Episode Duration: 1:34:56
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Francis Lewis (Handyman`)

It’s our last live episode of phpBB Weekly, and the last time David and Douglas are on the show as the regular co-hosts before the show goes under new management. However, it was a special episode, not only because almost the entire thing was improvised without planned show notes, but as a great opportunity for recapping Libertyvasion 2010 and offering some parting thoughts to the phpBB project as it continues moving into the future.

We start by looking at how we can help make MODding eaiser by offering suggestions to the teams on where to implement hooks in phpBB 3.1 Ascraeus.

Douglas also recaps some of the presentations from Libertyvasion, noting some of the plans and discussions relating to the future of phpBB development-particularly concerning phpBB4′s integration with Symfony 2–and recapping presentations about the proliferation of the MOD Team Tools, and looking at the improvements coming to the automatic MOD installer to be included with phpBB 3.1.

We also congratulate Yuriy and Patrick on their promotions to Operations Manager and Support Team Leader, respectively, and Douglas notes that Rich McGirr (RMcGirr83) was also given a surprise promotion to full MOD Team Member. Some other promotions that were neglected on the episode include the additions of Igor Wiedler (eviL<3) to the Developer Team and Christian Bullock (Christian 2.0) to the Support Team, along with a number of other new team members throughout the teams.

Then, Douglas and David pull back and reflect on how phpBB Weekly started and grew–against all odds–to the institution that it is today. We reflect back on some of our more memorable episodes — some of the ones mentioned are our BBGourmet April Fools episode, our first interview with Patrick O’Keefe, and the one where the teams taunted Douglas about the phpBB3 Gold release.

Then, David and Francis give us one last little chunk of podcast acting, as they take us all the way to England, where a man tries to get a license for his fish named Eric.

Finally, we close with our MOD and Style of the Week. We congratulate the winners of the Summer of MODs contest by making both of the winning MODs our MODs of the Week: Precise Similar Topics II by VSE, and Thanks for posts (ratings edition) by [WordPress is unable to display his username properly]. And for the Style of the Week, we honor Christian’s victory in the Libertyvasion T-Shirt Contest by making the Style of the Week Absolution by Christian 2.0.

We all want to thank everyone who has followed phpBB Weekly for all these years; it’s been a fun ride. We’re looking forward to seeing how the podcast continues to grow and evolve when Phil and Sam take over the show, and wish them lots of luck and lots of fun!

Episode Duration: 52:58
Panel Moderators: Steve Atkinson (stevemaury / Support Team) and Douglas Bell (webmacster87)
Panel Members: David Colón (DavidIQ / MOD Team), Will Hough (will_hough / Moderator Team), Raimon Meuldijk (Raimon / Styles Team), Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty / Management Team & Support Team), and Josh Woody (A_Jelly_Doughnut / Developer Team)

This special episode of phpBB Weekly is the recording of the phpBB Team Discussion Panel session which took place during Libertyvasion 2010 in New York City on Saturday, August 21. Support Team member Steve Atkinson moderated the panel, while Douglas Bell coordinated the questions asked from the audience and from phpBB Weekly’s special Libertyvasion channel (#phpbb-libertyvasion on irc.freenode.net) to make this an incredibly informative session covering a wide range of topics.

All six teams were represented on this panel, and the members weighed their input topics including how quick reply made it into phpBB3, how phpBB “competes” with other bulletin boards and social media, what it’s like to work with such a wide age-range of team members, how plans for phpBB4 will affect phpBB, how each of the members got involved in the first place, and much more.

Enjoy this great discussion panel, and plan to join us for our final live phpBB Weekly episode this Saturday for a complete Libertyvasion 2010 recap!

Episode Duration: 59:50
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87), Phil Crumm (Phil), and Sam Thompson (SyntaxError90)

First off, before anyone asks questions, the title of this episode refers to this Wikipedia article. During the show, David was en route to his new office in Buffalo, NY. After the show, we learned that saying “Buffalo” eight times actually counts as a complete English sentence, which led to some after-show fun that you can hear at the end of this episode.

