phpBB Weekly

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (45.7 MB)

Episode Duration: 49:55
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty)

This episode of phpBB Weekly is dedicated to phpBB supporters everywhere. (But no, there isn’t actually any chicken soup involved; we left the food behind with BBGourmet a few weeks ago.) Instead we’re joined by frequent phpBB Weekly guest Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty), Support Team Leader. Along with Micheal (veteran Support Team Leader), we have quite an interesting discussion.

We start by talking about JimA’s recent post on the phpBB.com Blog discussing why being a phpBB supporter is a rewarding experience as well as some things that you need to know before you start supporting. Yuriy and Micheal share some of the Support Team’s perspective on what they do to oversee community phpBB supporters and ensure that the Support Forums are a productive place.

Yuriy then overviews the Support Toolkit, which was recently made available for public preview via the phpBB Codeforge. The Support Toolkit will eventually become a tool that will be able to automatically perform a number of troubleshooting tools semi-independently of a properly-functioning phpBB installation. It is definitely a project that we will continue to keep a close eye on at phpBB Weekly.

Our last poll question was “What should be featured on the next episode of BBGourmet (if there ever is one)?” The top choice was “Deck 15 Donuts” with 5 votes (45%), although you know that David probably voted for that one multiple times, including once during this particular episode. Second choice was “Some poisonous recipe with vBulletin added to it” with 4 votes (36%). There was 1 vote (9%) for “User Permissions Parfaits,” 1 vote (9%) for “Yummy Apple-Blueberry Bars (YaBB),” and 0 votes for “Invision Power Brownies.” This week’s poll question is “What’s the most important advice to give a phpBB supporter?” and the poll will end on May 9th. Vote in the sidebar on the right-hand side.

The MOD of the Week is easyPortal by Noxwizard, and the Style of the Week is Pro_ubuntu by Ishimaru Chiaki.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (34.6 MB)

Episode Duration: 37:47
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

On this shorter episode, we clean up from the deliciousness of last week and get back to “normal.” Douglas and Micheal take a look back at a number of the April Fool’s pranks from the previous week (see links below) from phpBB communities and other websites.

UMIL 1.0 RC-2 was recently released by the MOD Team, and we briefly recap UMIL and what it does, but don’t get into many details about the new RC without David’s expertise on the subject.

Finally, Micheal discusses a recurring issue of people claiming that phpBB3 has vulnerabilities and exploits that do not exist (like this recent example). We discuss a bit about the ramifications of these and the best way that phpBB, other security firms, and web hosts can respond to these. See also this phpBB.com blog post and this discussion topic.

April Fools Links Mentioned on the Show:
Community April Fools Jokes
Deck 15–DO NOT ENTER!
New Tech “Products” for April 1st
Google’s Gmail Autopilot
Woopra’s Webcam Enablement Feature
UC San Diego’s Acceptances April Fools

Our ongoing Poll Question of the Week is “What should be featured on the next episode of BBGourmet?” Vote in the poll on the sidebar to the right. Poll ends on Saturday, April 11.

The MOD of the Week is Save full drafts by asinshesq, and the Style of the Week is SpringFlowers by BillStur Styles.