Not only that, it was also that Smarty2 is PHP4 code, and in recent years anyone reasonable moved to PHP5 and its' reacher OOP features - you still could use Sm

Not only that, it was also that Smarty2 is PHP4 code, and in recent years anyone reasonable moved to PHP5 and its' reacher OOP features - you still could use Smarty there but a) it could produce some technical problems B) it was totally not cool. In the meantime some other template engines were made (e.g. Dwoo or Twig) and they were better written, probably faster and have some great, new features (template extending). What further undermined Smarty's position was that php.net stopped to support the project (though I don't remember when it had happened exactly, might be well before 2008). But aside of all of that, the 3rd version of Smarty puts it back on the right track.