Other than that, we had a fairly informative episode, during which we discussed phpBB’s plans to support Bridges between phpBB and other publishing platforms. We also take a look at the MODs up for the Summer of MODs contest, and offer one last update on phpBB Weekly’s presence at Libertyvasion. We also take a look at the ongoing debate of whether or not to retire subsilver2 when phpBB 3.1 comes around.

Other Links Mentioned in the Episode:
Rules & Policies on Bridges in the Customisation Database
phpBB Hooks System Documentation
Stickerboy (from Londonvasion 2008)

The MOD of the Week is Page Titles Optimization by Unknown Bliss, and the Style of the Week is Grunge by RocketTheme.

Episode Duration: 1:15:44
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Josh Woody (A_Jelly_Doughnut)

We had a packed show on this episode of phpBB Weekly. After celebrating System Administrator Appreciation Day, we welcomed to the show Josh Woody (A_Jelly_Doughnut) of the Development Team, who filled us in on the Ascraeus (phpBB 3.1) Feature Freeze which took place right before we left for OSCON. We take a look at the different features planned for 3.1, which will be primarily a developer/MODder-friendly release, and also look ahead further down the phpBB development roadmap at 3.2 “Arsia,” 4.0 “Rhea,” and maybe even a few code-names beyond that.

Speaking of OSCON, Douglas shares a bit of a recap of phpBB’s experiences at OSCON, particularly phpBB’s first booth at the popular open-source conference & expo. He also goes through a blog post about OSCON and some of the upcoming plans that have sprouted from the event.

We also preview Libertyvasion 2010 and talk about phpBB Weekly’s live coverage from the event, which will include live blogging on our site, a non-live episode featuring various interviews, and a live broadcast of the 3 PM “phpBB Team Discussion Panel” session.

Finally, the MOD of the Week is Advertisement Management by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is The Matrix by _Vinny_.

Also, don’t forget about the Summer of MODs contest; the deadline to submit is on Tuesday!

Episode Duration: 1:00:08
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87), Cullen Walsh (ckwalsh), Lorelle VanFossen, and OSCONvasion 2010 Attendees

This episode features the live recording of our “Berties of a Feather” session presented as part of OSCONvasion 2010 meetup event during OSCON 2010 in Portland, OR. The session featured a presentation by Cullen Walsh on the issues to consider when starting up a phpBB forum, followed by a presentation by Lorelle VanFossen about bringing a community together online and finding value in your forum. We then had an open discussion on a number of different topics with the attendees of the BoF session.

This was a great session covering a wide array of interesting and engaging topics. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did in-person!

On this episode, Douglas tours the Expo Hall at OSCON 2010 and interviews representatives of a number of the exhibiting organizations and companies.

Featured on this episode are:

• phpBB (0:25)
• Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL) (5:58)
• Drupal (11:00)
• Electronic Frontier Foundation (15:47)
• LinuxFund (18:19)
• Code for America (28:00)
• PostgreSQL (30:47)
• Girls in Tech (36:57)
• OpSource (39:43)
• Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (QuIC) (43:19)
• NorthScale (47:02)
• Free Software Foundation (52:41)
• FireHost (57:58)
• Fedora (1:04:35)
• PDXphp (1:19:30)

Episode Duration: 1:01:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmaster87), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Adam Reyher (AdamR)

We advertised this episode as being the one where we would celebrate the end-of-life of Internet Explorer 6, scheduled for last Tuesday, July 13. Turns out we weren’t quite correct; according to Wikipedia, Tuesday was only the end-of-life for Internet Explorer 6 SP-2. IE6 SP-3 will continue to be supported until 2014.

