phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 47:32
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Despite us being somewhat early, this episode was our special for April Fools Day 2008: our best attempt to pretend to be a weekly live podcast all about vBulletin. We tried our best, but we couldn’t resist throwing in a few good doses of surprise and sarcasm.

On this episode of vBulletin Weekly, we look at the history of how vBulletin came to be and where it is today. For those of you who are new to vBulletin, we discuss the requirements of running vBulletin, the licensing fees (ever heard of those?) for vBulletin, and the long multi-step installation process. Plus, the first release candidate of the next major release of vBulletin, 3.7, just came out a week or two ago. We take a look at some of the wildly inventive new features coming in 3.7, as well as our opinions on them. Plus, we discuss a bit about the unique idea of “threads” that vBulletin offers, and answer some questions from our angry mob chat room about vBulletin.

Links mentioned in this episode:
vBulletin Info and History (Wikipedia)
vBulletin Community Forums
vBulletin Customizations Website
Comparison between phpBB and vBulletin
First Look at vBulletin 3.7

The Hack of the Week is the Post Thank You Hack for vB 3.6 by Abe1, and the Skin of the Week is Jedi Knights – Star wars for vB 3.6 by foruma-z.

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

Hello everyone,

I’m currently writing this from an iMac at an Apple Store, stealing their internet. My internet connection at home is not working because the cable on my router broke, and new ones are only available direct from my ISP (which means it won’t get in for a little while).

For tomorrow’s episode of phpBB Weekly, I will be taking my laptop and headphones over to my local library and grabbing a private “study” room that’s available there, utilizing their free (and hopefully reliable) wifi. However, since they don’t open until sometime later in the morning, phpBB Weekly will be starting 90 minutes later than usual, at 1:30 PM EDT (17:30 UTC) instead. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope that you will still be able to make it to the show.

Thanks for working with me on this, and we hope to see you tomorrow for our very special episode!

It’s been about three and a half months now since phpBB3′s gold release rocked the galaxy, and so now the hype has simmered down and the devs have rested up and the first big wave of post-release bug reports have rolled in. So now, three and a half months after the release, the Development Team has been working hard on the inevitable 3.0.1 release.

Confirming what David has promised us for these past few months, the Dev Team will be quietly issuing “quality assurance” release candidates of every minor release in an effort to avoid repeating instances of having to issue a new release within days of a previous one (as happened twice in the 2.0.x line and once during phpBB3′s RC stage). Anyone can help themselves to these release candidates (and the QA “Quack and Assassinate” Team will be forced to dive through them), and they will likely materialize into a full version of phpBB 3.0.1 by the end of the week. There will be a mailing list to subscribe to if you want to help test out release candidates when they come out (they will not normally be published on the announcements forum to the general community). As a reminder, while the RCs are not fully complete, the chances are that they will fix more problems than they cause; the purpose of the QA testing is to ensure that they don’t introduce any significant new problems.

So far, the list of changes for 3.0.1 features fifty bugfixes–it’s obvious that the dev teams have been busy, in addition to their recent release of 2.0.23 plus working on the development of Ascraeus.

We have been planning something special for this Saturday’s episode of phpBB Weekly, and thus, we will not be able to discuss phpBB 3.0.1 on our show this week. However, this is just a note to you to keep an eye out for the new release and update! (You know, I hear that the new auto-updater is like super-easy and totally rocks!) If you’re interested in helping to test out the release candidates, feel free to help yourself.

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Episode Duration: 50:31
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Scott Stubblefield

The jury was out on whether or not we would be able to recover from our, um, interesting episode last weekend, but we came around with a somewhat more serious episode this week. This episode featured our tenth guest interview in this podcast’s short history, and represents our response to the many comments that we have received from our listeners recently asking for us to focus a bit more on styles for phpBB.

On this episode, we were joined by phpBB style author Scott Stubblefield, who makes some of our favorite styles for phpBB2 and for phpBB3. On this episode, Scott tells us about how he got into making phpBB styles, his experiences as a style author transitioning from phpBB2 to phpBB3, tips for users interested in making phpBB styles, and much more. Plus, David answers a frequently asked question regarding how long it will be before the phpBB.com Styles Database finally comes back online.

The MOD of the Week is Quick reply for phpBB3 by rxu, and the Style of the Week is Star Trek for phpBB3 by Scott Stubblefield.

Be sure to join us next week when we will have a very special surprise topic that will be sure to knock your socks off…

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

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Episode Duration: 1:16:54
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

This special episode of phpBB Weekly was recorded off of TalkShoe because we were unable to be available for a live show on Saturday, March 15th. Instead, utilizing our favorite utility, Skype, we recorded this special non-live episode where we broke with tradition and had a non-binding, somewhat hilarious discussion about the various issues and non-issues for phpBB.

During the episode, we discuss the recent appearance of a “code sniffer” in the phpBB3 Subversion. However, David has no idea what it’s about either (at this point), and so we mostly end up speculating. We also talk about phpBB’s new QA Team–it’s supposed to stand for “Quality Assurance Team,” but we inadvertently come up with a wacky new name that you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

In addition, we talk and joke a bit about such topics as phpBB’s impact on global warming, and phpBB’s plans for World Domination. Douglas also introduces his roommate to Bertie, and then talks about what “features” should be included in phpBB 3.2, and David argues why they shouldn’t be there.

All in all, this episode was mostly an opportunity for us to take a break from the normal drawl of what we normally do on phpBB Weekly and have a bit of fun while breaking some of the rules. We hope that you enjoy it, and we’ll be back to our usual professional selves next week. Incidentally, please also don’t forget about completing our listener survey while you’re here.

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