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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!

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In this episode of phpBB Weekly, David and I are joined by guest host Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), the phpBB Support Team Leader. In what is so far our longest episode ever, David, Douglas, and Micheal talk about a number of different things, particularly relating to phpBB3, and also have a good time. MOD authors, server admins, and users concerned about security will really enjoy some of the more technical aspects of the conversation, while regular phpBB enthusiasts will also enjoy other parts of the episode.

David and MIcheal touch on a number of different things in phpBB3, including how phpbb_root_path is now handled as a defined constant instead of a variable, custom template paths, the new phpBB error handler, modularity, the naming of language files in modules, the hidden create_schema_files.php script and the DBMS, and the opening of the new MOD and Styles Databases. They also talk a bit about the various things in phpBB3 that make it more secure, including the “http only” cookie setting, request_var(), the removal of HTML support in posts (improved BBCode), serving avatars and attachments through download.php, SSL, XSS and SQL injection, and leaving vars unset along with the dangers of register_globals. In addition, Micheal asks an interesting question that stumps Douglas (although the jury’s still out on whether or not Douglas was actually stumped).

The MOD of the Week is Clickable forum and topic rows by tumba25, the very first phpBB3 MOD to be approved by the MOD team. The Style of the Week is Poolhall Junkies by Scott Stubblefield, also for phpBB3. Again, if you want to recommend a MOD or Style to us, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

Be sure to join us next week on August 11th for phpBB Weekly #027 where David will talk about phpBB3 modules in detail, for both administrators and MOD authors. Thanks again to Micheal for joining us. Also thanks to phpBB Weekly’s new sponsor, Audible.com. For your FREE audiobook, go to Audible.com/TalkShoe.