Even so, we pretend that IE6 is actually dying (because it’s about time that it should), and we hold a funeral for the aged web browser with eulogies written and delivered by both Douglas and David. (AFTER you’ve listened, you can download David’s eulogy and download Douglas’ eulogy.) Then, Adam Reyher (AdamR) joins us to analyze a bit about why Microsoft allowed IE6 to exist in a lull for so long, how it has affected web developers, and the benefits of not supporting IE6 in modern websites.

Before the funeral, David and Douglas also chat a bit about OSCONvasion 2010, as this was our last episode before we all prepare to head to Portland. Douglas notes an interesting BoF session about marketing for open source software, and takes advantage of the excuse for yet another comparison between phpBB and other platforms, looking at how other CMS platforms have utilized marketing techniques (notably WordPress’ Automattic company) to increase their reach.

Finally, David and Douglas announce the news that they will be ending their affiliation with phpBB Weekly effective on September 1, and explain a bit about the reasoning for this announcement and plans for transitioning over the next month-and-a-half.

The MOD of the Week is IE6 No More by VSE, and the Style of the Week Spring Element by FreeForums.org.

Episode Duration: 1:22:39
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

On this episode of phpBB Weekly we take a look at HTML5, the working draft of the next version of the very language that powers the internet. HTML5 has received an abnormal amount of hype recently, mainly as part of Apple’s response to why they are not supporting Flash on their iOS devices. We spend a good amount of time cutting through the hype of HTML5 and identify HTML5′s current limitations, the irony of Apple’s “open standards” examples requiring Safari, and the H.264 vs. WebM format war determining the codec to use for the <video&rt; tag, along with much more.

We also congratulate Christian Bullock (Christian 2.0) on winning the Libertyvasion T-Shirt Contest with his awesome shirt design, though we do ponder why the shirts are still going to be available at cost for Libertyvasion attendees. And Douglas, excited for OSCONvasion 2010, takes a look at the recently-released list of What’s Free at OSCON. And finally, for the first time, Douglas forgets to say his “Tag, you’re it” tagline, leading to a few interesting post-show reactions.

Links Mentioned in HTML5 Discussion:

• HTML5 (Wikipedia)
• HTML5 Draft Standard
• Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash
• Apple’s HTML5 Gallery
• Google’s HTML5Rocks Site
• WebM Project
• JW Player for HTML5
• InfoWorld Article: How HTML5 Will Change the Web
• YouTube’s Thoughts on HTML5

The MOD of the Week is Presentation/What Is Page by FreakyBlue, and the Style of the Week is Supernova by Christian 2.0.

The title of this episode is inspired by the classic movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy.

Episode Duration: 52:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87)

David wasn’t able to make it on this episode of phpBB Weekly because he just got back from a long, arduous surprise business trip in Buffalo, NY. So Douglas takes on the reins himself on this week’s episode and records a 50 minute show completely off-the-cuff, along with some help from the chat room. (Due to the off-the-cuff nature of this week’s show, there are no chapter markers in the Enhanced AAC version.)

Douglas instead expands upon his thoughts of the release of WordPress 3.0 and does some comparisons between the WordPress extension ecosystem and the phpBB extension ecosystem, comparing how WordPress plugins and themes differ from phpBB MODs and Styles, while postulating on why WordPress has a dramatically larger extension ecosystem than phpBB does.

Douglas then continues his ongoing discussion about phpBB’s lack of tangible community outreach compared to other open-source projects like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PHP, etc. He and Cullen Walsh (ckwalsh) met up in the Bay Area at Facebook HQ a few days before this show. Douglas talks a bit about that experience and what we’re going to be doing with OSCONvasion in July, and of course Douglas offers a refresh looking ahead at Libertyvasion. However he does try to consider one argument that the teams should try to do a lot more to support these types of events, versus the other argument that perhaps the phpBB community is not big enough or engaged enough to make those attempts worthwhile.

In phpBB news, the Support Toolkit 1.0.1 has been released and immediately followed up by yet another PL1 release. Still this release introduces a few features and fixes some bugs. And the teams have begun voting on the Libertyvasion T-Shirt Contest, and for our viewers, voting continues on our straw poll.

