phpBB Weekly

Well, okay, the title is exaggerating the point a little bit. When you’ve seen so many advertisements on the TeeVee for the lame shows that are starting up again soon (note that I’m NOT saying which ones), I kinda have the urge to mock it. But I digress.

Beginning this Saturday, August 23rd, phpBB Weekly will return from our summer break, aka the three weeks off that we took during August, to resume producing live episodes of phpBB Weekly. The time off was certainly worth it, because after nearly four months of almost-continuous coverage of Londonvasion (we did talk about some other things too, obviously), we kind of felt a bit exhausted from all of the buildup and a little bit lost in terms of what to talk about now that we didn’t have an event to cover all the time. Taking a few weeks off give both of us a chance to catch up with some things, collect ourselves, and regroup as we get prepared to continue going with phpBB Weekly this fall.

There will be some new things happening. We’re kicking off this Saturday with our 75th episode (three-quarters of the way to that auspicious one hundred mark!), where we’ll cover some of the news that has emerged over the last few weeks, and David will give us a tutorial on SEO for phpBB3. Those of you around when David first joined this podcast as a co-host more than a year ago will know that SEO is one of his specialities. There will also be an announcement coming soon that will keep us occupied for a few episodes.

We’ve also come to realize that we’ve covered nearly all of the phpBB3 tutorials that there is to cover on this podcast (but if you disagree, let us know and we’ll correct that). And so, we’re going to start moving into some new territory by starting a recurring segment with tips on Building a Successful Community. Loosely based on Patrick O’Keefe’s book along with other sources and our own experiences, we’ll be dedicating episodes to covering the steps and tips on building and managing a community successfully from the ground up. This is stuff that doesn’t just apply to phpBB users, but to administrators of any community out on the internet. In addition, as part of this segment, we’ll be bringing guests to interview on the show who have built successful communities from scratch and will share their tips and secrets to success. We will be starting the segment in September and, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be doing the segment at least twice a month. The very tentative “schedule” for this segment is currently set for the first & third weeks of the month, but this is subject to change depending on what our other topics of conversation will be.

Of course, we wouldn’t be doing new stuff on phpBB Weekly without asking for your input. We’re always looking for ideas of stuff to talk about on the show, so we’d love you to tell us what you think. Join in our live chat room or call us on the show and share your thoughts and tips. If you think that you’ve built a successful community from the ground up and have thoughts that you’d like to share, let us know and we’ll consider inviting you to be interviewed on the show. We get our ideas and our inspiration from all of you, so we really appreciate hearing from you.

Summer is ending, and we’re ready to get back into the show! We hope that you’ll join us again on phpBB Weekly, starting this Saturday!

P.S. Despite what you read in this topic, phpBB Weekly is NOT currently the “replacement” for the Official phpBB Podcast. The teams have not in any way contacted us about phpBB Weekly taking the official podcast’s place or anything like that. (At least, they haven’t contacted me; if David knows anything, then he isn’t telling me.) While it is not impossible that things may change in the future, absolutely nothing has happened thus far that would result in any change of the fate of this podcast. –Douglas

We briefly mentioned this as a possiblity on our last phpBB Weekly episode, now I guess it’s time for me to make it official. This Saturday, we will be reining in a developer onto the program. That’s right: phpBB Developer DavidMJ will be joining us on Saturday to talk about phpBB3, I would guess. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t want to bet against those odds.

Of course, we’ll probably ask him a bit about what he does in his own life (even though phpBB team members by general rule aren’t supposed to have a personal life) and how he got to be a phpBB developer, but the two Davids (DavidMJ and our own David Lewis) will also be talking a lot about the most significant new features coming in phpBB3, including some you may not have known about. He will also be taking in-depth about the new DBAL tools (which he was in charge of designing, by the way).

Of course, please take advantage of the show being live and join in! If you have any questions that you’d like to ask a phpBB Developer, this is a great chance to make your voice heard!

If there’s a question that you’d like us to ask, but you won’t be able to be on the live show to ask it yourself, there’s a discussion topic over at Star Trek Guide where you can submit questions for us to interrogate ask him.

See you this Saturday at 12 PM Eastern time (1600 UTC)!

We’re hearing from our listeners that you guys love it when we bring on guests to the show. And, now that David is on the teams, we’re hearing from all these team members that want to be guests on the show. Well, we’re probably not going to be going all out to bring guests on every week, but we’re probably going to start having more of them, and our next two episodes are going to be some exciting ones. I mentioned these briefly at the end of phpBB Weekly #031, but wanted to reiterate them here.

On phpBB Weekly #032, this Saturday, September 29th, MOD Team leader Eric Faerber (wGEric) will be joining us again on phpBB Weekly. I had kind of a lame interview with him back on episode #004 (and it was completely my fault), so David will be doing most of the questioning on this show, but I’ll be there as well. We’ll be talking about some of the projects that the MOD Team is working on now in preparation for the upcoming release of phpBB3, what you need to know about MODding in phpBB3, and we’ll also be talking a bit about the new hooks and events functionality coming in the next phpBB3 release. And of course, Eric will be answering your questions and comments, so be sure to join us for the live episode!

Then, on phpBB Weekly #033, which will be on Saturday, October 6th, we will be inviting a small panel of other members of the Tech Podcasts Network (of which this show is a member, by the way) to join us to talk about their experiences with building a true community around a bulletin-board/forum website, along with tips and answering questions. (Note that this is still subject to change as I’m still trying to arrange a panel, or at the very least, a guest!) Join us to get some expert tips on how you can attract members to your forum and build a community.

We have these shows and some other exciting shows planned, and we hope to have you join us for our upcoming episodes of phpBB Weekly!

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Download MP3 Episode (35.1 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:01:20
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Douglas returns from picking up around the Bay Area, and after telling an interesting and disappointing story from his excursion (which has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with phpBB3), he takes the reins and very thoroughly goes over the topic of banning. Covered on this show is why would you want to ban users? How do you ban users using phpBB? What are the differences in banning controls between phpBB2 and phpBB3? We also talk about how the phpBB3 warnings system can fit in here and discuss the importance of having set rules and guidelines on your forum, along with a cautionary warning about not getting carried away with banning users. (After all, you want to attract users to your forum, not send them away!) And then, Douglas selects two MODs of the Week which bring some of phpBB3′s enhanced banning functionality within the grasp of phpBB2 administrators. David also gives us the latest lowdown on recent changes to the phpBB teams, including a brand new Support Team leader, and then we announce some of the exciting episodes that will be coming up.

The two MODs of the Week this week are Ban Reasons and Temp Ban, both by eviL<3 for phpBB2. The Style of the Week is Thor by Wizardly for phpBB3.
If you would like to recommend a MOD or Style of the Week to us to be featured on a future episode (subject to our approval), bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

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

David has completed a move to Dallas, Texas, Douglas has attended many meetings and gotten back into the school routine, and that means that this Saturday, September 1st, we will be back with another episode of phpBB Weekly! We had previously announced that we would be pushing out a special episode sometime in between our intermission, but unfortunately our lives got in the way and prevented us from finding time for that.

However, we do invite you to join us for our triumphant return this Saturday at the usual time! The episode description has just been posted on the front page of the phpBB Weekly website, and we’re not planning to miss anymore episodes for a little while.

See you all on Saturday, live on TalkShoe!