phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:28:16

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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.