phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:31:34
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Nils Adermann (naderman), and Brad Baker

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Editor’s Note: Yes, we’re going a little out of order here, but between Douglas being in China and David being in Vancouver, we haven’t had the chance to catch up and get ahold of the recording of #065. We’ll try to have it out by the end of the week. Thank you for your patience.

This special episode of phpBB Weekly focused on discussion of phpBB’s relationship with Joomla! and how it has developed into the RokBridge integration between the two products. For the first half of the show, Douglas is joined by phpBB Developer Nils Adermann (naderman) who talks about how Joomla! and phpBB came together, how the relationship has grown and progressed, and about how the RokBridge project has developed and what it means for the future of both projects.

We also ran into some extra time, and took advantage of it to discuss the opening of the Styles Database, MODX 1.2.0, an early look at the upcoming 3.0.2 release, and some of the latest things checked into the Ascraeus SVN development.

Then, for the second half of the show, David joins us live from the Joomla!Day event in Vancouver during his lunch break, in which he talks a bit more about the phpBB-Joomla! relationship and about some of the things that have been taking place at the event. He also introduces us to Brad Baker, one of the Joomla! Core Team members. He’ll fully recap his experiences from the event on our next episode.

The MOD of the Week is Viewtopic Birthday for phpBB3 by eviL<3. There is no Style of the Week this week (because, as you hear on the show, the style databases that Douglas tried to connect to were down!).

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Episode Duration: 50:31
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Scott Stubblefield

The jury was out on whether or not we would be able to recover from our, um, interesting episode last weekend, but we came around with a somewhat more serious episode this week. This episode featured our tenth guest interview in this podcast’s short history, and represents our response to the many comments that we have received from our listeners recently asking for us to focus a bit more on styles for phpBB.

On this episode, we were joined by phpBB style author Scott Stubblefield, who makes some of our favorite styles for phpBB2 and for phpBB3. On this episode, Scott tells us about how he got into making phpBB styles, his experiences as a style author transitioning from phpBB2 to phpBB3, tips for users interested in making phpBB styles, and much more. Plus, David answers a frequently asked question regarding how long it will be before the phpBB.com Styles Database finally comes back online.

The MOD of the Week is Quick reply for phpBB3 by rxu, and the Style of the Week is Star Trek for phpBB3 by Scott Stubblefield.

Be sure to join us next week when we will have a very special surprise topic that will be sure to knock your socks off…

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

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Episode Duration: 38:25
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

In celebration of the 20th episode of phpBB Weekly, we have switched to a new recording strategy. Those who listen live on TalkShoe will not hear the opening/closing theme music, but instead the show will be recorded locally, and then I will edit in the theme music (and any other applicable sounds) after the fact and re-upload the show. This will result in a faster turnaround time for episode releases and much higher sound quality. Enjoy!

What’s the one thing that everyone tells you to do when you have an active phpBB board, WordPress blog, Drupal website, or anything else? Back it up! In this episode, I cover a number of different ways to back up your files and your database–some of the methods are phpBB-specific, and some aren’t.

For backing up your files, just download them to your local hard drive via an FTP client or your webhost’s File Manager. For backing up your database, phpBB2 and phpBB3 have built-in backup tools which work with all of the databases that they support. While phpBB3 has a good backup system, I recommend Vic D’Elfant’s SQL Backup MOD instead for doing backups of your phpBB2 database. However, the SQL Backup MOD is only compatible with MySQL, so that option is not available to other databases. In addition, phpMyAdmin has an excellent Export tool which allows you to backup entire databases (not just phpBB) with a lot of flexible options. cPanel also has a Backups section which can automatically download a gzip of a database backup. Or, try generating a Full Backup to create a tarball of your entire webspace, files and database included.

Whichever method you choose, remember to have a regular time to run these backups, and always backup your board before you install MODs or update phpBB, so that you’re safe if something goes wrong.

The MOD of the Week is Registration Stopper for phpBB2 by Fountain of Apples (hey, I don’t talk about my own MODs that often, this is the first time in 20 episodes!), and the Style of the Week is Brushed Metal for phpBB3 by Robin Huurman.

Also, a shout out and a thank you to the Star Trek Guide Forums, who will be promoting phpBB Weekly in each of their upcoming newsletters! Thanks for helping to spread the word!