Hello everyone,
I owe you all an explanation, an apology, and some good news.
What happened
In June 2025, L19 went offline after a hacking incident. The attacker exploited vulnerabilities in our ancient, unpatched phpBB 3.0.8 installation — software that hadn't been updated in over a decade — and turned our MySQL server into a cryptocurrency miner. I took the site down to prevent further damage.
The good news is that no data was lost. The bad news is that simply putting it back online wasn't an option — the same vulnerabilities that let the attacker in were still there, and the software was so far behind that a straightforward update wasn't possible.
That began a long process of figuring out how to migrate a heavily customized 15-year-old phpBB forum forward to modern software without losing anything. I'm sorry it took as long as it did. The forum means a lot to me, and I wanted to get it right rather than rush it and risk losing the years of knowledge and discussion this community has built.
What we've done
L19 has been fully migrated from phpBB 3.0.8 to phpBB 3.3.15 — the latest stable release. This was not a simple upgrade; it involved running 314 incremental database migrations across every phpBB release from 3.0.9 through 3.3.15, with several manual fixes along the way.
Here's what's been preserved:
- All 273,583 posts across 17,676 topics — verified byte-for-byte
- All 6,890 user accounts (your password still works — just log in normally)
- All 21,218 private messages
- All 12,554 attachments (2.1 GB of files)
- All 68,984 "thanks" records
- All polls, bookmarks, drafts, watch lists, and ban lists
- All custom profile fields (Go rank, KGS handle, OGS handle, etc.)
- Full search index (186,000 words, 9.5 million matches)
- PHP 8.3 (was PHP 5.4) and MySQL 8.0 (was MySQL 5.7)
- HTTPS everywhere with automatic Let's Encrypt certificates
- Go diagram rendering — the Go diagram tag has been completely overhauled with TrueColor images, anti-aliasing, TrueType fonts, and proper circular stones. Compare an old diagram to a new one and I think you'll notice the difference!
- SGF/EidoGo viewers — all 7 SGF-related BBCode tags (sgf, eidogo, etc.) still work. We also fixed a long-standing bug where backslash characters in SGF data (e.g. KGS chat messages) were being silently eaten. About 9% of SGF posts were affected.
- A new theme inspired by the original L19 look — warm wood tones, the classic banner, and Go stone icons for read/unread status. It's responsive, so it works well on phones too.
- Old /phpbb3/ URLs (from Google results, bookmarks, external links) automatically redirect to the new URL structure.
A migration this large — 314 database migrations, a PHP version jump of nearly a decade, and dozens of custom BBCode tags — is bound to have some rough edges I haven't caught yet. If you notice anything broken, weird, or different from how it used to work (broken formatting in old posts, missing images, features that don't behave right, etc.), please report it in this thread. The more specific the better — a link to the affected post or a screenshot goes a long way.
Forum cleanup
While we're at it — the forum structure has accumulated a lot of cruft over the years. There are subforums built around communities or servers that no longer exist, dead sections that haven't seen a post in years, and an overall layout that could use some rethinking. I'd like to ask our admins and moderators to get together and propose a cleanup — merging, archiving, or reorganizing subforums to better reflect what the community actually looks like today. If you have opinions on this, feel free to share them in this thread or in a dedicated discussion.
Call for maintainers
Running L19 as a one-person operation for 15+ years was a mistake. When I got busy with life and work, the forum fell behind on updates, which is exactly what made the hack possible.
I'd like to change that. If you have experience with any of the following and would be willing to help maintain L19, please reach out to me via PM or email (adrian@apetre.sc):
- phpBB administration — moderator tools, spam management, extensions, updates
- Docker / Linux server administration — keeping the infrastructure healthy
- Web development — PHP, CSS, JavaScript — for theme tweaks and custom features
- Community management — helping moderate and keep the forum a welcoming place
L19 has been a home for the English-speaking Go community for a long time. I'd like to make sure it stays that way, and that it doesn't depend on any single person to keep the lights on.
Thank you for your patience during the downtime. It's good to be back.
— Adrian
