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.

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

We’ve had a number of people e-mail us and tell us that, you know, if phpBB Weekly is all about forum software, shouldn’t you have a forum for phpBB Weekly? Well, it’s a great idea, but managing a forum is a lot of work (as we’ve mentioned on the show), and so far, we’ve pretty much been content with the comments system on the blog and the nice form where you can submit your questions.

Well, thanks to our good friends at Star Trek Guide, which, not coincidentally, is co-administrated by phpBB Weekly co-host David Lewis, they have now created a brand new forum just for phpBB Weekly, which we will be taking advantage of and hope that all of our wonderful listeners will take advantage of. Keep an eye out on there for topics where we’ll invite you to submit questions for when we bring guests on the show and ask for occasional feedback on the show. If there’s any comments from the forum that we find noteworthy, we may decide to mention your comments on the show. And, a much-requested, we have a special topic for help connecting to TalkShoe.

We’re really excited to be expanding phpBB Weekly in all of these ways. phpBB is about creating communities, and David and I are really excited to be able to find more and more ways to make phpBB Weekly a community-driven podcast. We may be the hosts, but you, the listeners, are the community members that make phpBB happen.

So run, don’t walk, over to the phpBB Weekly forum over at Star Trek Guide!