phpBB Weekly

Hello all,

About a month ago, I announced that David and I will retire from phpBB Weekly at the end of this month. However, at that time, I left the question of the podcast’s future direction up in the air.

Therefore I am very pleased to announce that starting in September, phpBB Weekly will be turned over to Phil Crumm and Sam Thompson, who will be co-hosting and producing the podcast for the indefinite future. You may better know these two as Phil (formerly iWisdom) of the Support Team, and SyntaxError90 of the MOD Team.

Although the new phpBB Weekly is going to be a bit more closely related to the core phpBB project, it’s not going to be just another incarnation of the ill-fated “Official phpBB Podcast” that ran briefly during the late part of 2007. Instead, phpBB Weekly is going to be subtitled as “The phpBB Community Podcast” and continue to primarily focus on issues and concerns that matter to the community, while also covering the latest phpBB news (as we have done in the past).

But other than the fact that the new phpBB Weekly will have new co-hosts, the major difference is that phpBB Weekly will now be having a lot more support and semi-official backing from the phpBB teams (as opposed to how it has previously been solely a freelance project between David and myself).

Also, phpBB Weekly episodes will no longer be streaming live as they are recorded (goodbye, uStream), and episodes are planned to be released twice per month, which an exact schedule to be determined soon. (Even so, the “phpBB Weekly” branding will continue to be used for name-recognition purposes.)

The new phpBB Weekly will be moving to a new section of phpBB.com, which is where episodes will be posted going forward. However the current phpBB Weekly website will be maintained until at least next April (if not longer) and new episodes will be mirrored on the current podcast feeds for as long as possible. Hosting of the podcast episodes themselves will be progressively moved off of Amazon S3 (where we have been hosted for the past year) and will be hosted on phpBB’s super-fast servers at OSUOSL.

Of course, we still have three episodes in the pipeline before this transition takes place at the end of August. So be sure to tune into our live coverage of Libertyvasion, and then join us for our final live episode on Saturday, August 28.

I’m very grateful to the phpBB teams for their frequent support of phpBB Weekly over the past three-and-a-half years, and also for their generous offer to help keep the phpBB Weekly legacy going. It is my hope that Phil and Sam will help breathe new life into this podcast and that it will continue to be a force to help keep the community informed and the phpBB project moving forward.

–Douglas Bell
(Outgoing) Co-Host and Producer, phpBB Weekly Podcast

To discuss this announcement, you may leave a comment below, or visit the discussion topic on phpBB.com, where you can also offer input & suggestions for upcoming phpBB Weekly episodes.

We are now only ten days away from the start of Libertyvasion 2010, the first official phpBB teams/users conference in over two years, and it’s certain to be a blast. Numerous phpBB team members will be on-hand presenting on everything from phpBB’s development roadmap to building a new community to looking how MODding is evolving, and much more. Plus numerous guest speakers will be coming, including Fabien Potencier (Symfony Lead Developer), Jonathan Wage (Doctrine Developer), Stefan Koopmanschap (Symfony Community Manager), David Soria Parra (Contributor to Git, Mercurial, and PHP), and Douglas Bell (some shmuck who does a podcast).

Hopefully by now you know whether or not you’re going to be there (it’s not too late to register), but if you’re not able to make it to the Big Apple next weekend, phpBB Weekly is going to on-site and providing full coverage of the event. Here’s what to expect:

Live Broadcast of the phpBB Team Discussion Panel
Like we did for Londonvasion 2008, we will be doing a live broadcast of the “phpBB Team Discussion Panel” part of Libertyvasion, which will take place on Saturday, August 21 at 3:00 PM EDT (1900 UTC) and last for one hour.
During this session, representatives of the different phpBB teams will questions on almost any topic from the Libertyvasion audience and from our phpBB Weekly chat room on uStream, so if you have a question that you’ve really wanted to ask the teams, this is your best chance! So plan to join us to get a nice live taste of the fun at LIbertyvasion.

Per an agreement with the phpBB teams, we will not be live broadcasting any other portion of Libertyvasion, however video recordings of all the sessions will be published online within a week or two after the event by the teams.

Live Blogging and Tweeting from Libertyvasion
Our phpBB Weekly blog and @phpBBWeekly Twitter feed will be dedicated that weekend to providing live updates throughout both days of the conference. We’ll be making blog posts covering the highlights of each of the presentations from Libertyvasion, and will also be tweeting any of the other interesting moments that come along, so you can follow along with Libertyvasion as it’s happening.

You’ll be able to find all our Libertyvasion posts here. Also, everyone tweeting about Libertyvasion will be asked to use the #lvasion2010 hashtag in their tweets, so you can follow along.

Non-Live Episode from Libertyvasion
In addition to our aforementioned live stream, Douglas will be recording a non-live episode from Libertyvasion featuring interviews with various phpBB team members and Libertyvasion guests (particularly those whom have never made an appearance on phpBB Weekly so far), and much more capturing the excitement and the experience of Libertyvasion. This episode will be released within a day or two after the conclusion of Libertyvasion.

So that’s a full run-down of our complete coverage of Libertyvasion 2010. The fun starts next Friday, so stay tuned and stay subscribed!

We made this announcement initially on yesterday’s live recording of episode #155, but now I would like to take the opportunity to formally post it here:

Effective on Wednesday, September 1, David and I will be officially ending our affiliation with phpBB Weekly.

