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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.

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For the first time, Douglas steps off of the air on a phpBB Weekly episode and lets David take the helm. It’s probably risky, particularly after our excellent episode last week, but Coastal Cleanup Day in the San Francisco Bay Area and Douglas once again goes to do his part this year.

Meanwhile, David spends some time talking about how phpBB3 parses styles and how you can use certain styles only within specific forums in phpBB3. He then moves on to talk a bit about how you can integrate BBCode throughout your site and in your MODs, and then he talks a bit about how the module system works and whether or not a MOD should use it or not.

The next release (either RC-6 or final) of phpBB3 will include a new hooks functionality and a new DBAL tool, and what will this mean for MOD authors and how can they be implemented? This also means that MOD authors no longer have any excuse to not support all 8 DBMS types supported in phpBB3.

And for our weekly dose of MOD Team news, we talk a bit about MOD validation on phpBB.com and its importance, and we welcome Paul back on the MOD Team and also welcome Esmond Poynton (poyntesm) as the newest member of the MOD Team!

The MOD of the Week is ACP Add User MOD for phpBB3 by Highway of Life (that’s self-promotion for you!), and the Style of the Week is nDesign v2 for phpBB3 by Midnight Phoenix.

Additional links mentioned:
phpBB MODs Documentation
Geoffreak’s phpBB3 MODX Script Generator