phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:03:01
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

(Or maybe what we really need is an editor with a faster turnaround time. But I digress…)

David missed out on this episode of phpBB Weekly because he accidentally set his alarm clock for PM instead of AM. (We’ve all been there.) However, we’re joined once again by our old friend Micheal Cottingham, who has started a new video series called “Webapp Breakage” (and subtitled “I really need to find a better title”). In the video, he demonstrates how series XSS vulnerabilities (also known as HTML injection vulnerabilities) are by actually demonstrating in a test environment how an attacker could use XSS to take control of a victim’s computer. Yeah, it’s pretty scary.

Douglas and Micheal have a long discussion in this episode about the video and about the seriousness of XSS vulnerabilities, and Micheal explains some of the many potential problems that can result from being hacked through XSS. As part of the discussion, we spend some time discussing some safe browsing techniques that you can follow when you’re surfing the web to help keep you computer safe from sites that may be hacked via methods like this (and yes, Mac users, that goes for you too).

Other relevant links mentioned:
Injection Vulnerabilities Blog Post (from February)
NoScript Browser Plugin

Our Poll Question, “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” continues until Saturday. If you haven’t yet, go vote in the poll!

The MOD of the Week is Crazy Maths CAPTCHA Plugin by eviL<3 and the Style of the Week is static by spyka.

Be sure to join us live on Saturday for our exciting, spooky, and fun Halloween episode!

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Episode Duration: 1:40:42
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and special guest Bernard Meldonado

Disclaimer: We’re still trying to get used to uStream! Unfortunately, the audio for David and Bernard got double-recorded (as we found out after the fact), and we spent a lot of time trying to fix it to no avail. We’re quite disappointed about this considering how wonderful this episode was, but the sound isn’t awful. It just adds some space-agey reverb. We’ll try to avoid this problem in the future, and sorry for the inconvenience on this episode.

Last week, we briefly spent some time discussing CAPTCHAs and their effect on people who are visually impaired. Well, for this episode, we are joined by Bernard Meldonado, the founder of Solona, a volunteer-driven website that helps solve CAPTCHAs for such visually impaired users. In our extended conversation with him, we discuss the state of CAPTCHAs from a blind person’s perspective, the lameness of audio-based CAPTCHAs (with funny examples), and discuss some other services and laws to help make the web accessible. We also discuss a bit about what we would like to see in future phpBB CAPTCHA plugins (any MOD authors listening?), and really consider the future of CAPTCHAs from an accessibility standpoint. And Bernard tells us a lot about Solona and how it operates. If you’ve got some free time to spend and want to help make a difference, we really encourage you to volunteer for Solona and help solve CAPTCHAs! (We have not yet determined if solving that many CAPTCHAs improves or degrades the quality of your eyesight.)

We also cover the recent news of the week, including the phpBB 3.0.6 RC-3 release and the Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition results.

Our Poll Question is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” and continues until October 31. What are you waiting for? Go vote!

The MODs of the Week are Fancy jQuery Captcha by mtotheikle and Sortables CAPTCHA Plugin by Derky. The Style of the Week is Afterburner by RocketTheme.

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Episode Duration: 1:09:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

phpBB Weekly is back, Douglas is on a normal computer, and all is right with the world!

We cover a lot of ground on this episode. Douglas recaps our interest to find a phpBB Weekly Clerk (Editor’s Note: we’ve now found one!), voting for the CAPTCHA Plugin Competition begins, and a few new members join the phpBB teams.

In addition, we spend some time discussing a post made on phpBB.com concerning accessibility issues with CAPTCHA plugins, particularly for the visually impaired. We also look at the MOD team’s recent blog post on the MOD Validation workflow, and ponder why “Insta-Deny” is a trademarked term. Also, David tells us a bit about the upcoming new StarTrekGuide MOD Manager, which they are currently soliciting feedback on.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question, which goes until Saturday 10/31 (a week longer than indicated on the podcast), is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” Cast your vote here!

The MOD of the Week is Forum SEO by stokerpiller, and the Style of the Week is Gerbang Kasih by napy8gen.

Join us on Saturday when we’ll continue our discussion about CAPTCHA accessibility with special guest Bernard Maldonado of Solona!

UPDATE 10/16: We now have a new Clerk! (Actually, we’re changing the name to Executive Assistant.) A big thanks to Sam Jackson (aka sljaxon) who is now helping us out, and doing a great job!
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Episode Duration: 1:01:08
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and some unexpected guests (hint hint)

We’re back for another episode of phpBB Weekly with Douglas hobbling along via Skype on his iPod touch as he marks three weeks since the damage of his beloved MacBook. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, even if that makes him sound like he’s on a digitized cell phone. So what, this is phpBB Weekly, we should be used to funny-sounding audio by now, right?

However, you’re definitely going to want to give a listen to this episode to hear the unexpected (and completely unplanned) surprise that puts Douglas on the spot towards the end of the show. We actually re-recorded the end of this show last Monday (which was Douglas’ 18th birthday), since the end of the live recording we did on Saturday turned out very badly due to technical problems. So even if you listened in live, you didn’t get to hear it, so be sure you take a listen!

After apologizing and explaining his difficulties in getting episode #122 released, Douglas and David take a look at the newly-released second RC of phpBB 3.0.6, which includes regression fixes from RC1, and also introduces some major changes to phpBB’s auto-updater to allow it to be more tolerant of potential conflicts with MODs. Quite frankly, the developers have made quite a few more checkins in the few days since RC2, that we wouldn’t be surprised if we see a third release candidate before 3.0.6 goes final. But we’ll just have to wait and see…

The other big release of the weekend is MODX 1.2.3, the “toasted motherboard” edition. As this is the first release to the MODX spec in the past eight months, Douglas and David take the opportunity to dust off their ongoing conversation about MODX, and its usability and purpose compared to the gone-but-not-yet-forgotten Text Template. Also, Douglas’ experiences doing phpBB Weekly without a computer have brought a bug with phpBB3′s print view to his attention, which he will report as soon as phpBB.com lets him log in again.

The MOD of the Week is Board3 Portal by avaren, and the Style of the Week is 1thank by gokinstudio.com.

There will not be a phpBB Weekly episode this Saturday, October 3rd. We will return live on October 10, and Douglas will hopefully be back in front of a normal computer by then.