phpBB Weekly

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We thought that we were going to do this episode of phpBB Weekly on Skypecasts, but we encountered problems with their service that made TalkShoe feel like the utopia of live audio streaming, so we decided to move back, and indeed, a brand new bugfixed update of TalkShoe was waiting for us. After spending some time talking about our interesting phpBB Weekly plight, congratulating David’s brother Francis Lewis (Handyman) for becoming a MOD Team member (the first time when two brothers have both been on the teams!), and talking about the recent Joomla!-phpBB meetup, we welcomed phpBB Developer DavidMJ as special guest for the show.

With DavidMJ, we talk about some of the many changes in phpBB3 over phpBB2, particularly in the areas of security and the improved accessibility of the codebase for MOD and style authors. DavidMJ also tells us about his particular areas of expertise in phpBB3, the database management system (DBMS). We also discuss the question over phpBB2’s fate, how much longer phpBB3 will support PHP 4, and some technical info on the various optimizations in phpBB3, and much more.

The MOD of the Week is Instant Post Redirect for phpBB3 by eviL<3, and the Style of the Week is Holiday Style for phpBB3 by Echo. (Yes, we did unintentionally pick styles from the same author on two consecutive episodes.)
Also, as the holiday season gets closer, we’re asking you to recommend any holiday-related MODs and Styles to us to feature on the upcoming episodes of phpBB Weekly. If you have one to recommend, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle” and we’ll consider promoting it on the show.

Editor’s Note: Apologies for the time it took to release this episode. I was having some difficulties getting my editing software to work properly until Apple pushed out an updated release which fixed everything. I look forward to when we’ll stop having technical difficulties on this podcast!

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

Hello everyone,

Recently, this show has gone through a number of upheavals, whether it be hosts who couldn’t be present or having problems with our live-show service, TalkShoe. David and I have been getting frustrated with some of the issues we’ve been having, and so are going to be making some changes, which I’d like to begin to outline to you below.

Goodbye TalkShoe?
When I started this show in January, my primary basis for it was to have a show not just talking about creating communities with phpBB, but to actually have a community that could participate and be a part of the show. For these past few months, TalkShoe has been the tool that has allowed us to pull this off. However, during the last month or two, we have been dealing with a significant increase in difficulties with TalkShoe, to the point where if you were on yesterday’s episode of phpBB Weekly, you heard how I had to cut the show short (it was a 25 minute show!) due to TalkShoe completely giving up on me.

Even though yesterday’s episode #037 wasn’t that great, David and I have decided that we will release it anyway, however we’re going to start testing some alternatives to TalkShoe, and we have already began researching some of these. If we find one that we like this week, it is very likely that on episode #038 this Saturday, we will be “beta testing” a different service. Of course, we will be announcing details later on this week here on this blog.

If we determine that we like that service, then a number of significant changes will happen here on phpBB Weekly. For one thing, our feed URLs will change as we will be moving off of TalkShoe feeds and managing the podcast feed in-house. This will probably also give us an opportunity to launch an updated website, something I’ve been wanting to do for a little while now. Anyway, stay tuned, as we’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on this blog about any changes that are going to happen.

Daylight Savings Time
A number of countries have seen time changes ending recently, and in the case of the United States, we just had DST end last night. Therefore, the time of our show will be changing. We will still be recording the show on Saturdays starting at 12 PM Eastern Time, however this means that the show will be starting at 1700 UTC, not 1600 UTC. You may want to check your local time so you know when phpBB Weekly will be starting now in your area.

DavidMJ
David and I have gotten so many e-mails in the last month asking if we’re going to get DavidMJ back on the show, after he had to unexpectedly miss episode #034. I am very glad to announce that DavidMJ has agreed to guest host this Saturday, November 10th, on phpBB Weekly #038, to talk about phpBB3 (what else?). If you have any questions for him, there’s a topic in the phpBB Weekly forum, or you can come on the show on Saturday or ask him yourself!

Thanks for continuing to listen to phpBB Weekly, and for bearing with us as we go through these growing pains. When I started this show in January, I had no idea that it would grow into what it is today, and by going through these changes, we’re working to make the show even better for you, the listeners.

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This episode did not go according to plan. We had expected to have phpBB Developer DavidMJ on as a guest today, but unbeknownst to us at the time, he had a family emergency and was unable to make it, so we ended up coming together with a pretty good show while we stalled and took comments from our live listeners (six of whom were phpBB team members!). This episode was recorded right before the release of phpBB3 RC-6 and the ensuing chaos that has followed the release, which you can read a bit about in the previous post on this blog, and which will be discussed more thoroughly on next week’s episode. We do hope to try to bring DavidMJ on sometime in November, with more details coming soon.

In this episode we talk a bit about the phpBB Security Team and Incident Investigation Team and about what those teams do, and also briefly discuss some common security vulnerabilities common in PHP code that both the developers and MOD authors need to look out for. We do a little bit more coverage of the just-about-to-be-released RC-6, and wander off for a few minutes into a discussion of Mac security vs. Windows security. (It’s not as bad as you might think.) Then, Jeffro calls in and asks us to talk a bit more about just how private private messaging is, and we also talk about changes in phpBB3 styles vs. phpBB2 styles and possible enhancements to phpBB MODding in the long-term future.

The MOD of the Week is Notify Admin on Registration for phpBB3 by ameeck, and the Style of the Week is Playstation for phpBB3 by Scott Stubblefield.

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

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)!