phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:27:42
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Our penultimate episode of 2009 was also Douglas’ last episode of 2009 coming from Washington, DC. David and Douglas actually spent a lot of time at the beginning comparing notes about finals, the weather, Christmas trees, etc. Douglas also offered an early review of Google Chrome for Mac, and placates the many demands from everyone in the #startrekguide IRC channel who wanted it mentioned that SyntaxError90 is the newest member of the MOD team.

Our main topic of discussion on this episode takes a look at a question posed this week in the phpBB Discussion forum asking if phpBB is falling behind, to which we share our thoughts. We also take a look at some early (and unconfirmed) details about phpBB4 that appeared on the phpBB Development Wiki and discuss what they would mean for the potential long-term future of phpBB.

Finally, we recognize the winners of the 2009 phpBBHacks.com Awards, including the MOD and Style winners, which are our MOD and Style of the Week. The MOD of the Week is Censor Block by Thoul, and the Style of the Week is 1impression by gokin.

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Episode Duration: 1:09:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

phpBB Weekly is back, Douglas is on a normal computer, and all is right with the world!

We cover a lot of ground on this episode. Douglas recaps our interest to find a phpBB Weekly Clerk (Editor’s Note: we’ve now found one!), voting for the CAPTCHA Plugin Competition begins, and a few new members join the phpBB teams.

In addition, we spend some time discussing a post made on phpBB.com concerning accessibility issues with CAPTCHA plugins, particularly for the visually impaired. We also look at the MOD team’s recent blog post on the MOD Validation workflow, and ponder why “Insta-Deny” is a trademarked term. Also, David tells us a bit about the upcoming new StarTrekGuide MOD Manager, which they are currently soliciting feedback on.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question, which goes until Saturday 10/31 (a week longer than indicated on the podcast), is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” Cast your vote here!

The MOD of the Week is Forum SEO by stokerpiller, and the Style of the Week is Gerbang Kasih by napy8gen.

Join us on Saturday when we’ll continue our discussion about CAPTCHA accessibility with special guest Bernard Maldonado of Solona!

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Episode Duration: 1:01:08
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and some unexpected guests (hint hint)

We’re back for another episode of phpBB Weekly with Douglas hobbling along via Skype on his iPod touch as he marks three weeks since the damage of his beloved MacBook. But where there’s a will, there’s a way, even if that makes him sound like he’s on a digitized cell phone. So what, this is phpBB Weekly, we should be used to funny-sounding audio by now, right?

However, you’re definitely going to want to give a listen to this episode to hear the unexpected (and completely unplanned) surprise that puts Douglas on the spot towards the end of the show. We actually re-recorded the end of this show last Monday (which was Douglas’ 18th birthday), since the end of the live recording we did on Saturday turned out very badly due to technical problems. So even if you listened in live, you didn’t get to hear it, so be sure you take a listen!

After apologizing and explaining his difficulties in getting episode #122 released, Douglas and David take a look at the newly-released second RC of phpBB 3.0.6, which includes regression fixes from RC1, and also introduces some major changes to phpBB’s auto-updater to allow it to be more tolerant of potential conflicts with MODs. Quite frankly, the developers have made quite a few more checkins in the few days since RC2, that we wouldn’t be surprised if we see a third release candidate before 3.0.6 goes final. But we’ll just have to wait and see…

The other big release of the weekend is MODX 1.2.3, the “toasted motherboard” edition. As this is the first release to the MODX spec in the past eight months, Douglas and David take the opportunity to dust off their ongoing conversation about MODX, and its usability and purpose compared to the gone-but-not-yet-forgotten Text Template. Also, Douglas’ experiences doing phpBB Weekly without a computer have brought a bug with phpBB3′s print view to his attention, which he will report as soon as phpBB.com lets him log in again.

The MOD of the Week is Board3 Portal by avaren, and the Style of the Week is 1thank by gokinstudio.com.

There will not be a phpBB Weekly episode this Saturday, October 3rd. We will return live on October 10, and Douglas will hopefully be back in front of a normal computer by then.

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Episode Duration: 1:15:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic), Phil Crumm (iWisdom), Igor Wiedler (evil<3), and Damian (Obsidian/Desdenova)

It’s kind of ironic that for this podcast, 2009 has turned into a year where CAPTCHAs seem to get all of our focus. Especially considering how much we hate them. They’re simply a necessary evil, kind of like insurance companies. Nevertheless, we dedicate yet another episode to the discussion of Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart.

But why? Well, the submission period for the phpBB MOD Team’s Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition just ended. Once the MOD validators finish validating the submitted CAPTCHA plugins over the next few weeks, then both the phpBB teams and the community will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite CAPTCHA plugin (the winners of which will receive a free Bertie). However, we couldn’t wait for the voting to start, so we ran our own survey asking MOD Authors to tell us about their CAPTCHA plugins, and so we spent some time describing and critiquing those plugins.

CAPTCHA Plugins Featured:
Crazy Maths CAPTCHA by eviL<3
Sortables CAPTCHA Plugin by Derky
Fancy jQuery CAPTCHA by mtotheikle (similar to this CAPTCHA)
SimpleMath by nickvergessen
Rotate Image CAPTCHA Plugin by Brainy

Douglas also pointed out that in a recent checkin to Subversion, the Development Team is apparently almost ready to seed phpBB 3.0.6 RC-1 to the QA Team. He and Igor discuss a bit about if phpBB 3.0.6 might have qualified as 3.1 under the new development roadmap, and why the teams decided to keep it as 3.0.6 instead of switching to 3.1. Douglas also shares that he’s hoping to organize another phpBB users meetup in Washington, DC in early 2010. And Damian and Igor talk a little bit about the phpBBModders.net community which they are a part of.

Our poll question, “What should be the next ‘tool’ added to the Support Toolkit?” continues until Saturday, September 12. Vote in the poll on the right-hand sidebar.

The MOD of the Week is Ban Hammer by SyntaxError90, and the Style of the Week is Reds by Culprit.

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Episode Duration: 1:26:48
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Okay, so it’s not all-new and it probably won’t blow your mind (not in a good way, at least), but nevertheless, phpBB Weekly is back! With a new presence on uStream, a new timezone, and (for Douglas) a new “studio” and a new operating system, it could be called all-new, except that we still have the same outlook on life. And the same tendency to talk, and talk, and talk.

On the phpBB news front, the second release candidate of the phpBB Support Toolkit is out now, and it’s also the first release to be officially supported and recommended for use. The deadline for the Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition has been extended to this Friday, and we will be covering it in much more depth next week.

In the “At what point will they quit tinkering and finally get a ‘gold master’ label out” category, development of the much-anticipated 3.0.6 release continues and more new features continue to be inserted. David and Douglas focus on two significant additions on this episode: the Newly Registered Users Group (to make it easier for moderators and administrators to observe the actions of newly registered users to ensure that they aren’t tending towards spam), and Submitting Statistics to phpBB.com (to optionally and anonymously submit usage and server statistics to the phpBB Development Team).

Finally, David and Douglas spend some time recapping our interview with Lorelle VanFossen by bringing the discussion about helping to bring around more community events and meetups into the phpBB community. We cover a range of thoughts on what the phpBB teams and community members can do to help phpBB reach out beyond its own online community.

Our phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “What should be the next ‘tool’ added to the Support Toolkit?” The poll will start in the next day or two on the right sidebar, and will end on September 12.

The MOD of the Week is IE6 No More by VSE, and the Style of the Week is Blue Stripe by BlackburnRavers.