phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:01:08
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and some unexpected guests (hint hint)

We’re back for another episode of phpBB Weekly with Douglas hobbling along via Skype on his iPod touch as he marks three weeks since the damage of his beloved MacBook. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, even if that makes him sound like he’s on a digitized cell phone. So what, this is phpBB Weekly, we should be used to funny-sounding audio by now, right?

However, you’re definitely going to want to give a listen to this episode to hear the unexpected (and completely unplanned) surprise that puts Douglas on the spot towards the end of the show. We actually re-recorded the end of this show last Monday (which was Douglas’ 18th birthday), since the end of the live recording we did on Saturday turned out very badly due to technical problems. So even if you listened in live, you didn’t get to hear it, so be sure you take a listen!

After apologizing and explaining his difficulties in getting episode #122 released, Douglas and David take a look at the newly-released second RC of phpBB 3.0.6, which includes regression fixes from RC1, and also introduces some major changes to phpBB’s auto-updater to allow it to be more tolerant of potential conflicts with MODs. Quite frankly, the developers have made quite a few more checkins in the few days since RC2, that we wouldn’t be surprised if we see a third release candidate before 3.0.6 goes final. But we’ll just have to wait and see…

The other big release of the weekend is MODX 1.2.3, the “toasted motherboard” edition. As this is the first release to the MODX spec in the past eight months, Douglas and David take the opportunity to dust off their ongoing conversation about MODX, and its usability and purpose compared to the gone-but-not-yet-forgotten Text Template. Also, Douglas’ experiences doing phpBB Weekly without a computer have brought a bug with phpBB3′s print view to his attention, which he will report as soon as phpBB.com lets him log in again.

The MOD of the Week is Board3 Portal by avaren, and the Style of the Week is 1thank by gokinstudio.com.

There will not be a phpBB Weekly episode this Saturday, October 3rd. We will return live on October 10, and Douglas will hopefully be back in front of a normal computer by then.

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Episode Duration: 1:30:41
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

The first day of December means that the end of the year is staring straight at us as we plunge into the holiday season, but here at phpBB Weekly, we prefer to plunge into another tutorial.

After wishing happy birthday to phpBB team members Paul and Anon, we dissect through the release announcement of phpBB3 RC8, which was announced just hours before this episode. And, as usual, we ask the same question that everyone has been asking since May: will this RC go golden master, or is there yet another RC coming down Santa Claus lane?

This week also saw the execution of the MOD Database Cleanup. We take a look at why and how it was done, and learn a bit about Douglas’ early MODding life in the process.

Finally, David guides us through a mini-tutorial on registration settings and usergroups in phpBB3. For more information on usergroups in particular, check out the Group management and Permissions sections of the phpBB3 documentation, or check out the Custom usergroups Flash tutorial.

The MOD of the Week is Vote Manager for phpBB2 by soapergem, and the Style of the Week is Christmas for phpBB2 by CyberAlien.

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

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Episode Duration: 1:10:46
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

This after-Thanksgiving episode of phpBB Weekly was interesting because we hadn’t really planned as much for the episode as we should have because we were busier planning for Thanksgiving, however through debates, discussion, and question answering, we were able to take a single, short topic and extended it out to make an entire show, to our surprise.

We start the show by giving our birthday wishes to David, whose birthday will be on Monday, November 26th, and we also go over some of the new features of phpBB Weekly’s website.

Following a recent announcement on Star Trek Guide in which David updated to a CVS version of phpBB3, we question him on his motives. It turns out that there will be an eighth release candidate for phpBB3 which will be coming out very soon. We discuss the new release a bit and also take a look at what it means for the timing of the final release. As the show lingers on, we end up having a bit of a heated discussion about phpBB3 vs. phpBB2, and we also talk a bit about phpBB3′s release cycle after 3.0.0 “Olympus” is released.

Additional links mentioned: phpBB 3.x Feature Tracker, Google Webmaster Tools

The MOD of the Week is Evil Quick Reply for phpBB3 by eviL<3 and the Style of the Week is Vista for phpBB3 by HelterSkelter.

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

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Episode Duration: 1:15:09
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Eric Faerber (wGEric)

Eric Faerber returns for his second appearance on phpBB Weekly, and one which probably is a bit more informative than his first appearance was (and the blame for that can go directly to Douglas). It’s also the day after Douglas’ birthday, and so we do a short celebration for him as well. We also do our best to run the show while phpBB.com is down for “unexpected maintenance”, and we also launch a new feature on this episode: the phpBB Weekly Trivia Question.

During the interview with Eric, David mentions a few more new Support Team members, and mentions that Acyd Burn has confirmed that there will be an RC-6 release coming. We also take a look at the new hooks system that was recently added into CVS and will be coming out with phpBB3 RC-6 and ask what it means for MODs, and Douglas reiterates his wish for a WordPressish plugin system for the MODding of the future. We also talk about other new things for MODs in phpBB3, and then ask Eric some user-submitted questions about the MOD Team. Eric also reveals a couple of details of the upcoming EasyMOD for phpBB3 (Codename: Blinky).

Since phpBB.com was down, we had to take our MOD and Style of the Week off of Star Trek Guide, which is probably the best alternative. Anyway, the MOD of the Week is PM Alert Layer for phpBB3 by angelside, and the Style of the Week is Aqua Glass for phpBB3 by Trent.

Incidentally, if you would like to send your birthday wishes to Douglas, the Star Trek Guide folks have already setup a topic for that.

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