While the reasons for our departure is slightly different between the two of us, the core of our decision is based on the fact that we are both finding it more difficult to continue to dedicate our time and effort to keeping this show going. David is becoming increasingly committed towards supporting his busy work schedule, which is making it more difficult for him to focus as much on phpBB as he has in the past. On my end, I’m continuing to pursue a number of activities at university which are going to take up a lot of my time in the fall, making it very difficult for me to continue putting in the additional effort to plan, record, edit, and do the other aspects of producing this show. And since it’s been nearly four years since I MODded or managed a phpBB forum seriously, I don’t entirely consider myself to be qualified to host the show without having any larger purpose of being part of it (as I would if I were taking charge of the production).

We’re going to be winding down the show over the next month-and-a-half with the following schedule:

• Saturday 7/17: No Episode
• Thursday 7/22: Live Episode from OSCONvasion 2010, if we get the technical setup together
• Non-Live Episode with Interviews of OSCON exhibitors
• Saturday 7/24: No Episode
• Saturday 7/31: Regular Live Episode
• Saturday 8/7: Regular Live Episode
• Saturday 8/14: No Episode
• Friday-Saturday 8/20-21: Two episodes from Libertyvasion 2010; one of which might be live (TBA)
• Saturday 8/28: Our final live episode with David & myself

We would like to say that we are both grateful for the tremendous support that we have received from both our listeners, our dedicate group of live chat-room participants, and the phpBB teams. While we are ending our affiliation with the show due primarily to us being over-committed and somewhat low on steam, our listener base is as strong as ever, and we really appreciate that. Speaking personally, while I’m somewhat regretful that i’ll have to further scale back my involvement with the phpBB community, I’m thrilled to be able to end my three-and-a-half year tenure with this show with the opportunity to be a part of Libertyvasion 2010 and get to personally meet most of the phpBB team members for the first time. I’m really looking forward to the next seven weeks that this show is preparing to cover, and hope they’ll help us really end the show on a high point.

Want to Keep it Going?
It is against all odds that we are able to say that, by the time September rolls around, we will have kept the show going for over 160 episodes. Past attempts by other people to start up a phpBB podcast (either unofficial or official) have not even made it to double-digits, much less triple-digits, the way we have. And we’ve still got a dedicated listener base still sticking with this show. And so even though we’re moving on, we’d love to be able to see phpBB Weekly continue to thrive going forward under new management than to see it die completely.

Therefore if you’re interested in hosting or co-hosting the show, or in trying your hand at editing the show (it’s not that hard, just make sure you have a Mac with GarageBand), please send me a private message. We’ve already got our website fully set up, along with templates for show notes, editing the podcast, etc. I’ll even keep hosting this website for free! And if we get a new crew to manage the show early enough, we’ll be able to spend August/September preparing for a smooth transition.

So that’s the official announcement. Both David and I would again like to thank all of you for sticking with us and helping to make the experience of producing this show such a rewarding one.

–Douglas Bell
Co-Host and Producer, phpBB Weekly Podcast

Hello everyone,

You may notice that phpBB Weekly has been falling a bit behind lately, or to be more specific, I’ve been falling a bit behind. Episodes have been consistently released late (or in the case of three recent episodes, have not been released at all) and planning for our episodes has not been up to our usual standard. Primarily this is because I am in the middle of an extremely stressful workload courtesy of university classes and organizations, and I’ve been getting very little sleep and have had no free time over the past four or five weeks. And now final exams are right around the corner. (American University has an early end to the Spring Semester; I’ll be back home in San Francisco in three weeks.)

Unfortunately, phpBB Weekly has had to take last priority among my various commitments during this time, but because I don’t want to make David record even more weeks of episodes that will never get released, I am instead going to put phpBB Weekly on a hiatus for the next few weeks until my semester ends. This will allow me to focus on my schoolwork, and will also provide me with a couple of weeks to catch up on releasing the episodes that are still in the can (episodes #144 from March 13, #146 from April 3, and #147 from April 10). As I am able to, those episodes will be released on this website for your belated enjoyment.

phpBB Weekly will return on Saturday, May 8 at our usual time, except that by then I will be back home in San Francisco for a nice long summer. We also hope by then to have some great episodes and guests lined up for summer, and will also have plans in place to celebrate our 150th episode (on May 22), the 10th anniversary of phpBB (on June 17), as well as establish plans for OSCONvasion 2010 and begin developing BBvasion in earnest. We’ll be sure to make up for this lackluster spring with an awesome summer for you guys to listen to and participate in.

Thanks for your understanding, hope you enjoy a few weeks off (I’m sure David will be happy to sleep in!), and see you in May! Back to the homework I go…
–Douglas Bell, phpBB Weekly Co-Host/Editor

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Episode Duration: 1:11:51
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

We had yet another episode focused on meetups this week, but we also worked hard to pick up the pieces from the two weeks that we took away from our normal schedule. Douglas recapped the “Monumental” Meetup, and then we looked towards OSCON, which now has its full program and early registration up and running. Of course, OSCONvasion 2010 will be happening in Portland, OR in late July. And then, the teams have also announced Libertyvasion 2010 to take place in New York City in late August, and we take a look at the plans announced so far.

We also take a look at how phpBB has moved from Subversion to Git and how the transition has gone for phpBB’s developers and core users. And while David is still waiting to get the resources for a more formal review, he discusses a bit about different PHP frameworks, particularly comparing Symfony 2 to CodeIgniter. (phpBB4 will be using the former, David prefers the latter.)

The MOD of the Week is Language Selection by Typos and the Style of the Week is Star 2.0 by planetstyles.com. We also pick a Notable Quotable: phpBB MOD Author Welcome Package by Desdenova.