phpBB Weekly

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (51.2 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:29:28
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), and Michael Williams (mtotheikle)

On this non-live “Anything Goes” episode, Douglas is joined by the “Spokane Clan”–David Lewis, Francis Lewis (Handyman), and Michael Williams (mtotheikle). They’re all from Spokane, all bigwigs on StarTrekGuide, and are all celebrating the retirement of phpBB2 while Douglas continues mourning it.

The main topic of conversation is the recent blog post on session integration and other ways of integrating phpBB with your website. While we (and by we, we mean David) have discussed this before, we go significantly in-depth on the subject in this episode, including integrating the sessions, auths, templates, languages, DBAL–essentially the entire framework of phpBB in order to allow your website to seamlessly integrate with phpBB. WARNING: This is one of our much more technical topics and likely not intended for the faint-hearted. Most of the things we discussed can be found as articles on the phpBB Development Wiki.

Douglas was also on WordPress Weekly the other day, and one of the topics of conversation included bridges between phpBB and other platforms (such as Joomla!, WordPress, etc.). We extend that conversation on bridges a bit as well, and we’ll go a bit more in-depth on a number of bridge solutions that have popped up during the year 2008 on upcoming episodes of phpBB Weekly.

Finally, an interesting topic on phpBB.com’s General Discussion forum asked Is there a Government Plan to Close Down the Internet? We discuss the merits of this conspiracy theory but also chat a bit about the deeper serious issue of Net Neutrality. If you want to learn more about Net Neutrality and what you can do to protect it, visit SaveTheInternet.com.

Last week’s Poll Question of the Week was “What do you think of phpBB Weekly’s new website?” There were 11 votes (78.57%) saying “Wow, it’s awesome!”; 2 votes (14.29%) saying “Not as good as it was before.”; and 1 vote (7.14%) with No Opinion. This week’s poll question is “Do YOU think there’s a government plan to close down the internet?” Vote in the poll on our right-hand sidebar, and leave a comment as well if you want to. The poll closes on January 24th.

The MOD of the Week is Print a Post Mod by RMcGirr83, and the Style of the Week is Glass Softblue (and other color choices as well) by DoubleJ.

Credit for our fake sponsor of the week goes to A Prairie Home Companion – Garrison Keillor.

As a reminder, phpBB Weekly will not be live on January 17th, but will return live during our usual timeslot on January 24th.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (46.1 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:20:35
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), Eric Faerber (wGEric), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

Sponsor: Online meetings made easy. Try GotoMeeting FREE for 30 days! www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/

After all the um, interesting results we had on last week’s episode involving multiple people connected via SkypeOut on their cell phones, you’d think that we’d want to jump back to normal this week, but no. David and Francis were both out of town this weekend in the Middle of Nowhere, Montana, at a horse show, and joined us on this episode via their phones in the middle of the horse show, as could be somewhat easily heard throughout the episode. In addition, we were joined on this episode by phpBB’s new Operations Manager, Eric Faerber (wGEric), by former team member Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), who claims to be married to Bertie on Facebook, and by Francis Lewis (Handyman) who is serving as the head manager of SCOFF Media, Bertie Mons’ independent media organization.

The phpBB teams made some dramatic reorganizational changes this week by expanding their group of Team Leaders into a new “Management Team,” which in addition to the team leaders consists of three “managers.” wGEric is the new Operations Manager, ChrisRLG is the new Business Manager, and dhn continues his work under his newly-renamed title, Website Manager. And, taking Eric’s place, Igor Wiedler (eviL<3) is succeeding Eric as the new MOD Team leader. Douglas, David, and Eric talk in-depth about these changes, why they were made, and what they mean for the future of phpBB.

Oh, and by the way, the MOD Team just posted a Q&A with the MOD Team topic, so if you have questions you’ve been dying to ask the MOD Team members, hie thee hence to that topic!

Finally, our panel of guests analyzes the campaigns in our President Bertie Election Contest, looking at the progress of the four candidates and discussing what strategies they’ve done well and what more they could/should have done. Voting for the candidates in our contest begins Monday, November 3rd at 9 PM EST (0200 UTC on Tuesday), so be sure to participate! More details will be posted later this week in the contest forum.

The MOD of the Week is Post Count Requirements by SyntheticChaos and the Style of the Week is AZ_Retro by ayashazoelle.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts. Also, be sure to check out and vote in the People’s Choice Podcast Awards! Voting ends this Thursday, so don’t miss out!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (33.2 MB)

Episode Duration: 58:02
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Francis Lewis (Handyman)

Sponsor: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/.

Douglas had another test to complete during this episode of phpBB Weekly, and David apparently had a harder time hijacking team members for this episode, so he was joined this time by his brother, Francis Lewis (Handyman). With the retirement of phpBB2 still holding the #1 slot for phpBB discussions across the internet, David and Francis talk a bit more about the retirement news, albeit from somewhat more of a teams-based angle. During this episode, they talk a bit about how the EOL of phpBB2 will help the phpBB3 branch (as well as 3.2 Ascraeus development) in the long run. They also discuss some of the enticing phpBB3 features that users and MOD authors can see as they slowly transition over to phpBB3, including a look at how and why phpBB3 is more “stable” than phpBB2, some of the interesting aspects of phpBB3’s Database Abstraction Layer (DBAL) and an overall analysis of why phpBB3 doesn’t require as much MODding as phpBB2 did.

In other news, the MOD Database Cleanup is slated to be completed in full on Wednesday, April 30th Saturday, May 31st, and David and Francis talk a bit about will be taking place. They also provide an update on the latest news with Londonvasion and the Star Trek Guide MODs Manager, as well as a status update on the MOD Team’s upcoming Package Manager (codenamed Blinky).

The MOD of the Week is Full Syndication Suite for phpBB3 by Schumi, and the Style of the Week is Avalon for phpBB3 by CyberAlien.

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