phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:21:43
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), Cullen Walsh (Brainy), and Samuel Thompson (SyntaxError90)

We hit this episode of phpBB Weekly coming right off of the excitement from OSCONvasion (all except Micheal, who couldn’t make it). Despite the fact that it was just a small meetup, most of which was spent touring the OSCON Expo Hall and downtown San Jose, it was still a lot of fun, with a lot of good discussions that took place. And it does go down as the first-ever phpBB meetup event in North America, after all. Douglas, Cullen, and Sam (who were all there) spent the first half hour of this episode recapping the various things we did and discussed at OSCONvasion. Be sure to follow the OSCONvasion tag on Flickr to see some of the great pictures we took around OSCON. And of course, audio from our live session is on phpBB Weekly #115, and video will be posted this week by AdamR.

It was announced just a few hours before this show that UMIL 1.0.0 Gold was released. The Unified MODs Install Library (UMIL) truly is the missing tool to allow actions like making database table changes, adding permissions, config options, or modules to be done automatically, and now that it’s fully stable, MOD authors and MOD installers can take full advantage of it.

Finally, the MOD Team has announced a Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition. This contest, which will help make a broad and diverse number of CAPTCHA plugins available for download and install at the launch of phpBB 3.0.6, offers free phpBB3 Berties to the best CAPTCHA plugins developed by MOD authors and submitted beginning in late August. The first submitted CAPTCHA plugin to be approved to the MOD Database will automatically receive a Bertie, plus a Bertie will be awarded to the team’s favorite CAPTCHA plugin and another to the favorite CAPTCHA plugin voted on by the community-at-large. We also take a look at the recently-revealed details of the default CAPTCHA plugins coming in 3.0.6, and go over what you need to know to build your own CAPTCHA plugin.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Vote in the poll on the sidebar at right; the poll ends on August 8th.

The MOD of the Week is Show First Post Only to Guest by Primy, and the Style of the Week is jblue by jbones.

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Download MP3 Episode (33 MB)

Episode Duration: 36:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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We had a very short episode of phpBB Weekly this week, one that would be sure to make David jealous. For whatever reason. But what can we say? We’re at sort of a lull in terms of phpBB news to cover, and we adjust accordingly.

A new post on the phpBB.com Blog by battye asks us, “How many forums should I create?” Micheal and Douglas discuss this a bit in terms of why it’s a very poor idea to start your board with dozens of forums or to have so many forums that they overwhelm your users. We also share some experiences we’ve had with boards that had many forums set up, or, even worse, lots of subforums many levels deep.

We then take a look at the world of Bertie. For one thing, Micheal and Bertie are no longer married. It’s technically not a divorce, since there never technically were papers verifying the marriage to begin with, but Micheal tries to explain the back story here. Bertie 3.0 continues to be available, and should be a hot item since Bertie Bear has been running for President, according to Micheal’s Facebook group. We have a bit of a discussion about Bertie’s qualifications to become President. And speaking of presidents, we also take a look at the actions of Albertie Einstein, Bertie Mons’ new president, who seems to have been a bit of a lame duck, having done nothing since last November. We’ll have to see if the situation changes there soon.

The Poll Question of the Week is “What is the best April Fools prank to pull on your users?” Vote (or suggest your own alternate answer) by March 28th in the sidebar.

The MOD of the Week is Anti Double Post by Théonaute, and the Style of the Week is green_vision by abble CoSa NoStrA.

Contrary to what was said at the end of the episode, we will be having an episode next Saturday, March 28th, that Douglas will host by himself. It will be our infamous annual April Fools Day special, where we’ll be putting on an unusual type of episode! Tune in live to be the first to find out the surprise!

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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Download MP3 Episode (55.8 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:37:28
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Patrick O’Keefe

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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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Download MP3 Episode (27.3 MB)

Episode Duration: 47:40
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Paul Sohier (Paul)

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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.

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