phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:40:42
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and special guest Bernard Meldonado

Disclaimer: We’re still trying to get used to uStream! Unfortunately, the audio for David and Bernard got double-recorded (as we found out after the fact), and we spent a lot of time trying to fix it to no avail. We’re quite disappointed about this considering how wonderful this episode was, but the sound isn’t awful. It just adds some space-agey reverb. We’ll try to avoid this problem in the future, and sorry for the inconvenience on this episode.

Last week, we briefly spent some time discussing CAPTCHAs and their effect on people who are visually impaired. Well, for this episode, we are joined by Bernard Meldonado, the founder of Solona, a volunteer-driven website that helps solve CAPTCHAs for such visually impaired users. In our extended conversation with him, we discuss the state of CAPTCHAs from a blind person’s perspective, the lameness of audio-based CAPTCHAs (with funny examples), and discuss some other services and laws to help make the web accessible. We also discuss a bit about what we would like to see in future phpBB CAPTCHA plugins (any MOD authors listening?), and really consider the future of CAPTCHAs from an accessibility standpoint. And Bernard tells us a lot about Solona and how it operates. If you’ve got some free time to spend and want to help make a difference, we really encourage you to volunteer for Solona and help solve CAPTCHAs! (We have not yet determined if solving that many CAPTCHAs improves or degrades the quality of your eyesight.)

We also cover the recent news of the week, including the phpBB 3.0.6 RC-3 release and the Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition results.

Our Poll Question is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” and continues until October 31. What are you waiting for? Go vote!

The MODs of the Week are Fancy jQuery Captcha by mtotheikle and Sortables CAPTCHA Plugin by Derky. The Style of the Week is Afterburner by RocketTheme.

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Episode Duration: 1:09:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

phpBB Weekly is back, Douglas is on a normal computer, and all is right with the world!

We cover a lot of ground on this episode. Douglas recaps our interest to find a phpBB Weekly Clerk (Editor’s Note: we’ve now found one!), voting for the CAPTCHA Plugin Competition begins, and a few new members join the phpBB teams.

In addition, we spend some time discussing a post made on phpBB.com concerning accessibility issues with CAPTCHA plugins, particularly for the visually impaired. We also look at the MOD team’s recent blog post on the MOD Validation workflow, and ponder why “Insta-Deny” is a trademarked term. Also, David tells us a bit about the upcoming new StarTrekGuide MOD Manager, which they are currently soliciting feedback on.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question, which goes until Saturday 10/31 (a week longer than indicated on the podcast), is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” Cast your vote here!

The MOD of the Week is Forum SEO by stokerpiller, and the Style of the Week is Gerbang Kasih by napy8gen.

Join us on Saturday when we’ll continue our discussion about CAPTCHA accessibility with special guest Bernard Maldonado of Solona!

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Episode Duration: 1:15:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic), Phil Crumm (iWisdom), Igor Wiedler (evil<3), and Damian (Obsidian/Desdenova)

It’s kind of ironic that for this podcast, 2009 has turned into a year where CAPTCHAs seem to get all of our focus. Especially considering how much we hate them. They’re simply a necessary evil, kind of like insurance companies. Nevertheless, we dedicate yet another episode to the discussion of Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

But why? Well, the submission period for the phpBB MOD Team’s Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition just ended. Once the MOD validators finish validating the submitted CAPTCHA plugins over the next few weeks, then both the phpBB teams and the community will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite CAPTCHA plugin (the winners of which will receive a free Bertie). However, we couldn’t wait for the voting to start, so we ran our own survey asking MOD Authors to tell us about their CAPTCHA plugins, and so we spent some time describing and critiquing those plugins.

CAPTCHA Plugins Featured:
Crazy Maths CAPTCHA by eviL<3
Sortables CAPTCHA Plugin by Derky
Fancy jQuery CAPTCHA by mtotheikle (similar to this CAPTCHA)
SimpleMath by nickvergessen
Rotate Image CAPTCHA Plugin by Brainy

Douglas also pointed out that in a recent checkin to Subversion, the Development Team is apparently almost ready to seed phpBB 3.0.6 RC-1 to the QA Team. He and Igor discuss a bit about if phpBB 3.0.6 might have qualified as 3.1 under the new development roadmap, and why the teams decided to keep it as 3.0.6 instead of switching to 3.1. Douglas also shares that he’s hoping to organize another phpBB users meetup in Washington, DC in early 2010. And Damian and Igor talk a little bit about the phpBBModders.net community which they are a part of.

