
I was with them for years also and could Mod the heck out of ver. 2.0.22 and when Ver. 3 final was released, I was quite confused for they've changed just about everything. Many a times did I post my questions on their forum but to no avail, except for the odd "search is your friend" type of answer.
Thing is, I searched before asking any of my questions and usually ended-up with 50 pages of posts which didn't reveal any solutions. When I started a thread about the lack of help (and the number of 0 answer posts on their forum), the thread was locked and I was issued a "warning" by a Moderator who is probably a big fan of Adolf Hitler. I PM'd this Nazi to explain how I (and probably hundreds of other users) felt about the lack of help, I was issued a second warning with the following: "arguing with a Moderator is prohibited and consider this as another warning". Darn it, who was arguing? I was only trying to find some kind of justification.
I've been running quite a few forums (especially on psychological issues) with at least 2 Moderators on each and we had a rule,
no 0 answer post.
The hell with phpBB and I hope that more people will move on to other forum software.
Sorry, peed-off...
Gene