phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:29:49
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Tom Beddard (subBlue)

On this episode, we’re joined by a very special guest, Tom Beddard (subBlue), the designer of the subSilver and prosilver themes for phpBB2 and phpBB3, respectively. We chatted with Tom about his experiences working with phpBB and with the teams, and what it’s like to write a completely new phpBB style from scratch (unlike most phpBB styles which are usually based somewhat on either subSilver/subsilver2 or prosilver). He also shared some thoughts for people interested in making styles for phpBB. (If you want a good read, be sure to check out his featurette on designing prosilver.)

David and Douglas also spend a bit of time discussing the future of community bulletin boards, and whether or not they may be on the decline in the future what with all the other new means of communication popping up around the internet. In the course of the conversation, David describes Google Wave and Douglas describes P2 and discuss how bulletin boards could borrow some of these ideas to improve usability and become more like a modern web application.

There is no MOD or Style of the Week. Our last phpBB Weekly Poll Question was “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Here are the answers:
“If they’re using Internet Explorer 6, who cares if they’re a bot or not? You know what to do with them…” 10 votes / 56%
“Ask the user what CAPTCHA stands for. If they know the correct answer, they’re probably a robot.” 3 votes / 17%
“Ask them to explain why the front REALLY fell off. That will weed out bots AND Australian senators.” 2 votes / 11%
“Attempt a Jedi mind trick on the user. If it doesn’t work, they’re probably a robot, or too smart to feel at home on your board anyway.” 1 vote / 6%
“Burn them at the stake. If they survive, they’re probably a robot. (Well, it worked at the Salem Witch Trials, right?)” 1 vote / 6%
And 1 “Other” answer:
“Pick the Bertie -captcha.”
Total Votes: 18

Finally, Douglas and David announce that this episode is our last episode on TalkShoe, because we are moving to uStream! They give a rundown of all of the details. As a reminder, there will be no live episodes on August 15 or 22; our next live show will be on Saturday, August 29. That episode will be our first episode broadcasting on uStream, and our first episode to adopt our new 1 PM EDT recording time. Keep an eye on phpBBWeekly.net as we make this transition over the next few weeks.

Finally, we close out the show by wishing a happy birthday to Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) in our usual phpBB Weekly way.

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Episode Duration: 1:20:16
On this episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

Talk about one whacky reunion episode. Douglas comes in fresh off of his high school graduation and is stumped as to why he is not entirely fast asleep during the show. David and Francis make their grand return after 3 months’ absence, and as a skit, they hold a SCOFF News-style interview of Australian Senator Collins about a crashed oil tanker. Paul will slap Douglas to high heaven if this episode isn’t released before the end of May, and we have all kinds of crazy technical difficulties throughout the show. (And yes, that stuttering that happens during the first 2-3 minutes? That’s David’s fault too.)

Nevertheless, we have kind of a random discussion episode, during which Micheal shares a bit more about the FTP Trojans that we discussed last week, we share rumors on what’s taken so long for the release of phpBB 3.0.5 (and typical to fashion, it was just released today), and David shares the incredible saga that has taken him and Francis away from phpBB for the past few months and continuing for the next few months as well. Douglas takes the opportunity to share some plans for helping to revitalize phpBB Weekly during the remaining summer months of David’s prolonged leave of absence, and we also talk a bit about the best readme file ever.

There is no MOD or Style of the Week this week. Our phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “Who would be your favorite guest on phpBB Weekly?” Vote in the poll in our sidebar on the right; the poll closes Saturday, June 13.

And don’t miss the little bonus featurette at the end of the episode; I spent a lot of time editing that!

Just a heads up for those of you who may be interested that I will be interviewed on WordPress Weekly this Friday, January 9th at 8 PM EST (0100 UTC on Saturday 1/10). Like our show, WordPress Weekly is a live podcast recorded on TalkShoe by Jeff Chandler (Jeffro2pt0), a good friend of this show, and he does a really good job with WordPress Weekly. We’ll likely talk a bit about phpBB Weekly, discussions on phpBB vs. WordPress from a code and/or interface standpoint, and maybe some of my experience with personal blogging (a subject that has nothing to do with phpBB whatsoever).

As a TalkShoe-based podcast, you can join-in to WordPress Weekly the same way you join in on our show (just use Call ID 34224 instead). Just wanted to mention it in case you’re interested in listening in!

Just a reminder, phpBB Weekly will NOT be live on January 10th or 17th. We will be releasing a non-live episode (#094) during the interim, and our next live episode will be on January 24th.
–Douglas Bell, Co-Host of phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:16:17
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Dave Rathbun (drathbun)

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With the official retirement of phpBB2 fast-approaching, what is someone still using the legacy version of phpBB to do? Where are they supposed to go? Well, on this episode, phpBB.com Moderator Team member Dave Rathbun joins us to tell us about a new site he is launching to provide a home for these wandering souls: phpBB2Refugees, which launches on December 9th (that’s today!). During the episode, Dave tells us about phpBB2Refugees, including what the site’s goals are, how long he intends to run it, as well as a bit of info on some of the things he did to put it together. (If you look closely, it won’t take long to notice that their installation of phpBB2 has quite a number of MODs present.) We highly recommend that you check out their site and recommend it to any phpBB2-using friends that you are aware of.

We also chat a bit with Dave about the Moderator Team, and about his infamous phpBB Doctor Blog, which has a lot of really interesting content that you’ll want to take a look at.

And in honor of today’s topic, we switched ranks this week and chose a phpBB2 MOD and Style this week. The MOD of the Week is Approval MOD by uncle.f, and the Style of the Week is Christmas by CyberAlien. We’d also like to hear your MOD and Style Recommendations for us to possibly feature in future episodes!

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Episode Duration: 1:31:34
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Nils Adermann (naderman), and Brad Baker

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Editor’s Note: Yes, we’re going a little out of order here, but between Douglas being in China and David being in Vancouver, we haven’t had the chance to catch up and get ahold of the recording of #065. We’ll try to have it out by the end of the week. Thank you for your patience.

This special episode of phpBB Weekly focused on discussion of phpBB’s relationship with Joomla! and how it has developed into the RokBridge integration between the two products. For the first half of the show, Douglas is joined by phpBB Developer Nils Adermann (naderman) who talks about how Joomla! and phpBB came together, how the relationship has grown and progressed, and about how the RokBridge project has developed and what it means for the future of both projects.

We also ran into some extra time, and took advantage of it to discuss the opening of the Styles Database, MODX 1.2.0, an early look at the upcoming 3.0.2 release, and some of the latest things checked into the Ascraeus SVN development.

Then, for the second half of the show, David joins us live from the Joomla!Day event in Vancouver during his lunch break, in which he talks a bit more about the phpBB-Joomla! relationship and about some of the things that have been taking place at the event. He also introduces us to Brad Baker, one of the Joomla! Core Team members. He’ll fully recap his experiences from the event on our next episode.

The MOD of the Week is Viewtopic Birthday for phpBB3 by eviL<3. There is no Style of the Week this week (because, as you hear on the show, the style databases that Douglas tried to connect to were down!).

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