phpBB Weekly

The United States presidential election is now only four weeks away, and boy, am I excited! After a seemingly endless campaign season that began over 18 months ago, I’m looking forward to all of this craziness ending and a new president getting elected.

But here at phpBB Weekly, I couldn’t resist doing something to parody the whole election process, and I wanted to do something fun on the podcast. So, as a result of a bunch of noodling around ideas in my head, we’re announcing the beginning of the “President Bertie” Election Contest!

So what is this contest? Well, in a nutshell, this is an opportunity for you and your Bertie to run for the office of President of Bertie Mons. (Bertie Mons is the new name for the capitol of Mars, which phpBB recently took over.) During the next four weeks, you and your Bertie (only one Bertie per entrant, please) will have the chance to do such presidential-campaign things as submitting a nomination petition and getting signatories for it, participating in a live debate on phpBB Weekly, campaigning within the phpBB Weekly community to get people to vote for you, and (of course) voting for the next President Bertie!

At their core, all elections are essentially popularity contests, and this contest is no different. So, you’ll be highly encouraged to take pictures of your Bertie looking “presidential,” or at least downright interesting, whatever you construe that meaning to be. And of course, during the campaign process, you’ll be able to talk about how qualified your Bertie will be as the potential president of Bertie Mons. And finally, everyone will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite presidential candidate during a 36-hour election on November 3-5, and (if needed) another 36-hour runoff election on November 6-8. More details about the later stages of this contest will come up later on during the contest.

What’s the prize? Well, we don’t have one yet. (Other than fame and fortune, of course! Well, fame, anyway.) It would be great if someone could donate a prize that we can give to the newly elected President Bertie on his “Inauguration Day.” If you would like to donate a prize, please let us know!

How do I get started? If you want to nominate your Bertie to participate in this contest, you will need to submit a nomination petition, and get it signed by ten unique people who have not signed anyone else’s petition by the end of the day (UTC time) on Friday, October 17th. This process, and everything else having to do with this contest, will take place in a new President Bertie forum within the phpBB Weekly forum on StarTrekGuide. Note that there are a lot of laws/rules that pertain to elections in real life, and we’re going to be paralleling as many of them as we can in this contest, so please make sure that you read all of the rules for participating found in the President Bertie forum! As the contest progresses, the details of each step of the contest will be posted there.

But I don’t own a Bertie! Well, you won’t be able to “enter” or “win” this contest, but there will still be many opportunities for you to participate in this contest and influence the results during each of the three stages of this contest (Nominations, Campaigning, and Voting). And you won’t have as many rules to follow, either! Right now, you can head over to the President Bertie forum and sign one of the candidates’ nomination petitions, and there will be more coming later on, so stay tuned.

In just over four weeks, we’ll be ready to inaugurate a brand new President Bertie! So all you Bertie owners, what are you waiting for? Without further ado, let the Bertie Mons campaign season begin!

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This episode of phpBB was a fun one for Douglas because he had the opportunity to go back and talk about phpBB2 again! And he owes it all to, of all people, the MOD team, thanks to their release of EasyMOD 0.4.0 for phpBB2.

But first, Patrick O’Keefe of phpBBHacks.com joins us once again to tell us all about phpBBHacks.com Idol, a contest that’s partially about MODs and Styles and much more about popularity, along with the chance to win nearly $1000 worth in prizes and books (plus we’re throwing in the chance to be featured on a future episode of phpBB Weekly!). The deadline to submit your phpBB3 MOD/hack or style is Saturday, July 12, after which, voting will begin! We’ll be keeping a close eye on this contest as it progresses.

Then of course, Douglas talks all about EasyMOD 0.4.0, including recapping a bit on EasyMOD’s long history, discussing what’s new in 0.4.0 (mostly MODX support), and reviewing the release based on some testing that he did. David also gives us a bit more insight on the upcoming MOD Package Manager (Blinky) that’s still in development.

And speaking of the MOD team and phpBB2, per the phpBB2 Retirement Plan, the MOD team set the MOD Requests and MOD Writers Discussion forums for phpBB2 to read only on July 1, as well as disabling new topics in the MODs in Development forum for phpBB2, which we talk briefly about. Dave Rathbun (drathbun) also joins us to talk about these various phpBB2 topics.

And, last but not least, people have been receiving their 3.0 Berties at last, and the crazy pictures are here.

For what might possibly be our last phpBB2 MOD and Style of the Week (though please leave a comment if you’d like the phpBB2 MOD and Style coverage to continue), the MOD of the Week is Visual Confirmation on New Posters by Thoul, and the Style of the Week is subMerged by redhair.

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Douglas was away on a tour of Beijing, China with his school during this episode (which partially explains why this episode was somewhat late in its release), so David was joined on this episode by Paul (of the MOD team) to go through the latest flurry of phpBB news.

In this episode, David and Paul began by talking about the release of MODX 1.2.0, covering the changes and the benefits that the new version provides to the MODding community, as well as the much much easier MOD packaging policies. In addition, the Styles Database and Demo were officially opened, meaning that phpBB3 styles submissions will finally start to be validated! Yay!

They also recap on BertieZilla’s experiences at LinuxTag Berlin, where the phpBB guys shared a booth with Joomla! and gave out gummy-Berties. And, speaking of Berties, it looks like Bertie 3.0 is about to be shipped!

Finally, David, Francis, and two other team members will be at Joomla!Day Vancouver on June 14th, and David gives a preview of what to expect.

The MOD of the Week is Display user’s age in viewtopic for phpBB3 by EY, and the Style of the Week is ComicBook for phpBB3 by thecharmed01.

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On this episode, we’re joined by Jeff (JKThinking), co-host of the phpBBireland Podcast, which just launched back in March. Their podcast covers the phpBBireland website, the developers of the Stargate Portal for phpBB3 (no, it’s actually not an Irish phpBB support site). In addition to learning a bit more about the phpBBireland podcast, we also chat with Jeff about the Stargate Portal and have a good discussion about the purpose of portals for phpBB and when they are and are not useful for discussion forums.

Afterwards, David talks a bit about Bertie’s sojourn to Berlin at the LinuxTag Convention. Next week, David will chat with the phpBB team members who were at LinuxTag.

The MOD of the Week is FAQ Manager for phpBB3 by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is SkyBlue for phpBB3 by Alex.

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This special episode of phpBB Weekly was recorded off of TalkShoe because we were unable to be available for a live show on Saturday, March 15th. Instead, utilizing our favorite utility, Skype, we recorded this special non-live episode where we broke with tradition and had a non-binding, somewhat hilarious discussion about the various issues and non-issues for phpBB.

During the episode, we discuss the recent appearance of a “code sniffer” in the phpBB3 Subversion. However, David has no idea what it’s about either (at this point), and so we mostly end up speculating. We also talk about phpBB’s new QA Team–it’s supposed to stand for “Quality Assurance Team,” but we inadvertently come up with a wacky new name that you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

In addition, we talk and joke a bit about such topics as phpBB’s impact on global warming, and phpBB’s plans for World Domination. Douglas also introduces his roommate to Bertie, and then talks about what “features” should be included in phpBB 3.2, and David argues why they shouldn’t be there.

All in all, this episode was mostly an opportunity for us to take a break from the normal drawl of what we normally do on phpBB Weekly and have a bit of fun while breaking some of the rules. We hope that you enjoy it, and we’ll be back to our usual professional selves next week. Incidentally, please also don’t forget about completing our listener survey while you’re here.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts.