phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 53:41
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

A sarcastic thanks to a couple of phpBB team members (who shall be nameless) for correcting my mistake: #phpbb-mod is “hash phpbb-mod”, not “pound phpbb-mod”, even though most people in the US of A call it a “pound” and the rest of the world calls it a “hash”. From now on, I’m just calling it a “number sign”. *rolls eyes*

phpBB3 RC-2 has been released! The changelog for this release includes a whopping 113 fixes and changes. Plus, for the first time, upgrading with the built-in auto-updater is officially supported! Douglas tried out the auto-updater this morning, and sings its praises (as well as explaining how it works).

The GNU General Public License version 3 is final, but according to Meik “AcydBurn” Sievertsen, don’t expect phpBB to be using the new version. Douglas talks a bit about what this means, and also what it means in terms of licensing MODs.

It was announced today that submissions to the MOD Database are now open! First impression of the new forms: lots of bugs! However, paul999 has been moving quickly to fix as many bugs as he can today, so hopefully we can give you a better impression next week.

Finally, we talk a bit about the MOD Authors Convention that has been ongoing today, including critiquing it and offering suggestions for how we think it should be run. The convention continues today in #phpbb-mod until 8 PM Eastern time tonight!

The MOD of the Week is Collapsed Categories by Default by Wicher, and the Style of the Week is JM-Ignited by jmignited (view demo).

Finally, a shout out to phpBBCast, thanking them for promoting and covering phpBB Weekly episodes!

Hello everyone,

Due to popular demand, and in the hopes of not distracting the topics in phpBB’s IRC channels, I have now setup a #phpbb-weekly IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. This channel is intended for “after-hours” phpBB Weekly discussion, it does not replace the chatroom in TalkShoe during the show. (Besides, wouldn’t it be cooler for you to call in?)

Today, partly for the MOD Authors Convention, we will be having an hour-long pre-show for phpBB Weekly starting in a few minutes. The actual recording doesn’t begin until the normal time, of course. Feel free to join in if you want!

Thanks for listening!
–Douglas Bell

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Episode Duration: 49:44
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

In this episode, Highway of Life joins us to talk about his experience with phpBB3. He talks about how he built his Star Trek Guide Forums off of phpBB3 CVS (which is not recommended, by the way) , the differences between MODding for phpBB2 and phpBB3, and much more. We had an excellent interview on this episode which is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in learning more about what’s new in phpBB3, including MOD authors and people who are interested in building a real online community with phpBB3.

In addition, next week is the 2007 MOD Authors Convention in the #phpbb-mod IRC room on freenode.net. Douglas covers what the event will be like, how to participate, and we even come up with some questions to ask there. We will be covering the MOD Authors Convention next weekend on episode #022.

The MOD of the Week is Delete User MOD by ycl6, and the Style of the Week is ExtremeDark Red by GHS (view demo).

MOD Team leader wGEric announced today that the MOD Team will be holding an all-day, IRC MOD Authors Convention from 0000 UTC on June 30th till 0000 UTC on July 1st. They did something similar a year ago, except that this year, they actually are dividing the day into 2 hour blocks to talk about various subjects. A number of MOD Team members will be available at any moment of the day to discuss MODding with members of the community in IRC.

That day, as you know, is also going to be phpBB Weekly #022, starting at 1600 UTC, so what I want to know is should I do anything special in terms of covering the MOD Authors Convention on the podcast? Leave any suggestions or comments on this entry. (If the MOD team has any suggestions in terms of covering the Convention, they can also feel free to comment! I know that you listen to the show, guys.)

See you next Saturday in #phpbb-mod!

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Episode Duration: 38:25
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

In celebration of the 20th episode of phpBB Weekly, we have switched to a new recording strategy. Those who listen live on TalkShoe will not hear the opening/closing theme music, but instead the show will be recorded locally, and then I will edit in the theme music (and any other applicable sounds) after the fact and re-upload the show. This will result in a faster turnaround time for episode releases and much higher sound quality. Enjoy!

What’s the one thing that everyone tells you to do when you have an active phpBB board, WordPress blog, Drupal website, or anything else? Back it up! In this episode, I cover a number of different ways to back up your files and your database–some of the methods are phpBB-specific, and some aren’t.

For backing up your files, just download them to your local hard drive via an FTP client or your webhost’s File Manager. For backing up your database, phpBB2 and phpBB3 have built-in backup tools which work with all of the databases that they support. While phpBB3 has a good backup system, I recommend Vic D’Elfant’s SQL Backup MOD instead for doing backups of your phpBB2 database. However, the SQL Backup MOD is only compatible with MySQL, so that option is not available to other databases. In addition, phpMyAdmin has an excellent Export tool which allows you to backup entire databases (not just phpBB) with a lot of flexible options. cPanel also has a Backups section which can automatically download a gzip of a database backup. Or, try generating a Full Backup to create a tarball of your entire webspace, files and database included.

Whichever method you choose, remember to have a regular time to run these backups, and always backup your board before you install MODs or update phpBB, so that you’re safe if something goes wrong.

The MOD of the Week is Registration Stopper for phpBB2 by Fountain of Apples (hey, I don’t talk about my own MODs that often, this is the first time in 20 episodes!), and the Style of the Week is Brushed Metal for phpBB3 by Robin Huurman.

Also, a shout out and a thank you to the Star Trek Guide Forums, who will be promoting phpBB Weekly in each of their upcoming newsletters! Thanks for helping to spread the word!