phpBB Weekly

Well, August is nearly upon us. Not only is this going to be a significant month for me personally, as I will be moving away to university in Washington, DC in only two weeks, but it’s also going to be a very significant month for phpBB Weekly, as the show will be featuring some very exciting episodes and significant changes this month.

Tomorrow, we will kick-start the month of August with an in-depth look at the significant development changes announced earlier this week and the recent developer meeting in Germany. These are major announcements that will have far-reaching impacts for the entire phpBB community, and Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty, Support Team Leader) will be joining us tomorrow to discuss it.

The following Saturday, August 8th, we will be joined by Tom Beddard (subBlue). Tom is the designer of phpBB’s subSilver and prosilver themes, both editions of the phpBB.com website, and has done lots of other excellent design work. He’s not a very active member of the phpBB.com community, so the opportunity to have him on phpBB Weekly is a very unique one. We’re very grateful to him for setting some of his time aside to join us, and I encourage you to share any questions you’d like us to ask him.

phpBB Weekly will not be live on August 15 or 22 as a result of my cross-country move. However, sometime during that break, we will release a special non-live episode consisting of an interview with a good friend of mine, Lorelle VanFossen. Although she is mainly active within the WordPress community, she has a lot of experience working with local organizers of WordCamp events, and so we’re going to talk a bit about what organizers of local meetups/events should know. (This is part of our effort to encourage more phpBB users to organize local events in their area.) We’ll also talk a bit about some of her other contributions to the WordPress community, and her awesome book, Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging. (The interview will be non-live because all of her Saturdays through December are booked speaking at WordCamps and other events!)

phpBB Weekly will return from our break on Saturday, August 29th, however starting on that date, the show will be moving to a brand new timeslot: 1 PM EDT/1700 UTC (aka one hour later). This will be a much more convenient time for us, and hopefully more convenient for those of you who tune in as well. This new time is subject to change (although very unlikely). We have a number of interesting plans for our episodes in the fall, so we’re looking forward to keeping the phpBB Weekly momentum going! (And does anyone want to wager a bet on whether or not David will be back with us full time once September rolls around?)

So there’s the exciting plans for next month here on phpBB Weekly. Thanks for listening, and stay tuned…

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Download MP3 Episode (74.8 MB) | Download Episode Chat Log

Episode Duration: 1:21:43
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), Cullen Walsh (Brainy), and Samuel Thompson (SyntaxError90)

We hit this episode of phpBB Weekly coming right off of the excitement from OSCONvasion (all except Micheal, who couldn’t make it). Despite the fact that it was just a small meetup, most of which was spent touring the OSCON Expo Hall and downtown San Jose, it was still a lot of fun, with a lot of good discussions that took place. And it does go down as the first-ever phpBB meetup event in North America, after all. Douglas, Cullen, and Sam (who were all there) spent the first half hour of this episode recapping the various things we did and discussed at OSCONvasion. Be sure to follow the OSCONvasion tag on Flickr to see some of the great pictures we took around OSCON. And of course, audio from our live session is on phpBB Weekly #115, and video will be posted this week by AdamR.

It was announced just a few hours before this show that UMIL 1.0.0 Gold was released. The Unified MODs Install Library (UMIL) truly is the missing tool to allow actions like making database table changes, adding permissions, config options, or modules to be done automatically, and now that it’s fully stable, MOD authors and MOD installers can take full advantage of it.

Finally, the MOD Team has announced a Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition. This contest, which will help make a broad and diverse number of CAPTCHA plugins available for download and install at the launch of phpBB 3.0.6, offers free phpBB3 Berties to the best CAPTCHA plugins developed by MOD authors and submitted beginning in late August. The first submitted CAPTCHA plugin to be approved to the MOD Database will automatically receive a Bertie, plus a Bertie will be awarded to the team’s favorite CAPTCHA plugin and another to the favorite CAPTCHA plugin voted on by the community-at-large. We also take a look at the recently-revealed details of the default CAPTCHA plugins coming in 3.0.6, and go over what you need to know to build your own CAPTCHA plugin.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Vote in the poll on the sidebar at right; the poll ends on August 8th.

The MOD of the Week is Show First Post Only to Guest by Primy, and the Style of the Week is jblue by jbones.

