phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:23:15
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We had a lot of things to be happy about on this episode of phpBB Weekly: not only was there a large amount of news for us to cover, but it was the one-year anniversary of the release of phpBB 3.0.0 Gold, which put us in an excited mood (enough to make a few people in the chat room question us about whether or not we were sober).

In a somewhat surprising move, phpBB 3.0.4 was released on Friday, exactly one month after the release of 3.0.3, marking a major shift change as the Development Team begins focusing on making subsequent revisions of phpBB3 less, um, “huge” than 3.0.3 was. We cover the fixes, changes, and the one new feature in-depth, as usual.

David gives a grand welcome to this week’s new team members: two more Support Team members, and one new MOD Team member who was promoted from the Junior Validators Team. David also gives us a bit of an update on how the Junior Validators have been doing and a glimpse of where the idea will be heading.

Earlier this week, Meik (AcydBurn) that PHP 5.2.7 posed a security risk for phpBB2, due to an issue that PHP 5.2.7 caused with “magic_quotes_gpc.” We take a look at this risk in more detail, including why this affected phpBB2 but not phpBB3, and we also discuss why PHP 5.2.7 was retracted in the first place.

Finally, voting in the phpBBHacks.com 2008 Awards is almost over, so we take a look at the MODs/hacks, styles/templates, phpBB boards, and their authors up for the award.

The MOD of the Week is Annual Stars by eviL<3, and the Style of the Week is MG Xmas by Mighty Gorgon.

In honor of one of David’s favorite songs (as we discovered midway through this episode), the closing music is Black Horse and the Cherry Tree — KT Tunstall.

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Episode Duration: 1:16:17
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Dave Rathbun (drathbun)

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With the official retirement of phpBB2 fast-approaching, what is someone still using the legacy version of phpBB to do? Where are they supposed to go? Well, on this episode, phpBB.com Moderator Team member Dave Rathbun joins us to tell us about a new site he is launching to provide a home for these wandering souls: phpBB2Refugees, which launches on December 9th (that’s today!). During the episode, Dave tells us about phpBB2Refugees, including what the site’s goals are, how long he intends to run it, as well as a bit of info on some of the things he did to put it together. (If you look closely, it won’t take long to notice that their installation of phpBB2 has quite a number of MODs present.) We highly recommend that you check out their site and recommend it to any phpBB2-using friends that you are aware of.

We also chat a bit with Dave about the Moderator Team, and about his infamous phpBB Doctor Blog, which has a lot of really interesting content that you’ll want to take a look at.

And in honor of today’s topic, we switched ranks this week and chose a phpBB2 MOD and Style this week. The MOD of the Week is Approval MOD by uncle.f, and the Style of the Week is Christmas by CyberAlien. We’d also like to hear your MOD and Style Recommendations for us to possibly feature in future episodes!

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

I am quite embarrassed to point out something that we have consistently neglected to mention on phpBB Weekly for the last few weeks, even though it is quite a significant event happening within the greater phpBB community: the annual phpBBHacks.com Awards. Probably the most-recognized awards in the phpBB community, these awards go out to Hack/MOD Author of the Year, Hack/MOD of the Year, Style/Template Author of the Year, Style/Template of the Year, Support Forums Member of the Year, Staff Member of the Year, and phpBB of the Year.

With the exception of the Support Forums Member and Staff Member competitions, which are specifically within the support forums of phpBBHacks.com, the other awards are significant indicators of some of the best MODs, Styles, and communities out there for phpBB, and award-winners get to have a lot of bragging rights for the next year.

Voting for the awards ends on Sunday, December 14 at 6:00 PM EST (2300 UTC), so don’t miss this chance to vote now! We’ll be discussing the awards as one of our topics this Saturday, but I wanted to make sure that we told you about this more than a few hours ahead of time.