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!

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

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

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.

Sorry to throw out this unexpected announcement so last-minute, however we are going to be making some last-minute adjustments to our plans for Saturday’s episode of phpBB Weekly.

For those of you who regularly join us live when the show airs, please note that this Saturday’s episode will begin one hour earlier than usual, beginning at 12:00 PM EST/1700 UTC. This time change will only apply to this Saturday’s episode.

The reason for this time change is that we are going to have more topics to discuss than originally anticipated, and are anticipating the discussion of these topics to take as much as 2-3 hours. Therefore this time adjustment is necessary for us to be able to accomplish this while still respecting our personal schedules. However, we know that you all don’t want to listen to a 2-3 hour episode, so Saturday’s episode will be a special double episode of phpBB Weekly. That is, Saturday’s live episode will be edited into two separate episodes (#136 and #137) which will be released next week on Sunday 1/17 and Thursday 1/21, respectively.

So what’s on tap for this Saturday? Well we kind of had a big announcement that recently broke from the phpBB teams. We will actually be joined by Development Team Member Leader Nils Adermann (naderman), who is not only going to join us for our planned discussion on early phpBB4 goals and early feature ideas, but he is also going to tell us a little bit about his recently-announced promotion to Development Team Leader. And we’ll also have some other interesting topics to discuss, including one that David’s excited to talk about: the release of jQuery 1.4. You can see many more details about Saturday’s episode in the episode description on our home page.

So anyway, we’re ready for this marathon double episode of phpBB Weekly, and we hope you are too. Please take our word when we say that if there is one episode of phpBB Weekly that you don’t want to miss out on, then this is it. Hope to see you then!

Update 1/15: Updated the post to reflect today’s Development Team announcement. If you haven’t figured it out, this announcement is the reason that we made this a longer, double episode. Thanks to the teams for giving us a slightly earlier heads-up about this announcement so that we could plan accordingly.

Welcome back! After about six hours of downtime (and about two additional days of work beforehand), the renovated phpBB Weekly website is now online!

Those of you who have been around awhile will remember that around this time last year we launched the new version of our website (the one with the cool translucency stuff and the Mars background); well, we’re still using the same theme as we did then. However, last August, we went through a major transition as we stopped using TalkShoe and started using uStream to do our live episodes. Though we made a few changes then, our website hadn’t been completely optimized to replace all of the functionality that we lost when we stopped using TalkShoe. Today’s renovation finishes up the job–although the design remains the same, most of our website has seen some significant changes and improvements.

New Home Page
Our site now has a new home page, with the blog and episodes now under a separate Blog/Episodes tab. The new home page is actually really powerful, designed to allow users to find out everything that they may want to know about our podcast right there.

The new home page includes the Flash player and download links for our most recent episode directly on the home page, along with a dynamic countdown timer to the next live episode (by popular demand). In addition, the next four scheduled live episodes are listed, and the descriptions of those episodes can be collapsed to save space. The home page also features much better integration with Twitter and Facebook.

You may be wondering where the Live page went, which contained the uStream player and chat box. Well, those are now handled on the home page too! When phpBB Weekly is broadcasting live, the home page will automatically change to show the uStream player and chat box instead of the other content, meaning that you can now stream the show and join the chat room right on the home page of our site! Come by for phpBB Weekly #134 on Saturday and you’ll get to see it–it’s really awesome!

Other Changes to the Site Layout

• Eliminated the secondary sidebar, providing extra width for the main page content and the primary sidebar. (Trust me, it makes a really big difference to the aesthetics of the site!)
• Used a higher quality version of the background image.
• Reduced the “information overload” in the sidebar, which now only contains Subscribe links, External Links, and the five most recent posts on the phpBB Weekly forum (made possible using phpBB 3.0.6′s ATOM feeds!).
• New Blog/Episodes view with quick links to filter by category or month/year, or quickly jump to the Archives/Tags/Weekly Picks/Zeitgeist pages.
• The Participate page is back, and by popular demand, now includes instructions on how to join the uStream chat room via IRC.
• Reduced legal/copyright info in the footer and moved/expanded in a new Legal section on the About page.
• New “Back to Top” links on the Weekly Picks and Zeitgeist pages for improved navigation.