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Download MP3 Episode (51.9 MB) | Download Episode Chat Log | Watch Video on Blip.tv

Episode Duration: 56:39
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), Adam Reyher (AdamR), Cullen (Brainy), and OSCONvasion Attendees

Listen in to the “Berties of a Feather” session that we held at OSCONvasion 2009 and streamed live on the internet. During this hour-long session, we discuss a bit about community management with our audience members, Adam delivers a PowerPoint presentation on how to successfully build a new community with phpBB, and Douglas leads a discussion on how community members can get more involved in phpBB and discussion of some ideas that we would like to see in the future to foster even more community involvement in phpBB.

Much more info (with photos) about OSCONvasion is available here. We will have a complete wrap-up of our great time at OSCON and OSCONvasion on tomorrow’s regularly-scheduled episode.

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Download MP3 Episode (73.6 MB) | Download Episode Chat Log

Episode Duration: 1:20:22
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), Adam Reyher (AdamR)

On this episode, we’re all pumped up in anticipation of the OSCON 2009 convention taking place this week in San Jose, California. OSCON (O’Reilly Open Source Convention) is one of the biggest and longest-running events focused on free and open source software, and thanks in part to the fact that it moves from Portland, OR to the Bay Area for the first time this year, phpBB is going to be there via our OSCONvasion 2009 Bay Area phpBB Users Meetup, exclusively sponsored by phpBB Weekly.

And so, as we get ready to mobilize to San Jose, we dedicate this episode to free and open source software. We discuss what free and open source software is, what it means (note the oft-quoted “Free as in speech, not as in beer”), and some of its history. We also discuss a bit about some of the legal documents that helps keep free and open source software free and open source, such as the Creative Commons licenses and the GNU General Public License (including some discussion about the differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3 and other GPL variations). We also discuss a bit about the idea of copyleft and how these licenses use copyleft to extend the freedoms and rights normally reserved by copyright. And finally, we talk a bit about how open source is actually helping to make all kinds of software better, and how it helps make phpBB and many other PHP-based web programs better as well.

If you’re going to be in the Bay Area this week, we hope that you’ll come to OSCON. There’s a bunch of free events and a great Expo Hall with lots of great exhibitors, all of which are available to you with a free Expo Hall Only registration. And of course, our OSCONvasion 2009 meetup, which will have involvement from lots of team members, live phpBB demos, and much more. And if you can’t come, we will be streaming OSCONvasion 2009 on a special phpBB Weekly episode this Thursday evening, and everyone is invited to listen live and join in on our TalkShoe chatroom and ask any questions you want to the panel that will be presenting, just like we did at Londonvasion last year! We hope to see you in person or in spirit (via the internet) on Thursday! It’s sure to be a blast.

Our last phpBB Weekly Poll Question was “What would be the most likely impact of enabling Quick Reply on your board?” Here are the answers:
“The front will fall off.” 8 votes / 31%
“The energy saved by not loading the reply forms will qualify me for a tax rebate for being ‘green.’” 7 votes / 27%
“The ‘Post Reply’ button will go on strike and accuse me of hiring scabs.” 6 votes / 23%
“The earth’s magnetic field will suddenly turn upside down, and we won’t be able to hang things on refrigerators ever again.” 3 votes / 12%
“Truckloads of pointless ‘I agree’ replies to sort through.” 0 votes / 0%
And 2 “Other” answers:
“The universe WILL implode! And ketchup will taste like mustard.”
“It still doesn’t make me coffee ”
Total Votes: 26
There will not be a Poll Question this week, our next poll will be announced next Saturday.

The MOD of the Week is Syntax Highlighter by UseLess, and the Style of the Week is polyethylene by Zergall.

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Download MP3 Episode (55.3 MB) | Download Episode Chat Log

Episode Duration: 55:32
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Michael Williams (mtotheikle)

David and Michael fill in for Douglas on this episode, who had to duck out at the last minute. They spend some more time discussing the ongoing (and quickly-moving) development of the upcoming phpBB 3.0.6 release, and also discuss the features that they would most like to see in a 3.0.x release.

Finally, on Douglas’ behalf, David describes the fundraising efforts that we’re putting together to help us rein in some equipment to use at OSCONvasion 2009. There are some sponorship opportunities available as well!

The MOD of the Week is FAQ Manager by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is SkyLine by MartectX.