phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:32:51
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We start out this episode of phpBB Weekly first by taking a look back at last weekend’s MOD Authors Convention and briefly recapping some of it (see last week’s episode for full coverage of the event). Then, we tackle a topic that we didn’t get to last week: a discussion about CAPTCHAs in phpBB, as well as some of the difficulties of utilizing CAPTCHAs in open-source projects, along with a look at some of the other efforts at preventing spambot registration on various websites. The moral of the story: whatever you do, turn on User Activation in your phpBB Settings, because no CAPTCHA is perfect.

Then, we turn to the first part of our segment on “Building a Successful Community,” in which Douglas and David discuss the things that a user who wants to create a brand new community needs to plan out from the start, and the skills and qualities that new administrators will need for their community to be successful in the long run. Most of the content for this segment comes out of Patrick O’Keefe’s book, Managing Online Forums.

The MOD of the Week is th23 Domain by th23, and the Style of the Week is Black Pearl by Mighty Gorgon.

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Download MP3 Episode (47.1 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:22:14
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty)

David did do one thing for this show when he joined the phpBB teams: he found a bunch of team members who were anxious to be guest hosts on phpBB Weekly. On this episode, we’re joined by guest host Yuriy Rusko, better known on phpBB.com as Marshalrusty, a member of the Support Team.

First off, David and Yuriy talk about the first episode of the new Official phpBB Podcast, which I guess is meant to differentiate it from this podcast. But then, they end up talking about the Official phpBB Podcast so much, including recapping a bit on their talk about the COPA and COPPA laws, that this show effectively is now the phpBB Podcast podcast.

However, we do have an interesting discussion with Yuriy about dealing with spam, (including CAPTCHAs and other anti-spam measures), security, and his experiences giving support for phpBB. David also takes a moment to recognize a few of the phpBB team members who have recently stepped down to return to their normal lives, and their many many contributions to the phpBB project.

The MOD of the Week is Font Type BBcode for phpBB2 by Templater, and the Style of the Week is BF Vista Style for phpBB3 by Frost.
If you want to recommend a MOD or Style for us to promote, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”, and we might feature it on a future episode.

Additional links mentioned during the show:
Marshalrusty’s Preventing SPAM post
Dave Rathbun’s Doctor Blog
Marshalrusty’s Registration Auth Code (RAC) MOD
Info/Application to be a MOD Team Member

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