phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 36:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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We had a very short episode of phpBB Weekly this week, one that would be sure to make David jealous. For whatever reason. But what can we say? We’re at sort of a lull in terms of phpBB news to cover, and we adjust accordingly.

A new post on the phpBB.com Blog by battye asks us, “How many forums should I create?” Micheal and Douglas discuss this a bit in terms of why it’s a very poor idea to start your board with dozens of forums or to have so many forums that they overwhelm your users. We also share some experiences we’ve had with boards that had many forums set up, or, even worse, lots of subforums many levels deep.

We then take a look at the world of Bertie. For one thing, Micheal and Bertie are no longer married. It’s technically not a divorce, since there never technically were papers verifying the marriage to begin with, but Micheal tries to explain the back story here. Bertie 3.0 continues to be available, and should be a hot item since Bertie Bear has been running for President, according to Micheal’s Facebook group. We have a bit of a discussion about Bertie’s qualifications to become President. And speaking of presidents, we also take a look at the actions of Albertie Einstein, Bertie Mons’ new president, who seems to have been a bit of a lame duck, having done nothing since last November. We’ll have to see if the situation changes there soon.

The Poll Question of the Week is “What is the best April Fools prank to pull on your users?” Vote (or suggest your own alternate answer) by March 28th in the sidebar.

The MOD of the Week is Anti Double Post by Théonaute, and the Style of the Week is green_vision by abble CoSa NoStrA.

Contrary to what was said at the end of the episode, we will be having an episode next Saturday, March 28th, that Douglas will host by himself. It will be our infamous annual April Fools Day special, where we’ll be putting on an unusual type of episode! Tune in live to be the first to find out the surprise!

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Download MP3 Episode (58.2 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:41:40
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic)

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Now that we’ve emerged from Londonvasion, we came on this episode still a bit hungover from the excitement of the event, and a little but unsure of what to cover, so we decided to talk about some of the latest news from phpBB.com, not expecting that the episode would turn out to be as long as it did. We’re also joined on this episode by Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic), the Support Team leader.

The phpBB Discussion forums have been reorganized into one basic, general phpBB Discussion forum. We talk about what the change means and some of the reasons why it was implemented.

Then, there’s a new post on the phpBB.com Blog about template inheritance, a new feature coming in phpBB 3.0.3 based on some requests that originated at Londonvasion, and provides a way for style authors to simplify their styles by basing portions of them on other templates (like prosilver or subsilver2, for example). We talk a bit about template inheritance and describe how it will work.

Finally, for a topic that David requested, we discuss an ongoing discussion on the phpBB.com forums relating to the recent blog post on MOD Author feedback. We cover some of the issues that were brought up in this discussion and talk about how the MOD team should and better communicate with the MOD community, and some of the other documentation, ongoing projects, and tools that the MOD team is working on to help out MOD authors. The MOD team continues to accept feedback on the MOD Database and the validation process.

The MOD of the Week is RedBar3 by cherokee red, and the Style of the Week IS AeroBlue by jrolson.

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

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Download MP3 Episode (41.9 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:13:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life), Jeff (JKThinking)

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On this episode, we’re joined by Jeff (JKThinking), co-host of the phpBBireland Podcast, which just launched back in March. Their podcast covers the phpBBireland website, the developers of the Stargate Portal for phpBB3 (no, it’s actually not an Irish phpBB support site). In addition to learning a bit more about the phpBBireland podcast, we also chat with Jeff about the Stargate Portal and have a good discussion about the purpose of portals for phpBB and when they are and are not useful for discussion forums.

Afterwards, David talks a bit about Bertie’s sojourn to Berlin at the LinuxTag Convention. Next week, David will chat with the phpBB team members who were at LinuxTag.

The MOD of the Week is FAQ Manager for phpBB3 by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is SkyBlue for phpBB3 by Alex.

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

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Download MP3 Episode (18 MB)

Episode Duration: 45:01
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

You do have permission to download this episode (pun intended). We’re still waiting for a new phpBB3 release, but team member Vic D’Elfant has joined the Development Team. Douglas gives a long tutorial on how to setup forums in phpBB3, and how to assign permissions for new forums to users on phpBB3 so that they can actually use those new forums! Included is a guide on how to navigate the new permissions system and also all the ways that it can be used to show as many (or as few) permissions as you need. Douglas also shows how you can now control how much (or how little) moderators can do on a board.

The MOD of the Week is Topic Description by Swizec, and the Style of the Week is phpBBXP2 by Vereor.

Next week we will continue talking about permissions, including how to set permissions for non-forum-related features on the board, and how to edit and configure your own permission roles beyond the default ones.

Correction: During the episode I recommended using the “On Moderation Queue” as the default role for Global Moderators. I was incorrect: Under the default settings, “On Moderation Queue” means that all posts that that user or group makes must be approved by a moderator before they appear on the board. Global Moderators should be assigned “Full Access” to the board, and control over whether or not they moderate that board is set under the Forum Moderators panel as I described. Thanks to Lastof for pointing this out!