Excellent News!
phpBB is probably my favorite Web Forum format! I am very glad to see that you went with an "Open source" format. The amount of modifications and hacks possible to phpBB is incredible. By the way...while the boards administration panel offers a lot of options and different ban filters and settings be aware that it will not completely keep the spammers out....In fact, by upgradding to this slicker BB format you may have actually ecouraged them! On other sites we have issues with chronic spammers using proxy servers to disguise their IP addresses....making it extremely difficult to keep them out by IP addy alone.
One suggestion that I would make is to go ahead and link your main web pages "forum" buttons directly to your new forum. You could then link back to the older forum from an announcement posted in every folder here. I accidently posted on the old board before I read your most recent announcement.
If you'd like to see what all is possible with phpBB check out:
http://www.aquatic-oasis.net/
Alex (the site owner) has heavily modified the code to allow the user some very usefull features (including a built in spell check)....never mind the current graphics over there as we are waiting for a couple of our members who are graphic designers to come up with a new banner....Talk to Alex on that site about possibly linking our site to yours (one thought might be to create a "sport fishing" folder linking directly to your site and a "fishkeeping" folder on yours linking to us.)
On the old board, I went by Colby D, however I'm usually known as "Seedy" on most web forums I participate in or administrate so, I thought I'd use it here too.