Well, I click on the link to the download page and poke around a bit. I was happy to see that this update was released today, so the notice must of just appeared. I'd hate think that it was there for days and we just didn't notice it.
I looked at the list of changes from our version to the new version, and I didn't see anything that looked like it would be critical to us. Unfortunately, I am far from a tech geek. My general rule of thumb is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But there may well be a good reason to update. I wonder if a kindly former admin could let us know whether there have been any previous udates in the time that board77 has been around.
As for whether the update is somehow causing the weird new colon problem, it doesn't make sense to me that that would be the case, since we haven't actually done anything. On the other hand, the timing certainly is suspicious. I suppose we'll need to contact phpbb and find out what is going on with that. I should know how to do that, but I don't. Perhaps Prim or someone more knowledgable then I could either point me in the right direction or handle it themselves.