phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:09:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

phpBB Weekly is back, Douglas is on a normal computer, and all is right with the world!

We cover a lot of ground on this episode. Douglas recaps our interest to find a phpBB Weekly Clerk (Editor’s Note: we’ve now found one!), voting for the CAPTCHA Plugin Competition begins, and a few new members join the phpBB teams.

In addition, we spend some time discussing a post made on phpBB.com concerning accessibility issues with CAPTCHA plugins, particularly for the visually impaired. We also look at the MOD team’s recent blog post on the MOD Validation workflow, and ponder why “Insta-Deny” is a trademarked term. Also, David tells us a bit about the upcoming new StarTrekGuide MOD Manager, which they are currently soliciting feedback on.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question, which goes until Saturday 10/31 (a week longer than indicated on the podcast), is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” Cast your vote here!

The MOD of the Week is Forum SEO by stokerpiller, and the Style of the Week is Gerbang Kasih by napy8gen.

Join us on Saturday when we’ll continue our discussion about CAPTCHA accessibility with special guest Bernard Maldonado of Solona!

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Episode Duration: 1:21:43
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), Cullen Walsh (Brainy), and Samuel Thompson (SyntaxError90)

We hit this episode of phpBB Weekly coming right off of the excitement from OSCONvasion (all except Micheal, who couldn’t make it). Despite the fact that it was just a small meetup, most of which was spent touring the OSCON Expo Hall and downtown San Jose, it was still a lot of fun, with a lot of good discussions that took place. And it does go down as the first-ever phpBB meetup event in North America, after all. Douglas, Cullen, and Sam (who were all there) spent the first half hour of this episode recapping the various things we did and discussed at OSCONvasion. Be sure to follow the OSCONvasion tag on Flickr to see some of the great pictures we took around OSCON. And of course, audio from our live session is on phpBB Weekly #115, and video will be posted this week by AdamR.

It was announced just a few hours before this show that UMIL 1.0.0 Gold was released. The Unified MODs Install Library (UMIL) truly is the missing tool to allow actions like making database table changes, adding permissions, config options, or modules to be done automatically, and now that it’s fully stable, MOD authors and MOD installers can take full advantage of it.

Finally, the MOD Team has announced a Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition. This contest, which will help make a broad and diverse number of CAPTCHA plugins available for download and install at the launch of phpBB 3.0.6, offers free phpBB3 Berties to the best CAPTCHA plugins developed by MOD authors and submitted beginning in late August. The first submitted CAPTCHA plugin to be approved to the MOD Database will automatically receive a Bertie, plus a Bertie will be awarded to the team’s favorite CAPTCHA plugin and another to the favorite CAPTCHA plugin voted on by the community-at-large. We also take a look at the recently-revealed details of the default CAPTCHA plugins coming in 3.0.6, and go over what you need to know to build your own CAPTCHA plugin.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Vote in the poll on the sidebar at right; the poll ends on August 8th.

The MOD of the Week is Show First Post Only to Guest by Primy, and the Style of the Week is jblue by jbones.

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Episode Duration: 1:00:21
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

Again, sorry about the late release on this one; it’s been near-impossible to find a chance to get this episode edited! In our defense though, phpBB 3.0.5 STILL hasn’t been released, even though we talked about it on this episode eleven days ago!

On this episode, due to a late start, we wound up being joined again by phpBB Support Team Leader Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty) alongside Micheal Cottingham and Douglas Bell. Having missed out of two weeks’ worth of episodes, we primarily spend this episode recapping on a bit of phpBB news.

UMIL’s third release candidate is out, and so we spend a little bit of time recapping UMIL and its future importance for phpBB3 MOD authors. We also note that RC-1 of phpBB 3.0.5 has been released to the QA Team for testing, which contains a number of new features and changes and lots of bugfixes. (It has, after all, been more than five months in the making.) It should be released on phpBB.com fairly soon.

