phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:18:23
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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News from the phpBB front has been somewhat limited recently, so we dug deep into our coffers to uncover some things to chat about on this “potpourri”-style episode.

David first brings up that phpBB.com has now been enhanced with some of the new features from the recently-released phpBB 3.0.3. New users on phpBB.com will now have their first post send to the moderation queue for approval, but once they have one approved post, they will then have free access to go on posting like normal. The teams are hoping that this will allow them to catch spammers more easily and ban them on sight. Speaking of banning, David also shares how much he loves the new one-click ban feature, making it possible for administrators to ban users straight from their profile.

David and Douglas than discuss a question which has been often brought up recently: “Will phpBB write/release a book?” Well, as is the case with most things from the teams, there’s no definite answer, but David and Douglas both have their own separate opinions on the subject, which they spend some time discussing.

Finally, David and Douglas talk a bit about the new request class that Nils Aderman (naderman) committed to the Ascraeus SVN repository last week, which brings a number of enhancements to phpBB3′s request_var() function, and what it means for MOD authors. They then step back and go over the importance of securing user-submitted variables in PHP in order to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities, which request_var() makes very simple for phpBB3 MOD authors. As Nils quoted in his commit log,

“Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.”

The MOD of the Week is Smilie Creator by Dr.Death, and the Style of the Week is proChristmas by topdown. If you have any suggestions for MODs or Styles to highlight on our show (particularly any holiday-themed styles), please share them with us!

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Episode Duration: 1:08:22
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We had a slightly harder time preparing for this week’s episode–when you’ve gotten so used to the idea that the phpBB.com teams will have a new news story every single week and then suddenly, there’s nothing new to talk about… let’s say it caught us by surprise. However, we did manage to improvise a pretty good show.

As of the day we recorded this episode, there were only 40 days left until the formal retirement of phpBB2. We take another look at the rapidly-approaching date as well as review the different teams’ timetables for adjusting to the retirement, and Douglas shares that in honor of the retirement, he will be launching a completely brand new phpBBWeekly.net website on January 1st with a new phpBB3-branded album artwork and some new features.

Then, David leads a tutorial about Custom Profile Fields in phpBB3. He covers how they work, how to set them up, as well as how to integrate them into your site and your style in a number of different ways, as well as sharing a number of examples on how he’s used them on StarTrekGuide.

Additional links mentioned in this episode:
Custom Profile Fields Flash Tutorial
Wiki Article on Integrating Custom Profile Fields within your styles

The MOD of the Week is Add Disclaimer by david63 and the Style of the Week is Chrimbo by ModphpBB3.

And, because we couldn’t resist a little pre-Thanksgiving fun, the closing music is from the U Can’t Stuff This eCard. Hope you have a great Turkey Day on Thursday!

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: 1:36:42
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty)

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“Hooray…new features!” was the headline of this episode of phpBB Weekly as the long-awaited phpBB 3.0.3 update was released. We take another look at some of the new features in this release.

Also, Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty) joins us on this show to talk about his recent promotion to Support Team Leader and to give us a glimpse of the direction that the future Support Team will be taking.

Finally, in the third segment of our Building a Successful Community series, we talk about the things you should know about recruiting and maintaining quality staff members on your forum. Yuriy shares some experiences that the phpBB.com teams have learned, David shares his experiences from StarTrekGuide, and Douglas shares some experiences from communities that he ran in the distant past.

The MOD of the Week is Milestone Congratulations by MartectX, and the Style of the Week is coffee_time by abble.

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: 1:09:07
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Jordan Lewis (Hank the Cowdog, representing Albertie Einstein)

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The era of change must be upon us. Not only did Barack Obama get elected as the next American president, but the changes within the phpBB teams just keep on coming with each passing week. This week it was announced that Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic) is stepping down as Support Team leader (but is staying as a member of the Support Team) and will be replaced by Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty). We briefly discuss this announcement, and there’s word that there could still be more structural changes coming soon to the phpBB project; stay tuned…

In the more immediate future, however, phpBB 3.0.3 RC-1 has been sent out to the QA Team for testing, which means that the long-awaited next update to phpBB3 is likely on the way very soon. Why is it long-awaited? There’s actually a number of new features coming in this release, such as template inheritance, changes to the moderation queue, and new permissions for sending private messages to multiple recipients. We go through the new toys coming in this next release in detail.

Finally, our President Bertie contest has officially ended with two elections that were held during the week, and on this episode, we announce the winner of the Bertie Mons Presidential Election: Albertie Einstein of the Intellectual Party, sponsored by Hank the Cowdog! We perform Albertie Einstein’s inauguration ceremony live on the show, and Jordan (Hank the Cowdog) delivers an inaugural address as well. The contest may be over, but Bertie Mons will continue to thrive on StarTrekGuide. Oh, and if anyone has figured out where the good people at SCOFF Media have disappeared to, please let us know…

The MOD of the Week is Activation Justification by TerraFrost and the Style of the Week is 4poziomSEO_orange by gokin.

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: 1:20:35
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), Eric Faerber (wGEric), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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After all the um, interesting results we had on last week’s episode involving multiple people connected via SkypeOut on their cell phones, you’d think that we’d want to jump back to normal this week, but no. David and Francis were both out of town this weekend in the Middle of Nowhere, Montana, at a horse show, and joined us on this episode via their phones in the middle of the horse show, as could be somewhat easily heard throughout the episode. In addition, we were joined on this episode by phpBB’s new Operations Manager, Eric Faerber (wGEric), by former team member Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), who claims to be married to Bertie on Facebook, and by Francis Lewis (Handyman) who is serving as the head manager of SCOFF Media, Bertie Mons’ independent media organization.

The phpBB teams made some dramatic reorganizational changes this week by expanding their group of Team Leaders into a new “Management Team,” which in addition to the team leaders consists of three “managers.” wGEric is the new Operations Manager, ChrisRLG is the new Business Manager, and dhn continues his work under his newly-renamed title, Website Manager. And, taking Eric’s place, Igor Wiedler (eviL<3) is succeeding Eric as the new MOD Team leader. Douglas, David, and Eric talk in-depth about these changes, why they were made, and what they mean for the future of phpBB.

Oh, and by the way, the MOD Team just posted a Q&A with the MOD Team topic, so if you have questions you’ve been dying to ask the MOD Team members, hie thee hence to that topic!

Finally, our panel of guests analyzes the campaigns in our President Bertie Election Contest, looking at the progress of the four candidates and discussing what strategies they’ve done well and what more they could/should have done. Voting for the candidates in our contest begins Monday, November 3rd at 9 PM EST (0200 UTC on Tuesday), so be sure to participate! More details will be posted later this week in the contest forum.

The MOD of the Week is Post Count Requirements by SyntheticChaos and the Style of the Week is AZ_Retro by ayashazoelle.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts. Also, be sure to check out and vote in the People’s Choice Podcast Awards! Voting ends this Thursday, so don’t miss out!