Using phpBB 2 with PHP 5 or later

When phpBB 2 was first released, most web hosts supporting PHP scripts had version three of the PHP scripting language. Since that time, many upgraded versions of the scripting language have been released. Each new version, as with any software, added new features, fixed bugs, and removed some older, outdated features. PHP 5 is the first version to remove features that phpBB 2 requires to function.

In order to use phpBB 2.0.9 or earlier releases of phpBB 2 on PHP 5 or later, you need to make the following changes to your common.php file.

Using phpBB 2.0.9 or earlier is not recommended, due to security exploits that can target those versions of phpBB. It is recommended to upgrade to the latest version of phpBB. No changes are required to use phpBB 2.0.10 or later versions on PHP 5.

#
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------
#
//
// addslashes to vars if magic_quotes_gpc is off
// this is a security precaution to prevent someone
// trying to break out of a SQL statement.
//
#
#-----[ BEFORE, ADD ]------------------------------------------
#
// PHP5 with register_long_arrays off?
if (!isset($HTTP_POST_VARS) && isset($_POST))
{
	$HTTP_POST_VARS = $_POST;
	$HTTP_GET_VARS = $_GET;
	$HTTP_SERVER_VARS = $_SERVER;
	$HTTP_COOKIE_VARS = $_COOKIE;
	$HTTP_ENV_VARS = $_ENV;
	$HTTP_POST_FILES = $_FILES;
}