Finally, the MOD Team announced that they have released policies for MOD validation which contains details on what they look for during validation, insta-deny/repackage policies, etc. All MOD authors planning on submitting to the MODs Database should read these policies carefully, as following this policies will help you avoid having your MOD be denied!

Our last Poll Question of the Week was “What’s the most importance advice to give to a phpBB Supporter?” The top answer was “No matter what your signature says, you can kiss the sanctity of your PM box goodbye” with 5 votes (42%). Next up was “If someone actually figures out that they should use the Support Request Template, then they deserve premium service” with 4 votes (33%). Next up was “Let the Support Team deal with idiots. That’s where they get their fun.” with 2 votes (17%). And last was “Speak softly and carry a big stick” with 1 vote (8%). Receiving no votes was “Never tell people to ‘search,’ only to ‘follow directions.’”

The MOD of the Week is phpBB Mood Swings by Xanta Media, and the Style of the Week is SkyLineBlue by MartectX.

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Episode Duration: 1:14:35
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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David had snow on the brain during this pre-Christmas/holiday episode of phpBB Weekly, though with the ridiculous amount of snow that eastern Washington state has been receiving (as evidenced on David’s webcam), who could blame him. And with free snow giveaways being advertised on the SCOFF News Report, which we couldn’t help but replay during this episode, it’s easy to imagine yourself in the midst of the insanity of the Northwestern Winter Wonderland. Throw in the fact that Douglas has figured out David’s sound effects method and you’re in for one crazy holiday fun-fest.

But this episode wasn’t all fun-and-games. We did review the list of phpBBHacks.com Awards winners and noted their accomplishments. Congrats to all of the winners. Plus, David tells us about UMIL (the Unified MOD Installation Library) which was recently previewed by the MOD Team as a way for MOD authors and MOD installers to automate the process of installing modules and performing other functions necessary to the initial installation of a MOD. David describes what UMIL can do, how it works, and its current and possible future relationship with AutoMOD (the new official name for Blinky).

The MOD of the Week is Guess Timezone 2 by TerraFrost, and the Style of the Week is DirtyBoard2.0 by abble. Additionally, the opening music is Flu Ride – Bob Rivers and the closing music is Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer – Elmo & Patsy.

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays for all of us at phpBB Weekly. Thank you so much for continuing to listen to our show and making this a worthwhile venture for us. Peace & blessings to your and your family during this season and through the new year.

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: 1:23:15
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We had a lot of things to be happy about on this episode of phpBB Weekly: not only was there a large amount of news for us to cover, but it was the one-year anniversary of the release of phpBB 3.0.0 Gold, which put us in an excited mood (enough to make a few people in the chat room question us about whether or not we were sober).

In a somewhat surprising move, phpBB 3.0.4 was released on Friday, exactly one month after the release of 3.0.3, marking a major shift change as the Development Team begins focusing on making subsequent revisions of phpBB3 less, um, “huge” than 3.0.3 was. We cover the fixes, changes, and the one new feature in-depth, as usual.

David gives a grand welcome to this week’s new team members: two more Support Team members, and one new MOD Team member who was promoted from the Junior Validators Team. David also gives us a bit of an update on how the Junior Validators have been doing and a glimpse of where the idea will be heading.

Earlier this week, Meik (AcydBurn) that PHP 5.2.7 posed a security risk for phpBB2, due to an issue that PHP 5.2.7 caused with “magic_quotes_gpc.” We take a look at this risk in more detail, including why this affected phpBB2 but not phpBB3, and we also discuss why PHP 5.2.7 was retracted in the first place.

Finally, voting in the phpBBHacks.com 2008 Awards is almost over, so we take a look at the MODs/hacks, styles/templates, phpBB boards, and their authors up for the award.

The MOD of the Week is Annual Stars by eviL<3, and the Style of the Week is MG Xmas by Mighty Gorgon.

In honor of one of David’s favorite songs (as we discovered midway through this episode), the closing music is Black Horse and the Cherry Tree — KT Tunstall.

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