Upcoming Changes for phpBB Weekly (the actual podcast) in 2010
Let’s face it: 2009 was not the strongest year for phpBB Weekly, as far as the podcast was concerned. As such, we’re going to be making some minor structural changes and tightening the format of the show a little bit next year. Here is a brief rundown of most of the changes that we have planned and are announcing:

• Shorter shows. We love to talk, but we’re sure that it doesn’t necessarily mean that you love to listen. We’re going to be tightening the format of our show a bit with the goal of having our shows be between 40-70 minutes long. (Shows with special topics or special interviews will aim for between 60-90 minutes long.)
• A more fixed release date. Podcast episodes will be released on the Tuesday following a live episode recording sometime between 1:00-7:00 PM Eastern time. I will try to hold to this schedule as best as possible, though from time to time I may get busy and be forced to release the episode late; however I will try to hold to this goal as best as possible. Special episodes or non-live episodes may be released earlier or later as needed.
• Better episode planning/promotion. We are going to have a goal of planning the main topic of our episodes at least a week in advance. This way we will be able to promote what is coming up the following week at the end of our shows (and give you a good reason to tune in live the following week). Of course our plans remain subject to change as needed, but it’s better than not announcing at all what we’re going to discuss until a day or two ahead of time. Plus if some newsworthy announcement does happen, we’ll likely cover it briefly at the beginning of our next show before moving onto our main topic, unless the announcement truly merits an immediate full show discussion.
• Better coordination with the phpBB teams. Other shows have come and go, but at the moment, phpBB Weekly is the only still-active phpBB podcast. And even though we are independent of the phpBB teams, we have a very good working relationship with the teams, and are going to try to do a lot more this year to bring in more voice from the team members who help make the phpBB community happen. (And hopefully we can get to hear from some team members whom we haven’t heard from before.) We’re also going to be doing a new series in the first half of 2010 called “Better Know a phpBB Team” (yes, I totally stole that from Colbert) in which we are going to plan a number of episodes spotlighting each and every phpBB team, hopefully while interviewing a member (or members) from that team. Stay tuned…
• Actually making use of our phpBB Weekly forum. In 2009 we launched a phpBB Weekly Poll Question feature on our show–which didn’t actually meet our initial expectations. In 2010, we’re going to try to bring about a slightly different idea: a Discussion Question of the Week. On each episode, we’re going to pose a related open-ended discussion question which will be posted on our phpBB Weekly forum after the live episode. From there, the topic will be open to you to discuss on the forum. On the following episode, we’ll take a look back at the discussion and read some of the most interesting responses on the show. We hope that this will get you a little bit more engaged than 2009′s poll questions did.

And with that, we are done with the 2000s decade! Enjoy the new website, and keep on tuning in. Onwards to 2010!

Huh? Is this a joke?
Nope, it’s no joke. Here’s the deal. As you know, our recent changes to phpBB Weekly’s technical setup included moving our show to uStream, and now releasing the show in an Enhanced AAC version, with embedded links and chapter markers and stuff. And although we’ve been dealing with a few bumps along the way, overall this change is a good one which will help make our show more accessible to our listeners.

But there is a catch: for us, hosting the show on uStream is actually a bit harder for us to pull off than TalkShoe was. And as you can probably imagine, it’s not easy trying to split our attention between what we’re talking about on the show and what’s going on with uStream. Hence why we are now soliciting some help.

So what’s this Clerk supposed to do?
The Clerk would be expected to be present during most live recordings of phpBB Weekly. In addition to having moderator privileges in phpBB Weekly’s uStream chat room, he/she will also be responsible for logging the chat room during the live show. (Unlike TalkShoe, messages in the uStream chat room overflow and disappear after awhile, hence why logging is now a full-time job, not just something copied at the end of the show.)

The Clerk will also help keep a timestamped record of the content discussed during the show. (Timestamped means that they will run a timer starting when we hit the record button.) This won’t have to be too detailed; mainly just noting when during the recording we change topics, or noting down any new link or topic that might be brought up in the middle of a show.

So wait, he’ll/she’ll be doing your job for you?
Only while we’re actually in the middle of recording live shows. We will still be prepping all of our show notes, managing all of the technical stuff to get the show streaming live, doing all the editing and releasing, etc. The main purpose here is to get another set of eyes on the chat room, and the timestamped record of the show content will help make the editing process go much faster, so that it won’t be necessary to listen to the whole episode over again to add the enhanced podcast features. Oh, and the Clerk won’t have to do anything on non-live episodes.

So what are the requirements to do this again?
• You need to be able to listen live to every episode of phpBB Weekly and participate in the chat room (if you occasionally have unexpected circumstances forcing you to miss, that’s okay).
• Be present at least 5 minutes before each episode’s scheduled start time.
• Be familiar with the stuff we talk about on the show.
• Have a stopwatch timer handy.
• Be attentive and be able to take notes (not too detailed).

Sure, I could do that. How do I apply?
Just send a private message to webmacster87 on StarTrekGuide explaining why you want to help fill this position by Wednesday, October 14. The person selected will be notified on Thursday and will get right to work on Saturday during episode #125.

Thanks for your interest in helping us out!

We’re still in the middle of our August break and are looking forward to returning next weekend. However, you may have heard today that the deadline for the Best CAPTCHA plugin competition has been extended to Friday, September 4th. That means that if you want to write a CAPTCHA plugin and are still working on it, you’ve still got two weeks left!

