phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 53:34
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Consider this scenario: The development team of a piece of software that you love makes a big announcement about a bunch of big new features coming in the next release, and you happen to run a podcast about that piece of software that you love. So you cover that announcement of those new features, and then over five months and twenty episodes of that podcast, you continue covering those features over and over again. Finally, that much-anticipated release actually gets released, but you’ve already talked about it so much that people are sick and tired of hearing you talk about it. In fact, rumors are that even the developers (who happen to listen to your podcast) are sick and tired of you talking about it, which may be the reason that the release actually got released. What do you do?

Well, in our case, that question was answered for us. One of our listeners this past week challenged us to go the entire show without mentioning 3.0.6 whatsoever. (If you haven’t heard, it was released last Tuesday.) He bet $50 that we wouldn’t be able to do it. So what did we do? We foiled him with a technicality. And the result? Arguably our wackiest live episode ever.

During the show, we covered this week’s release of PHP 5.3.1, and marveled at some of the interesting features being touched on in PHP 5.3. We also ended up spending some time looking ahead at PHP 6 and discussing some of the features that PHP 6 is removing and why.
The 2009 phpBBHacks.com Awards are starting, and nominations are being accepted until 7 PM EST tonight! This is generally considered the biggest awards event in the phpBB community, so don’t miss out…
Douglas also expresses some disappointment that OSCON 2010 will not be in San Jose again, but moves back to Portland, OR. David says that there will be a very funny SCOFF News coming once they get some sizable snowfall, and both of us share our Thanksgiving plans.

The MOD of the Week is Snow over phpBB by Tophon, and the Style of the Week is buziness_board by abble.

Then, after our shortest show (with David on the show) ever, we transition into our after-show, where we talk about the release of phpBB 3.0.6, the “Fast and Furrious” edition. (But, we technically didn’t talk about it during the show itself!) Douglas ends up singing through the feature list (we’re not expecting any Grammys), and we also take a walk down memory lane looking at all of the “furry” release names that phpBB has had over the years. There is no doubt that we could not have come up with a weirder dumber funnier way to honor phpBB 3.0.6′s release.

We will be taking next Saturday off for Thanksgiving weekend, but will return on Saturday, December 5 for episode #130. Our third season of phpBB Weekly is almost over… can you believe it?

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Episode Duration: 1:19:23
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Adam Reyher (AdamR)

On this episode, we take a look way, way back in time. Five years back, to be exact. That’s right, five years ago, phpBB 2.0.11 was released, after a serious vulnerability was discovered in phpBB2. This vulnerability was exploited over a month later by the Santy.A worm which used Google to seek out non-updated boards and deface them. Unfortunately, because the vast majority of phpBB admins didn’t take the time to keep their phpBB installations up-to-date, the Santy worm wreaked havoc among the phpBB community and nightmares for the Support Team, and unfairly attributed phpBB with a reputation for poor security practices.

We last talked about Santy two years ago, about a month before phpBB3′s release. Since then, phpBB’s security reputation has significantly improved, thanks to the fact that in the nearly-two years since 3.0.0, there have been zero security exploits for phpBB. And, as we discuss in this episode, a lot of that is thanks to the lessons that the phpBB community learned since the Santy worm, including the Development Team’s focus on security, the external security audits of phpBB2 and phpBB3, and groups like the Security Team, the QA Team, and the Incident Investigation Team.

We also spend some time comparing the oft-confused difference between security exploits and spam, the latter of which phpBB is currently targeting with the 3.0.6 release. But overall, this episode is about looking back at a turning point in phpBB history which essentially helped make phpBB a much better project for the experience.

We also acknowledge the Dutch phpBB meetup happening at the HCC dagen on Saturday, November 28, and Douglas puts in another plug for the Washington, DC meetup he’s trying to organize.

The MOD of the Week is Contact Board Admin by RMcGirr83, and the Style of the Week is Pro_iphone by Samurai Design. And inspired by the style, David mentions an iPhone App of the Week: Tapatalk.

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Episode Duration: 1:21:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

We return from a Halloween break to see a bunch of brand new releases awaiting our special phpBB Weekly coverage. David and Michael (mtotheikle) have released a Mac Dashboard widget for Solona, so if you use a Mac it’s now even easier to help others solve CAPTCHAs. phpBB.com has been retrofitted with some nifty new submenus in the site navigation. Also out are UMIL 1.0.1, phpBB 3.0.6 RC-4, Support Toolkit RC-3, and a new Online MODX Creator tool. But no final release of phpBB 3.0.6, but all good things come to those who are patient…

Our last (and final) phpBB Weekly Poll Question was “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” Here are the results:
To remove a step. (0% / 0 votes)
To trademark every single term used in the validation process. (33% / 2 votes)
Free meal vouchers for every day a MOD has to wait in the queue. (17% / 1 vote)
Building a memorial gravesite for every MOD that gets denied. (17% / 1 vote)
A betting ring where the validators place bets on which MODs will and won’t get approved. (33% / 2 votes)
To take a vacation. (0% / 0 votes)
Total votes: 6

The MOD of the Week is phpBB Gallery by nickvergessen and the Style of the Week is GuildWarsAlliance by Daniel St. Jules.