phpBB Weekly

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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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Episode Duration: 1:26:52
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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On this non-live episode of phpBB Weekly, David and Douglas go through a bunch of old news, recapping it and covering some new developments. We start by briefly mentioning the new phpBB Weekly theme/album artwork project that is in progress right now, and invite anyone who’s interested to participate.

You can now register for Londonvasion, which opened up a few weeks ago, along with a number of other details that Yuriy made available. We also (once again) do a recap on our latest plans for Londonvasion coverage, as well as answer a few questions that we’ve heard about it.

David gives us a recap on the MOD Team’s Package Manager (Blinky). In doing so, he also unveils some of the new features in the upcoming release of the MODX 1.2 spec for the first time.

Douglas and David then chat a bit about Sphinx for phpBB, another project in the phpBB Code Forge that is being put together by Development Team member Nils Adermann (naderman). Sphinx is an SQL full-text search engine that is already being used on phpBB.com and will likely be made available as an additional search plugin for a future release of phpBB3.

David then reveals that the new phpBB3 Styles Database has finally been completed and has been opened up! (The new Styles Demo only has one style in it at the moment: subsilver2.) You can now expect to start seeing styles hopefully be added to the database, and we’ll certainly be keeping our eyes open on there. We also speculate over whether or not there will end up being a Styles Demo for phpBB2 as well, but that question has yet to be answered…

And finally, we do a recap from our vBulletin Weekly April Fools joke by chatting about the recent vBulletin 3.7, which is virtually your own Facebook in a box. But since Jelsoft really knows the right way to celebrate a new release, we also take some time to discuss their simultaneous announcements of immediate end-of-life for vBulletin 3.0 and 3.5, along with end-of-life in six months for vBulletin 3.6; as well as unprecedented licensing changes (aka price increases) for vBulletin licenses. If you thought that phpBB’s end of life announcement was sudden, you probably won’t think that anymore!

The MOD of the Week is Forum Sponsor for phpBB3 by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is VidoStyle for phpBB3 by [urban] & Shadow_One.

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: 58:02
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Francis Lewis (Handyman)

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Douglas had another test to complete during this episode of phpBB Weekly, and David apparently had a harder time hijacking team members for this episode, so he was joined this time by his brother, Francis Lewis (Handyman). With the retirement of phpBB2 still holding the #1 slot for phpBB discussions across the internet, David and Francis talk a bit more about the retirement news, albeit from somewhat more of a teams-based angle. During this episode, they talk a bit about how the EOL of phpBB2 will help the phpBB3 branch (as well as 3.2 Ascraeus development) in the long run. They also discuss some of the enticing phpBB3 features that users and MOD authors can see as they slowly transition over to phpBB3, including a look at how and why phpBB3 is more “stable” than phpBB2, some of the interesting aspects of phpBB3’s Database Abstraction Layer (DBAL) and an overall analysis of why phpBB3 doesn’t require as much MODding as phpBB2 did.

In other news, the MOD Database Cleanup is slated to be completed in full on Wednesday, April 30th Saturday, May 31st, and David and Francis talk a bit about will be taking place. They also provide an update on the latest news with Londonvasion and the Star Trek Guide MODs Manager, as well as a status update on the MOD Team’s upcoming Package Manager (codenamed Blinky).

The MOD of the Week is Full Syndication Suite for phpBB3 by Schumi, and the Style of the Week is Avalon for phpBB3 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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Download MP3 Episode (43.8 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:16:30
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

We start this episode with some updates from the Subversion front. Recent updates in Subversion are showing that phpBB 2.0.23 and phpBB 3.0.1, both primarily bugfix updates, are going to be on their way soon. Also, in the weird description of the MOD team, the MODs Manager (codename “Blinky”) was “leaked on purpose,” as revealed in this Star Trek Guide thread. You can now check out the MODs Manager on the new phpBB Code Forge. (We also learned that the Code Forge is powered by a program called Redmine.)

However, the focus of this episode is a tutorial on BBCode. In this show, we discuss the reasons why BBCode was created and why it’s more secure to use than HTML (which is also why phpBB3 does not allow HTML to be used), and then discuss a bit about how adding custom BBCodes in phpBB2 and phpBB3, along with a recap of the significant changes coming to BBCode in Ascraeus.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:
BBCode (Wikipedia article)
phpBB BBCode Guide
Adding Custom BBCodes in phpBB3 (Flash Tutorial)
phpBB2 Multiple BBCode MOD
Popular Custom BBCodes for phpBB3

The MOD of the Week is First post on every page for phpBB3 by rxu, and the Style of the Week is envision for phpBB3 by AkaNSu.

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