Obviously, we’re going to be covering the competition very closely during the month of September, and we want to start by hearing about some of the ideas that you, the phpBB MODding community, have come up with.

Therefore, during the next two weeks, we will be running a small survey asking CAPTCHA plugin authors to tell us all about your CAPTCHA plugins! On phpBB Weekly #121, which will be live on Saturday, September 5th (the day after the submission deadline), we’re going to take a look at the submissions that we receive and discuss them on the show. That’s right, this is a golden opportunity for you to get free exposure to your CAPTCHA plugin, and more exposure might mean more votes in the competition!*

*This does not mean that we will lobby for or against any particular plugin; all coverage of CAPTCHA plugins on phpBB Weekly will be fully objective during the duration of the contest.

Our only requirement is that your plugin must be a stable version and submitted to the MOD Database (and thus qualify for the contest). So what are you waiting for? Fill out our survey after the jump.

Thanks, and best of luck to all during the competition!

Everyone who subscribes to the phpBB Weekly podcast feed needs to change their feed URL!

As before, the feed for the phpBB Weekly blog is still separate from the podcast feed. Our blog feed has not changed. Our new podcast feed, however, is as follows:
http://www.phpbbweekly.net/feed/podcast/

Starting with episode #119, that feed will contain the Enhanced AAC version of phpBB Weekly. Enhanced AAC is the preferred version because it will have a smaller filesize and some nice features like chapter markers and hyperlinks. However, Enhanced AAC is primarily compatible with QuickTime, iTunes, and other iDevices.

If Enhanced AAC is not desirable for you, we have an alternate feed that will continue to contain MP3 versions of the show:
http://www.phpbbweekly.net/feed/podcastmp3/

Read on for details on how to make this change in iTunes and other feed readers, and more on some of the other new features on our site.

To make this changeover in iTunes, go to the Advanced menu and choose Subscribe to Podcast, then paste the new feed URL in the window that appears. You can then unsubscribe from the old phpBB Weekly feed (any episodes that you have already downloaded will remain in iTunes even after you unsubscribe). Note that the new feed may redownload episode #118 if you change over before our next episode is released.

In any other feed reader/podcatcher, simply add a new feed with the URL. You can keep the old feed if you wish as no more episodes will be published there.

So what else is new? Well, here’s a brief rundown:

• Our site has been thoroughly deTalkShoeified! No more need to show off details on how to call into TalkShoe, since calling in is now a thing of the past.
• You don’t have to leave our website to participate in the show live anymore! Our new Live page lets you stream our live broadcast AND participate in our uStream chat room!
• The Participate page no longer exists. Of course, we still want listeners to participate, but the new Live page eliminated the need to go into details about how to dial in on TalkShoe or open up the chat room. In its place, there’s a new “Get Involved!” section of the sidebar which summarizes the main points from the Participate page in a few bullet points, and is a great way to find out the ways you can become an active part of the phpBB Weekly community.
• Speaking of which, our whole sidebar has gotten a nice facelift. The ways to subscribe to our show have been cleaned up and organized, we’ve pared out some links that we no longer think are relevant, etc. Plus that slow-to-load TalkShoe badge isn’t there anymore, obviously.
• Every single episode post on this site now lists the filesize, duration, and participants in the episode on the top of the feed. Going forward when we offer Enhanced AAC (M4A) versions, these will both be linked with their separate filesizes indicated. (The Flash player will continue to only play the MP3 version though for better compatibility.)
• The About page has been updated and expanded.
• The Promote page has also been expanded with ways that you can embed the uStream player and chat room to your websites, and how you can also embed a pop-out episode player that plays our published phpBB Weekly episodes to your site.

We have some more advanced features planned as well, which are planned to come in the next month or two:

• More advanced managing of future episodes, likely to include a Google Calendar integration or something of that nature.
• A more dynamic “Next Episode” badge on our home page that will include some automatic functionality for when the show is live.
• Some way of integrating phpBB Weekly’s Twitter feed more closely with our website.
• We just put together a new phpBB Weekly Facebook Fan page and are hoping to figure out ways to make it useful. Any Facebook experts out there have suggestions?

A couple of credits to mention that are helping to make this transition from TalkShoe possible:

• Our podcast media will now be hosted on Amazon’s S3 hosting service, which will allow for very high bandwidth uploads and downloads. A big thanks to David Lewis who is contributing the funding to make this possible.
• We are also going to be using a stats engine provided by the Tech Podcast Network, and we’re very grateful to them for providing this service. (Thought we’d forgotten about them, eh? We’re still a proud member of their network!)
• Our podcast feeds are being generated by the Blubrry PowerPress Plugin for WordPress. It’s an awesome plugin that has been a joy to use when setting it up today.

All right, that said, enjoy our renovated site, and enjoy the new streaming service and new formats coming to phpBB Weekly when we return from our break in a few weeks!