No MOD or Style of the Week this week, they have been saved for when David returns next week and we have a chance to hold our long-anticipated discussion about HTML5.

Episode Duration: 1:16:54
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (webmacster87) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

This was a special episode for us, as we spent the episode celebrating phpBB’s 10th birthday, which officially occurred on Thursday, June 17 — the day when the first lines of code were written by James “theFinn” Atkinson that would become phpBB 1.0.0. David and Douglas weren’t quite able to give a more “dignified” celebration to the occasion, so instead they spent the episode looking back at how phpBB first got started, and then commenting at some of phpBB’s accomplishments and other notable occasions from throughout the past ten years. See below for a full list of links for the items mentioned during this episode.

David and Douglas also take a look at the latest round of changes to phpBB.com’s homepage, and comment on the state of the prosilver theme. Douglas is also very excited about the release of WordPress 3.0, which he notes has included a brand new default theme there as well. And if you’ve got some designing gumption in your blood, check out the Libertyvasion T-Shirt Design Contest where you can submit a possible design for the Libertyvasion 2010 T-Shirt and win prizes.

We’re also going to host a phpBB Weekly Straw Poll asking you to vote on which T-Shirt design is your favorite! So what are you waiting for? Go vote now!

Our phpBB 10-Year History Review: (Click the # to open the related link)

• 6/17/00: First lines of code written for phpBB #
• 7/1/00: Testing request posted to DevShed #
• 7/15/00: phpBB goes to CVS at SourceForge #
• 8/14/00: phpBB.com registered, website launched #
• 12/16/00: phpBB 1.0.0 released #
• 2/17/01: Work begins on phpBB2 #
• 11/6/01: phpBB 1.4.4 released, final 1.x release #
• 4/4/02: phpBB 2.0.0 released #
• 4/13/03: phpBB nominated for Webby award #
• 4/21/03: phpBB2 localized into 43 different languages #
• 5/25/03: First planned feature list for 2.2 announced #
• 8/27/03: phpBB Announces new “pricing” structure #
• 8/2/04: Introducing Bertie #
• 11/18/04: phpBB 2.0.11 Critical Update #
• 1/14/05: phpBB 2.2 dead, becomes 3.0 Olympus #
• 8/16/05: phpBB announces community coding projects #
• 9/14/05: Paul Owen (psoTFX) steps down #
• 2/28/06: phpBB moves from Doreo to OSUOSL #
• 4/11/06: MOD Team premieres MODX #
• 6/17/06: First beta of phpBB3 #
• 1/4/07: phpBB Weekly Starts!
• 3/18/07: New phpBB Website launched #
• 4/30/07: James Atkinson (theFinn) steps down, phpBB becomes independent #
• 5/20/07: First RC of phpBB3 #
• 8/3/07: phpBB wins SourceForge Community Choice Awards for Best Project for Communications #
• 12/13/07: phpBB 3.0.0 released #
• 7/12/08: phpBB.com Blog opens #
• 7/20/08: phpBB hosts Londonvasion 2008 #
• 12/22/08: First beta of AutoMOD #
• 1/1/09: phpBB2 declared EOL #
• 1/12/09: First RC of UMIL #
• 5/14/09: First RC of AutoMOD #
• 6/24/09: First RC of STK #
• 7/22/09: Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition #
• 7/25/09: UMIL 1.0.0 released #
• 7/29/09: Significant changes to phpBB development, 3.2 becomes 3.1 #
• 11/17/09: phpBB 3.0.6 released #
• 1/15/10: Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) steps down as Development Team leader #
• 3/3/10: STK 1.0.0 released #
• 6/7/10: AutoMOD 1.0.0 released #

Our MOD of the Week is Full Quick Reply Editor by weeb, and the Style of the Week is SoftWood by FreeForums.org. The closing music for this episode is Happy Birthday – Ian Melrose.