Nodejs is the future. Event-driven, asynchronous, you cant write smooth and blazing fast things in lame php as in node. I really loved the PHP in the past but those annyoing barriers, eats a lots of resource (especially with apache), top-heavy, all compared to Node - can easily convince.
And sorry, but its called NODEBB. Whats the point of create a new phpBB ? Have a lots of board written in php and if you want that go for it (of course noone as cool as nodebb hehe).