Man, it seems like we can’t seem to get our episodes recorded weekly, doesn’t it? Well, hopefully we’ll start to turn that bad habit around, starting with this episode.
We start on this episode with an update from our President Bertie Election Contest, in which two candidates, Lyndon Bertie Johnson and Sir Bertie Jr., have qualified for the ballot. The two-week campaign season has now begun, and the fun is happening now in the forum!
Finally, for the main portion of our show, we turn to a blog post made this week by Support Team member iWisdom on handling support requests. We talk a bit about how Support Team members and community supporters go through the Support Forum to help users out with phpBB, discuss some of the more common support requests, and finally offer our tips for interested users who want to start contributing in the support forum.
The MOD of the Week is Topic Solved by tumba25, and the Style of the Week is Jedi Knights by Scott Stubblefield.
This episode was actually recorded on Saturday, September 20, but between some busy circumstances and a weeklong outage with TalkShoe’s uploading form, it took two weeks to get this thing released!
Douglas was out and about during this episode of phpBB Weekly, so David decided (as usual) to invite a few other team members to come along for the ride. He was joined on this episode by Cullen (Brainy) of the Moderator Team, and Francis Lewis (Handyman) of the MOD Team, and they talked about a plethora of topics. They start by discussing a few things that moderators should know about the dangers of over-moderating: over-zealously deleting signatures or posts. They then discuss a bit more about CAPTCHAs, why the work and don’t work, and some ideas for alternatives for a CAPTCHA.
Then, remember back at Londonvasion, when Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) gave a presentation outlining the new features coming in phpBB 3.2 Ascraeus? He recently made a blog post explaining these features in more detail, and they cover this blog post in detail on this episode.
We actually had the chance to carve out a shorter episode of phpBB Weekly today, thanks to the fact that the recent surge in phpBB news has finally started to calm down. We took more of a MOD author’s/developers angle on this episode of phpBB Weekly.
For starters, MODX 1.2.1 is out. This update mostly consists of an updated XSL which brings a long some nice user interface enhancements, and gives Douglas the opportunity to rediscover how much better MODX has become since the last time he looked at it seriously a year or two ago. (We won’t rewrite the changes in MODX 1.2.1 here when you can see them by clicking on the link.) Plus, David also talks about the possibility of introducing new action tags into MODX in the future and asks for feedback from MOD Authors on what they would like to see. More about MODX is available at the MODX Resource Centre, and you can also see a sample of MODX 1.2.1.
Then, we go into-depth with the new phpBB Code Wiki, and discuss in-depth the purposes of the wiki, what kind of articles can be found on the wiki, and most importantly, how anyone can help contribute to the wiki to make it better. Our discussion is based on a blog post about the wiki that David posted last week.
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IMPORTANT! Contrary to what was said on this episode, we are still going to be doing our live episode streaming from Londonvasion as planned.
This episode, however, did not go according to plan, due to the fact that the team members had an important presentation to be at that conflicted with this live episode, and the London hotel that they were staying at had a miserably poor internet connection. (The hotel has promised that there will be a much, much better connection at Londonvasion, according to an e-mail David sent awhile after this episode ended.) So Douglas, left by himself, tried to fill for time by discussing some of the team member photos from Londonvasion and covering what will be discussed at Londonvasion based on the finalized schedule.
In addition, voting in the phpBBHacks.com Idol has begun, and Douglas explains how the voting will work and who is up against who. Go help determine who will win all of the fabulous prizes and their own library of books (not to mention the ever-important bragging rights)!
Don’t ask why David has this pipe dream of a short episode of phpBB Weekly, but this episode sure didn’t turn out to be what he was looking for. Which might be a good thing. While we did ramble off of our expected script a bit, we had a pretty good, in-depth discussion in the middle of the show.
phpBB 3.0.2 has been released, and we discuss what’s new and the various bugs that have been fixed, along with a few minor new features.
We then go into a bit of a discussion about the duties that the phpBB MOD team has and discuss a bit about their documentation and how their phpBB3 MODding documentation differs a bit from the docs that they had back when phpBB2 MODding was the “in” thing.
Also, the phpBB Blog has been unveiled as a new way to bridge the gap between the team members and the community, as well as a partial replacement for the now-dormant Official phpBB Podcast, and David leads us in a short game of musical chairs. You’ll just have to find out what that menas for yourself.
Finally, in our Londonvasion Update (and yes, we remembered the jingle this time), David shares what his personal travel itinerary will be in London, and we share our finalized Londonvasion plans and Douglas talks about Londonvasion Central.
There is no MOD or Style of the Week this week.
phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts.
phpBB Weekly is a live podcast that covers the latest news on the phpBB forum software, including various tips and tutorials on using phpBB as a user and as an administrator, and highlighting various MODs and Styles that are available for phpBB on the web today. The show is hosted by Douglas Bell and David Lewis.
On this website, you can listen to the past episodes of phpBB Weekly, find show notes for all of the previous shows, and find out information about upcoming episodes. You should also check out our phpBB Weekly forum.
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