phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 29:32
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

This episode of phpBB Weekly was recorded on Saturday, November 3–right after Halloween, so I guess someone was playing a trick on us. However, this episode was pretty much ruined when TalkShoe froze up on me in the middle of the episode, however I notified TalkShoe and they have since released an update which has seemed to fix up these problems.

David and I debated whether or not we wanted to release this episode, but we decided to go ahead and do it anyway. On this episode, Douglas continues the countdown to the final release of phpBB3 by answering a number of questions about phpBB3 from our audience, at least until TalkShoe got stuck.

Link mentioned: Simple Syndication MOD for phpBB3 (in beta)

The MOD of the Week is ACP Site Announcement Centre for phpBB2 by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is Halloween Style for phpBB3 by Echo. As we get closer to the holidays, we’re asking for people to recommend holiday-related MODs and Styles to us. Bookmark them on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts.

Hello everyone,

After having horrible problems with Skypecasts that made even TalkShoe look like the utopia of live podcasting, we are going to be starting phpBB Weekly #038 live on TalkShoe again. Please feel free to join us in the usual manner.
–Douglas Bell

Per my last post on Sunday, David and I have decided to test out an episode on a new service from Skype called Skypecasts in the hopes that it will be a more viable and reliable service than TalkShoe. Again, this will primarily be a test, and we will decide after the fact whether we want to permanently move our show to Skype’s new network.

So, if you want to be here on Saturday, what do you need to do? Well, on Saturday, the phpBB Weekly Skypecasts page will have a “Join this Skypecast” link. You will need to have a Skype account and have downloaded the latest version of Skype for this to work.

Skypecasts does not include a chat room, so we will be congregating on irc.freenode.net in the #phpbb-weekly channel. I will also try to keep my eyes on the Star Trek Guide chatbox as well.

We will not be participating in the TalkShoe Live! chat room, however as a courtesy to our regular TalkShoe streamers, I will try to hook the Skypecasts call in with TalkShoe so that you can listen to the call through TalkShoe’s live stream. Of course, this assumes that TalkShoe cooperates, I’m able to get Skypecasts to connect to the TalkShoe phone number, and I’m only guaranteeing that we will do this for this particular episode.

Also, unless there’s some hidden button or setting that I can’t find until David points me to it, Skypecasts is really nothing more than a public Skype conference call, which means that if you call in, you will be live immediately. Therefore, please make my life so much easier by calling in with headphones in order to prevent echo and background noise, otherwise, I’ll have to stop what I’m saying to scroll through the list and find out who’s making the gossip in order to mute them. I don’t know, if we end up using Skypecasts, we may end up having to hire someone to be an ad hoc call screener. :/

Have any questions about this Saturday’s setup? Leave a note in the comments below or go to the phpBB Weekly forum topic. Also, for those of you who do participate in the show live, we will be asking you to post your feedback in the phpBB Weekly forum (with a feedback link to be announced during the show) to help us decide if we want to make the switch.

Again, thank you for working with us as we evaluate this transition. Going through these growing pains now will help us make phpBB Weekly a better show in the future.

Update 11/10: The link above has been updated, and the old link is no longer valid. Please note the new link.

Hello everyone,

Recently, this show has gone through a number of upheavals, whether it be hosts who couldn’t be present or having problems with our live-show service, TalkShoe. David and I have been getting frustrated with some of the issues we’ve been having, and so are going to be making some changes, which I’d like to begin to outline to you below.

Goodbye TalkShoe?
When I started this show in January, my primary basis for it was to have a show not just talking about creating communities with phpBB, but to actually have a community that could participate and be a part of the show. For these past few months, TalkShoe has been the tool that has allowed us to pull this off. However, during the last month or two, we have been dealing with a significant increase in difficulties with TalkShoe, to the point where if you were on yesterday’s episode of phpBB Weekly, you heard how I had to cut the show short (it was a 25 minute show!) due to TalkShoe completely giving up on me.

Even though yesterday’s episode #037 wasn’t that great, David and I have decided that we will release it anyway, however we’re going to start testing some alternatives to TalkShoe, and we have already began researching some of these. If we find one that we like this week, it is very likely that on episode #038 this Saturday, we will be “beta testing” a different service. Of course, we will be announcing details later on this week here on this blog.

If we determine that we like that service, then a number of significant changes will happen here on phpBB Weekly. For one thing, our feed URLs will change as we will be moving off of TalkShoe feeds and managing the podcast feed in-house. This will probably also give us an opportunity to launch an updated website, something I’ve been wanting to do for a little while now. Anyway, stay tuned, as we’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on this blog about any changes that are going to happen.

Daylight Savings Time
A number of countries have seen time changes ending recently, and in the case of the United States, we just had DST end last night. Therefore, the time of our show will be changing. We will still be recording the show on Saturdays starting at 12 PM Eastern Time, however this means that the show will be starting at 1700 UTC, not 1600 UTC. You may want to check your local time so you know when phpBB Weekly will be starting now in your area.

DavidMJ
David and I have gotten so many e-mails in the last month asking if we’re going to get DavidMJ back on the show, after he had to unexpectedly miss episode #034. I am very glad to announce that DavidMJ has agreed to guest host this Saturday, November 10th, on phpBB Weekly #038, to talk about phpBB3 (what else?). If you have any questions for him, there’s a topic in the phpBB Weekly forum, or you can come on the show on Saturday or ask him yourself!

Thanks for continuing to listen to phpBB Weekly, and for bearing with us as we go through these growing pains. When I started this show in January, I had no idea that it would grow into what it is today, and by going through these changes, we’re working to make the show even better for you, the listeners.

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Download MP3 Episode (37.4 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:05:20
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life), Paul Sohier (Paul), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

Douglas missed this episode because his return flight from Long Beach the day before suffered a seven hour delay (read more if you’re interested), effectively turning it into a red eye flight, so he slept in during this episode. TalkShoe apparently wasn’t being cooperative, but in a fairly Official Podcast-esque episode of phpBB Weekly, he is joined via a Skype conference call by phpBB team members Paul and Techie-Micheal.

This episode, like about a third of our episodes to date, is all about MODs. David, Paul, and Micheal talk extensively about MOD Development, the MOD Database, and other things MOD authors may want to know. Finally, they talk a bit about the tribulations of giving support for boards with MODs on them, and what the Support Team can and cannot do to help you when a MODded board needs help.

The MOD of the Week is Prime Memberlist Filter for phpBB3 by primehalo, and the Style of the Week is Brushed Metal for phpBB3 by Robin Huurman.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts.