phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:09:07
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Jordan Lewis (Hank the Cowdog, representing Albertie Einstein)

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The era of change must be upon us. Not only did Barack Obama get elected as the next American president, but the changes within the phpBB teams just keep on coming with each passing week. This week it was announced that Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic) is stepping down as Support Team leader (but is staying as a member of the Support Team) and will be replaced by Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty). We briefly discuss this announcement, and there’s word that there could still be more structural changes coming soon to the phpBB project; stay tuned…

In the more immediate future, however, phpBB 3.0.3 RC-1 has been sent out to the QA Team for testing, which means that the long-awaited next update to phpBB3 is likely on the way very soon. Why is it long-awaited? There’s actually a number of new features coming in this release, such as template inheritance, changes to the moderation queue, and new permissions for sending private messages to multiple recipients. We go through the new toys coming in this next release in detail.

Finally, our President Bertie contest has officially ended with two elections that were held during the week, and on this episode, we announce the winner of the Bertie Mons Presidential Election: Albertie Einstein of the Intellectual Party, sponsored by Hank the Cowdog! We perform Albertie Einstein’s inauguration ceremony live on the show, and Jordan (Hank the Cowdog) delivers an inaugural address as well. The contest may be over, but Bertie Mons will continue to thrive on StarTrekGuide. Oh, and if anyone has figured out where the good people at SCOFF Media have disappeared to, please let us know…

The MOD of the Week is Activation Justification by TerraFrost and the Style of the Week is 4poziomSEO_orange by gokin.

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Episode Duration: 1:51:09
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life), Cullen (Brainy), and Francis Lewis (Handyman)

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This episode was actually recorded on Saturday, September 20, but between some busy circumstances and a weeklong outage with TalkShoe’s uploading form, it took two weeks to get this thing released!

Douglas was out and about during this episode of phpBB Weekly, so David decided (as usual) to invite a few other team members to come along for the ride. He was joined on this episode by Cullen (Brainy) of the Moderator Team, and Francis Lewis (Handyman) of the MOD Team, and they talked about a plethora of topics. They start by discussing a few things that moderators should know about the dangers of over-moderating: over-zealously deleting signatures or posts. They then discuss a bit more about CAPTCHAs, why the work and don’t work, and some ideas for alternatives for a CAPTCHA.

Then, remember back at Londonvasion, when Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) gave a presentation outlining the new features coming in phpBB 3.2 Ascraeus? He recently made a blog post explaining these features in more detail, and they cover this blog post in detail on this episode.

The MOD of the Week is Anti-Bot Question by CoC, and the Style of the Week is DarkFantasy by Daniel Exe.

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: 47:40
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Paul Sohier (Paul)

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Douglas was away on a tour of Beijing, China with his school during this episode (which partially explains why this episode was somewhat late in its release), so David was joined on this episode by Paul (of the MOD team) to go through the latest flurry of phpBB news.

In this episode, David and Paul began by talking about the release of MODX 1.2.0, covering the changes and the benefits that the new version provides to the MODding community, as well as the much much easier MOD packaging policies. In addition, the Styles Database and Demo were officially opened, meaning that phpBB3 styles submissions will finally start to be validated! Yay!

They also recap on BertieZilla’s experiences at LinuxTag Berlin, where the phpBB guys shared a booth with Joomla! and gave out gummy-Berties. And, speaking of Berties, it looks like Bertie 3.0 is about to be shipped!

Finally, David, Francis, and two other team members will be at Joomla!Day Vancouver on June 14th, and David gives a preview of what to expect.

The MOD of the Week is Display user’s age in viewtopic for phpBB3 by EY, and the Style of the Week is ComicBook for phpBB3 by thecharmed01.

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: 47:32
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Despite us being somewhat early, this episode was our special for April Fools Day 2008: our best attempt to pretend to be a weekly live podcast all about vBulletin. We tried our best, but we couldn’t resist throwing in a few good doses of surprise and sarcasm.

On this episode of vBulletin Weekly, we look at the history of how vBulletin came to be and where it is today. For those of you who are new to vBulletin, we discuss the requirements of running vBulletin, the licensing fees (ever heard of those?) for vBulletin, and the long multi-step installation process. Plus, the first release candidate of the next major release of vBulletin, 3.7, just came out a week or two ago. We take a look at some of the wildly inventive new features coming in 3.7, as well as our opinions on them. Plus, we discuss a bit about the unique idea of “threads” that vBulletin offers, and answer some questions from our angry mob chat room about vBulletin.

Links mentioned in this episode:
vBulletin Info and History (Wikipedia)
vBulletin Community Forums
vBulletin Customizations Website
Comparison between phpBB and vBulletin
First Look at vBulletin 3.7

The Hack of the Week is the Post Thank You Hack for vB 3.6 by Abe1, and the Skin of the Week is Jedi Knights – Star wars for vB 3.6 by foruma-z.

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

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Episode Duration: 44:38
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

On the heels of last week’s accident comes another episode of phpBB Weekly, once again featuring a solo act from Douglas. On this episode, Douglas once again begs for forgiveness for the accident that caused last week’s dilemma, but also takes a second look at what was discussed last week and re-examines (as well as clarifies) the various new features in phpBB 3.2 Ascraeus. At the same time, he examines the announcement that phpBB Development is moving to Subversion, and also makes mention of the new phpBB Code Forge.

This is a short and sweet episode that may sound like a regurgitation of what was covered last week, but we try to tackle it all in a new light as we collectively take a deep breath and move on.

The MOD of the Week is Change Poster for phpBB2 by Joe Belmaati, and the Style of the Week is Jenova Template for phpBB2 by varuna.

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