Our poll question, “What should be the next ‘tool’ added to the Support Toolkit?” continues until Saturday, September 12. Vote in the poll on the right-hand sidebar.

The MOD of the Week is Ban Hammer by SyntaxError90, and the Style of the Week is Reds by Culprit.

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Episode Duration: 1:26:48
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Okay, so it’s not all-new and it probably won’t blow your mind (not in a good way, at least), but nevertheless, phpBB Weekly is back! With a new presence on uStream, a new timezone, and (for Douglas) a new “studio” and a new operating system, it could be called all-new, except that we still have the same outlook on life. And the same tendency to talk, and talk, and talk.

On the phpBB news front, the second release candidate of the phpBB Support Toolkit is out now, and it’s also the first release to be officially supported and recommended for use. The deadline for the Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition has been extended to this Friday, and we will be covering it in much more depth next week.

In the “At what point will they quit tinkering and finally get a ‘gold master’ label out” category, development of the much-anticipated 3.0.6 release continues and more new features continue to be inserted. David and Douglas focus on two significant additions on this episode: the Newly Registered Users Group (to make it easier for moderators and administrators to observe the actions of newly registered users to ensure that they aren’t tending towards spam), and Submitting Statistics to phpBB.com (to optionally and anonymously submit usage and server statistics to the phpBB Development Team).

Finally, David and Douglas spend some time recapping our interview with Lorelle VanFossen by bringing the discussion about helping to bring around more community events and meetups into the phpBB community. We cover a range of thoughts on what the phpBB teams and community members can do to help phpBB reach out beyond its own online community.

Our phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “What should be the next ‘tool’ added to the Support Toolkit?” The poll will start in the next day or two on the right sidebar, and will end on September 12.

The MOD of the Week is IE6 No More by VSE, and the Style of the Week is Blue Stripe by BlackburnRavers.

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Episode Duration: 1:29:49
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Tom Beddard (subBlue)

On this episode, we’re joined by a very special guest, Tom Beddard (subBlue), the designer of the subSilver and prosilver themes for phpBB2 and phpBB3, respectively. We chatted with Tom about his experiences working with phpBB and with the teams, and what it’s like to write a completely new phpBB style from scratch (unlike most phpBB styles which are usually based somewhat on either subSilver/subsilver2 or prosilver). He also shared some thoughts for people interested in making styles for phpBB. (If you want a good read, be sure to check out his featurette on designing prosilver.)

David and Douglas also spend a bit of time discussing the future of community bulletin boards, and whether or not they may be on the decline in the future what with all the other new means of communication popping up around the internet. In the course of the conversation, David describes Google Wave and Douglas describes P2 and discuss how bulletin boards could borrow some of these ideas to improve usability and become more like a modern web application.

There is no MOD or Style of the Week. Our last phpBB Weekly Poll Question was “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Here are the answers:
“If they’re using Internet Explorer 6, who cares if they’re a bot or not? You know what to do with them…” 10 votes / 56%
“Ask the user what CAPTCHA stands for. If they know the correct answer, they’re probably a robot.” 3 votes / 17%
“Ask them to explain why the front REALLY fell off. That will weed out bots AND Australian senators.” 2 votes / 11%
“Attempt a Jedi mind trick on the user. If it doesn’t work, they’re probably a robot, or too smart to feel at home on your board anyway.” 1 vote / 6%
“Burn them at the stake. If they survive, they’re probably a robot. (Well, it worked at the Salem Witch Trials, right?)” 1 vote / 6%
And 1 “Other” answer:
“Pick the Bertie -captcha.”
Total Votes: 18

Finally, Douglas and David announce that this episode is our last episode on TalkShoe, because we are moving to uStream! They give a rundown of all of the details. As a reminder, there will be no live episodes on August 15 or 22; our next live show will be on Saturday, August 29. That episode will be our first episode broadcasting on uStream, and our first episode to adopt our new 1 PM EDT recording time. Keep an eye on phpBBWeekly.net as we make this transition over the next few weeks.

Finally, we close out the show by wishing a happy birthday to Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) in our usual phpBB Weekly way.