phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 39:08
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

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It’s our annual pre-April Fools Day episode, but this time, we’re not doing another very bad impression of another bulletin board podcast. This time Douglas takes the podcast up to a new level: the height of cooking shows! Live on the air, Douglas prepares one of the biggest delicacies for any community: Community Chocolate Cake, with the taste of your community baked right in. You can check out the actual photos of the project, and view the full recipe after the jump.

Our last Poll Question of the Week was “What’s the best April Fools prank to pull on your users?” There were 3 votes (30%) for “Give them access to a fake version of the ACP (example),” 3 votes (30%) for “Announce that your community has been purchased by Microsoft (or some other arch enemy),” 2 votes (20%) for “Make them think they’ve been banned,” 0 votes for “Change the language on your entire board to something strange and obscure,” and 2 “other” votes which were “Put a giant slice of bacon over the index page (example)” and “BORG INVASION!”. This week’s poll question will be “What other recipe should be featured on the next edition of BBGourmet (if there ever is one)?” Vote in the poll on the right-hand sidebar on this website!

There is no MOD or Style of the Week this week. phpBB Weekly will return back to its normal self next week!
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Episode Duration: 36:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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We had a very short episode of phpBB Weekly this week, one that would be sure to make David jealous. For whatever reason. But what can we say? We’re at sort of a lull in terms of phpBB news to cover, and we adjust accordingly.

A new post on the phpBB.com Blog by battye asks us, “How many forums should I create?” Micheal and Douglas discuss this a bit in terms of why it’s a very poor idea to start your board with dozens of forums or to have so many forums that they overwhelm your users. We also share some experiences we’ve had with boards that had many forums set up, or, even worse, lots of subforums many levels deep.

We then take a look at the world of Bertie. For one thing, Micheal and Bertie are no longer married. It’s technically not a divorce, since there never technically were papers verifying the marriage to begin with, but Micheal tries to explain the back story here. Bertie 3.0 continues to be available, and should be a hot item since Bertie Bear has been running for President, according to Micheal’s Facebook group. We have a bit of a discussion about Bertie’s qualifications to become President. And speaking of presidents, we also take a look at the actions of Albertie Einstein, Bertie Mons’ new president, who seems to have been a bit of a lame duck, having done nothing since last November. We’ll have to see if the situation changes there soon.

The Poll Question of the Week is “What is the best April Fools prank to pull on your users?” Vote (or suggest your own alternate answer) by March 28th in the sidebar.

The MOD of the Week is Anti Double Post by Théonaute, and the Style of the Week is green_vision by abble CoSa NoStrA.

Contrary to what was said at the end of the episode, we will be having an episode next Saturday, March 28th, that Douglas will host by himself. It will be our infamous annual April Fools Day special, where we’ll be putting on an unusual type of episode! Tune in live to be the first to find out the surprise!

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Download MP3 Episode (62.6 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:08:20
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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We have done it! Our one-hundredth episode of phpBB Weekly, a significant milestone for any podcast. There may be tens or hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there, but only some of them make it to this milestone, particularly for a podcast that we never thought would make it this far ourselves.

Unfortunately, despite the high demand from our listeners, we were unable to book a guest to join us on this episode. But we had someone almost as good! Our new temporary co-host, Micheal Cottingham, joined us in his new role for this first time on this show, and Douglas and he chatted a bit about security. We discuss a number of the topics from the StarTrekGuide Security Class forum (including an important one for EVERYONE to read about protecting your passwords), and we also go over some common injection vulnerabilities that MOD authors and all PHP developers need to keep an eye out for. And if you think you know all of the injections by heart, why not try the “Find the Injection” games over on the Security Class forum?

We also take a look at a recent blog post about Area51 (the phpBB development site, not the secret military base) and discuss a bit about its past role during Olympus development and its likely role during Ascraeus development.

Our last poll question was “What’s your favorite web browser?” There were 6 votes (55%) for “Firefox!”, 3 votes (27%) for “Safari!”, 1 vote (9%) for “Internet Explorer,” and 1 vote (9%) for “I seem to have an inability to pick a web browser and stick with it.” This week’s poll will be “What’s the best April Fool’s prank to pull on your users?” The poll will open up later this week and run until March 28; plus there will be an “Other” option for you to submit your own suggestions!

The MOD of the Week is User Reminder by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is AutumnsColor by BillStur Styles.

Hello phpBB Weekly listeners,

It’s been awhile, but I’m excited to say that we are returning to a full-time presence on the airwaves! Or internet waves. Whatever.

Point is, tomorrow (about 12 hours away as of me writing this post) will be our one-hundredth episode! This is a significant milestone for any podcast, particularly for us, and I’ve personally been looking forward to it for about the last three months. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to book a really cool guest to interview on our podcast tomorrow due to some of the tumultuousness that we’ve been dealing with recently, but we hope to have a rocking fun episode tomorrow anyway, and we hope you’ll be sure to join us. (And as a reminder, if you didn’t start Daylight Savings Time last Sunday, make sure you join us an hour earlier than previously.)

Hi there, phpBB Weekly listeners!

Following up on last Saturday’s announcement that David Lewis is taking a temporary hiatus from the show, I’m very pleased and excited to share with you that I’ve found a temporary co-host to take David’s place over the next month or two. Micheal Cottingham, known on phpBB.com as Techie-Micheal, former Support Team leader, has agreed to fill in as my co-host!

Micheal has joined us on phpBB Weekly many times before. He also appeared on the first few episodes of the Official phpBB Podcast and also joined me for a memorable episode of my former other podcast, PreviewCast, when we roasted a crazy website known as AboutUs.org. (We’ll probably end up retelling that story on the next episode.) Micheal brings with him a lot of knowledge about security, which has been a pretty hot topic in the phpBB community recently (wink wink), and although he stepped down from the teams last year, he continues to be very active in the phpBB.com forums. So I’m very excited that he will be joining me on phpBB Weekly.

We are still canceling the episode for this Saturday, March 7th due to me being out of town. Our next live episode will be Saturday, March 14th, and it will be our 100th episode! We still have not confirmed what we’ll be doing on that episode, and we’ll be sure to let you know if it’s something big and important, but we do hope that you’ll join us and join in the party! And, of course, be there to give Micheal a proper welcome. David has also told me that he’ll try to stop by for a few minutes too just to join in the party, since about 3/4 of the last hundred episodes couldn’t have been done without him.

Our biannual Daylight Savings Time notice: Don’t ask me why the United States decided that it should do Daylight Savings Time so early, but this Sunday, March 8th represents the second Sunday in March and is when Daylight Savings Time starts in the United States. And as David, Micheal, and I are all based in the United States, we are moving the show’s time accordingly. Therefore, beginning with our next episode and going through November, phpBB Weekly will be taking place an hour earlier, at 1600 UTC instead of 1700 UTC. (Still 12 PM EDT–Eastern Daylight Savings Time.) Therefore, if you aren’t “springing forward” this weekend, then please check your local time to be sure that you don’t miss us when we start an hour earlier on March 14th.