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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Episode Duration: 1:08:20
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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We have done it! Our one-hundredth episode of phpBB Weekly, a significant milestone for any podcast. There may be tens or hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there, but only some of them make it to this milestone, particularly for a podcast that we never thought would make it this far ourselves.

Unfortunately, despite the high demand from our listeners, we were unable to book a guest to join us on this episode. But we had someone almost as good! Our new temporary co-host, Micheal Cottingham, joined us in his new role for this first time on this show, and Douglas and he chatted a bit about security. We discuss a number of the topics from the StarTrekGuide Security Class forum (including an important one for EVERYONE to read about protecting your passwords), and we also go over some common injection vulnerabilities that MOD authors and all PHP developers need to keep an eye out for. And if you think you know all of the injections by heart, why not try the “Find the Injection” games over on the Security Class forum?

We also take a look at a recent blog post about Area51 (the phpBB development site, not the secret military base) and discuss a bit about its past role during Olympus development and its likely role during Ascraeus development.

Our last poll question was “What’s your favorite web browser?” There were 6 votes (55%) for “Firefox!”, 3 votes (27%) for “Safari!”, 1 vote (9%) for “Internet Explorer,” and 1 vote (9%) for “I seem to have an inability to pick a web browser and stick with it.” This week’s poll will be “What’s the best April Fool’s prank to pull on your users?” The poll will open up later this week and run until March 28; plus there will be an “Other” option for you to submit your own suggestions!

The MOD of the Week is User Reminder by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is AutumnsColor by BillStur Styles.

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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)

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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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Download MP3 Episode (49.3 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:26:12
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

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.