phpBB Weekly

David has completed a move to Dallas, Texas, Douglas has attended many meetings and gotten back into the school routine, and that means that this Saturday, September 1st, we will be back with another episode of phpBB Weekly! We had previously announced that we would be pushing out a special episode sometime in between our intermission, but unfortunately our lives got in the way and prevented us from finding time for that.

However, we do invite you to join us for our triumphant return this Saturday at the usual time! The episode description has just been posted on the front page of the phpBB Weekly website, and we’re not planning to miss anymore episodes for a little while.

See you all on Saturday, live on TalkShoe!

I’m excited to announce that phpBB Weekly has been accepted as a part of the Tech Podcast Network! The Tech Podcast Network is a rather exclusive site which promotes various podcasts and podcasters reporting from all sides of the tech realm. I’m really excited about the show’s acceptance. For now, it will mean a little bit more exposure and promotion, but hopefully we’ll have some additional announcements related to them coming soon! In the meantime, check them out to discover some other cool shows from the world of tech.

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Episode Duration: 1:18:53
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

This episode turned out to be a packed episode as we added a number of last-minute topics right before the show. We ended up having an unexpected interview with Paul Sohier, MOD Team Member, and we chatted with him a little bit about the MOD/Style Databases (which he’s responsible for designing) and MOD validation.

Furthermore, the PHP teams have announced that they will be formally discontinuing PHP 4 after this year (and security fixes after 2008-08-08). We chat about whether or not this is a good idea and what this means for phpBB, particularly phpBB2, which is not even officially supported under PHP 5. Then, David and I debate whether or not the phpBB teams should advance phpBB2 a bit after the final release of phpBB3, and on whether or not it’s important for the teams to maintain a more “lite” version of phpBB alongside the more complete and more complex phpBB3.

Finally, David talks about the new concept of modules in phpBB3 and what it means for MOD authors and administrators, along with a basic tutorial on how to build modules in phpBB3 and install them. For more info on modules, check out the modules documentation.

The MOD of the Week is Disable Post Editing After X Hours by Throckmorton, and the Style of the Week is RedSilver by jozomannen. Both run on phpBB2. If you want to recommend a MOD or Style (great opportunity here for self-promotion!), bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

Just a note that we will be taking another 2-week intermission from live shows. We will be recording an episode #028 off of TalkShoe sometime during the next few weeks, followed by #029 back on TalkShoe on Saturday, September 1st. Also, thanks again to our sponsor, Audible.com.

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Download MP3 Episode (49.3 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:26:12
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

In this episode of phpBB Weekly, David and I are joined by guest host Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), the phpBB Support Team Leader. In what is so far our longest episode ever, David, Douglas, and Micheal talk about a number of different things, particularly relating to phpBB3, and also have a good time. MOD authors, server admins, and users concerned about security will really enjoy some of the more technical aspects of the conversation, while regular phpBB enthusiasts will also enjoy other parts of the episode.

David and MIcheal touch on a number of different things in phpBB3, including how phpbb_root_path is now handled as a defined constant instead of a variable, custom template paths, the new phpBB error handler, modularity, the naming of language files in modules, the hidden create_schema_files.php script and the DBMS, and the opening of the new MOD and Styles Databases. They also talk a bit about the various things in phpBB3 that make it more secure, including the “http only” cookie setting, request_var(), the removal of HTML support in posts (improved BBCode), serving avatars and attachments through download.php, SSL, XSS and SQL injection, and leaving vars unset along with the dangers of register_globals. In addition, Micheal asks an interesting question that stumps Douglas (although the jury’s still out on whether or not Douglas was actually stumped).

The MOD of the Week is Clickable forum and topic rows by tumba25, the very first phpBB3 MOD to be approved by the MOD team. The Style of the Week is Poolhall Junkies by Scott Stubblefield, also for phpBB3. Again, if you want to recommend a MOD or Style to us, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

Be sure to join us next week on August 11th for phpBB Weekly #027 where David will talk about phpBB3 modules in detail, for both administrators and MOD authors. Thanks again to Micheal for joining us. Also thanks to phpBB Weekly’s new sponsor, Audible.com. For your FREE audiobook, go to Audible.com/TalkShoe.