phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:35:15
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We return from our three week break energized and ready to go with our fall “season” of phpBB Weekly, and we kick it off with the realization that there’s a whole bunch of news for us to cover from just the past few days.

The MOD and Styles Databases have been upgraded with the ability to subscribe to individual MOD updates by e-mail (and, according to Paul, there’s a secret RSS feed as well). Speaking of the databases, thirteen phpBB3 styles have finally been approved for the Styles Database. In addition, the Styles Team has announced a new styles validation policy regarding how they will handle new releases of phpBB and how it will affect style validation. The Londonvasion videos are now available as well, and David shares some of his recommendations for the best ones to watch if you don’t have time for all of them.

The MOD Team will be holding its third annual MOD Authors Convention next Saturday, August 30 in the #phpbb-mod IRC channel. We briefly describe what sessions will be presented at the convention on this episode, and will be providing complete live coverage of the convention on next week’s episode. And finally, PHP 4.4.9 has been released, signifying the last release of PHP 4 as the PHP Group drops support for it, plus PHP 5.3 is in early release candidate stage, and we discuss some of the development team’s recent changes in the Subversion repository in response to the new version of PHP.

We then bring you a tutorial on the ways you can optimze search engine optimization (SEO) in phpBB3, from our local SEO expert, David Lewis, whose blog post on SEO and phpBB3 just appeared on the phpBB.com Blog.

Links from the SEO Tutorial and Other Recommended SEO Tools:
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Analytics
SEO MOD
Advanced Meta Tags MOD
What are Google Sitemaps?

This week’s MOD and Style of the Week are the winners of the recent phpBBHacks.com Idol (which means that these two authors won over $1200 worth of prizes for their products!). The winning hack/MOD is Log Connections by Elglobo and the winning style is Soul City by Abble CoSa NoStrA.

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

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

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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.

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Episode Duration: 1:30:41
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

The first day of December means that the end of the year is staring straight at us as we plunge into the holiday season, but here at phpBB Weekly, we prefer to plunge into another tutorial.

After wishing happy birthday to phpBB team members Paul and Anon, we dissect through the release announcement of phpBB3 RC8, which was announced just hours before this episode. And, as usual, we ask the same question that everyone has been asking since May: will this RC go golden master, or is there yet another RC coming down Santa Claus lane?

This week also saw the execution of the MOD Database Cleanup. We take a look at why and how it was done, and learn a bit about Douglas’ early MODding life in the process.

Finally, David guides us through a mini-tutorial on registration settings and usergroups in phpBB3. For more information on usergroups in particular, check out the Group management and Permissions sections of the phpBB3 documentation, or check out the Custom usergroups Flash tutorial.

The MOD of the Week is Vote Manager for phpBB2 by soapergem, and the Style of the Week is Christmas for phpBB2 by CyberAlien.

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

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Episode Duration: 42:27
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Following a few weeks off for Douglas to go back to school and David to move house, we are back with another phpBB Weekly–and this time, David is leading off the show. Still, we have a great episode–despite an unexpected technical glitch that happened at the end of the show.

phpBB3 Release Candidate 5 has been released, and Acyd Burn has noted that it will hopefully be the last one before Olympus goes gold. But then, looking at the bug tracker, is there a chance that there will be another RC forthcoming?
This week, the MOD team asked for feedback on the new MOD Database. David summarizes a number of the comments that have been made thus far, and Douglas also offers some of his opinions.

The MOD of the Week is Welcome PM on First Login for phpBB3 by DualFusion, and the Style of the Week is Milky Way for phpBB3 by Mighty Gorgon. Plus, Handyman/GroovePlugs calls in to tell us about his Photo Gallery MOD for phpBB3.
If you have a MOD or Style that you’d like us to feature on a future episode, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag phpbbwmod or phpbbwstyle.

Finally, David mentions Skitch, a Mac-only application that he has been using to take screenshots and give MOD support with. Douglas wrote a review of Skitch which describes the program in more detail.

Thanks to the Tech Podcast Network for featuring phpBB Weekly, and to our sponsor Audible.com.

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Download MP3 Episode (21.5 MB)

Episode Duration: 53:41
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

A sarcastic thanks to a couple of phpBB team members (who shall be nameless) for correcting my mistake: #phpbb-mod is “hash phpbb-mod”, not “pound phpbb-mod”, even though most people in the US of A call it a “pound” and the rest of the world calls it a “hash”. From now on, I’m just calling it a “number sign”. *rolls eyes*

phpBB3 RC-2 has been released! The changelog for this release includes a whopping 113 fixes and changes. Plus, for the first time, upgrading with the built-in auto-updater is officially supported! Douglas tried out the auto-updater this morning, and sings its praises (as well as explaining how it works).

The GNU General Public License version 3 is final, but according to Meik “AcydBurn” Sievertsen, don’t expect phpBB to be using the new version. Douglas talks a bit about what this means, and also what it means in terms of licensing MODs.

It was announced today that submissions to the MOD Database are now open! First impression of the new forms: lots of bugs! However, paul999 has been moving quickly to fix as many bugs as he can today, so hopefully we can give you a better impression next week.

Finally, we talk a bit about the MOD Authors Convention that has been ongoing today, including critiquing it and offering suggestions for how we think it should be run. The convention continues today in #phpbb-mod until 8 PM Eastern time tonight!

The MOD of the Week is Collapsed Categories by Default by Wicher, and the Style of the Week is JM-Ignited by jmignited (view demo).

Finally, a shout out to phpBBCast, thanking them for promoting and covering phpBB Weekly episodes!