phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:53:23
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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Well, we have come to the end of another year and just about closed out our second season of phpBB Weekly, and on this episode, we take a look back at how the phpBB project, teams, and community have evolved in the past year. We discuss all of the major announcements of the year and their lasting impact, as well as mention some of the best times we’ve had on this podcast over the past year, make some predictions for 2009, and we discuss what we think the accomplishments of this year have meant for phpBB overall. All of the announcements mentioned can be found in the phpBB.com Announcements forum.

David did also give us the scoop on the announcement that AutoMOD 1.0.0 beta 1 was released. We discussed how AutoMOD actually works and how to use it (which I don’t think we’ve actually covered before), and Douglas compares AutoMOD to EasyMOD for phpBB2 to look at their similarities and differences.

Additional AutoMOD Links Mentioned in this Episode:
AutoMOD
AutoMOD Support Forum
Installing AutoMOD
Installing MODs with AutoMOD
Known Issues with AutoMOD 1.0.0 beta1

Finally, Douglas closes out the show by thanking everyone who contributed to phpBB Weekly in the past year and helped make this show possible. Be sure to check back here on Wednesday, December 31st, when we will release a phpBB Weekly’s Best of 2008 clipshow episode featuring our best moments from this past year. Then, check back on Thursday, January 1st, when we will launch our brand new (and totally gorgeous) website and album artwork! You won’t want to miss it.

The MOD of the Week is Skype Mod by RMcGirr83 and the Style of the Week is Maxthon by Culprit.

Here’s wishing everyone a happy and healthy new year!

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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: 1:18:23
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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News from the phpBB front has been somewhat limited recently, so we dug deep into our coffers to uncover some things to chat about on this “potpourri”-style episode.

David first brings up that phpBB.com has now been enhanced with some of the new features from the recently-released phpBB 3.0.3. New users on phpBB.com will now have their first post send to the moderation queue for approval, but once they have one approved post, they will then have free access to go on posting like normal. The teams are hoping that this will allow them to catch spammers more easily and ban them on sight. Speaking of banning, David also shares how much he loves the new one-click ban feature, making it possible for administrators to ban users straight from their profile.

David and Douglas than discuss a question which has been often brought up recently: “Will phpBB write/release a book?” Well, as is the case with most things from the teams, there’s no definite answer, but David and Douglas both have their own separate opinions on the subject, which they spend some time discussing.

Finally, David and Douglas talk a bit about the new request class that Nils Aderman (naderman) committed to the Ascraeus SVN repository last week, which brings a number of enhancements to phpBB3’s request_var() function, and what it means for MOD authors. They then step back and go over the importance of securing user-submitted variables in PHP in order to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities, which request_var() makes very simple for phpBB3 MOD authors. As Nils quoted in his commit log,

“Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.”

The MOD of the Week is Smilie Creator by Dr.Death, and the Style of the Week is proChristmas by topdown. If you have any suggestions for MODs or Styles to highlight on our show (particularly any holiday-themed styles), please share them with us!

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: 58:47
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We actually had the chance to carve out a shorter episode of phpBB Weekly today, thanks to the fact that the recent surge in phpBB news has finally started to calm down. We took more of a MOD author’s/developers angle on this episode of phpBB Weekly.

For starters, MODX 1.2.1 is out. This update mostly consists of an updated XSL which brings a long some nice user interface enhancements, and gives Douglas the opportunity to rediscover how much better MODX has become since the last time he looked at it seriously a year or two ago. (We won’t rewrite the changes in MODX 1.2.1 here when you can see them by clicking on the link.) Plus, David also talks about the possibility of introducing new action tags into MODX in the future and asks for feedback from MOD Authors on what they would like to see. More about MODX is available at the MODX Resource Centre, and you can also see a sample of MODX 1.2.1.

Then, we go into-depth with the new phpBB Code Wiki, and discuss in-depth the purposes of the wiki, what kind of articles can be found on the wiki, and most importantly, how anyone can help contribute to the wiki to make it better. Our discussion is based on a blog post about the wiki that David posted last week.

The MOD of the Week is Upcoming Birthday List by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is RedSilver 3 by jozomannen.

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 the People’s Choice Podcast Awards. Nominations are now open (through the end of the day on September 30), so if you really like phpBB Weekly, consider nominating us!

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Episode Duration: 1:27:33
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

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The news media is busy traveling from one convention in Denver to another in St. Paul, and that means that they’re all ignoring the most important convention of all: the 2008 phpBB MOD Authors Convention! Well, we didn’t, and our panel of experts (Douglas, David, and Paul) report live from the MOD Authors Convention, providing their analysis of the events and presentations of the convention, as well as wondering why the MOD team didn’t nominate someone to run for president.

Anyway, we did discuss the various sessions at the MOD Authors Convention and talk about some of the highlights that were discussed. For example, in the “future of MODding” session, there was a certain amount of discussion about the possibility of introducing “Junior Validators” into the validation process. If this went forward, this would be like allowing certain users to be able to participate in the “testing” phase of validation, but not the line-by-line/security/etc. phases, and could also serve as a way for the MOD team to evaluate possible new additions to the team.

We also recapped the announcement that Paul hinted about last week, which was that the MOD team’s MOD pre-validator (MPV) tool is now publicly available. We discuss MPV in detail, including how it works and how it compares to the previous mEAL tool that was chiefly written by David Smith (smithy_dll).

There was also discussion at the convention about the phpBB Wiki (which was formally announced towards the end of the day), which will serve as the primary source of development, MODding, and (possibly) styling documentation for phpBB, and like all wikis will be user-contributable. We talked a bit more about the Wiki and how the MOD team’s goal of streamlining its documentation (we’ve talked about this a few times recently) ties into this new announcement.

And of course, this episode took place during the second “phpBB3 MODding & Best Practices” session, which was supposed to be David’s session, except he kinda played hooky from that so he could join in on this episode. However, he does summarize the main points from his session for us, answers a few questions from us, and fields requests from our chat room and from the #phpbb-mod channel to publish his session as a book.

Additional links mentioned in this episode:
MAMP/MAMP Pro
Wiki article: Creating Modules for phpBB3
Wiki article: Adding Modules to phpBB3

And finally, we ran out of time to mention it on this episode, but you should really check out the recent blog post on CAPTCHAs in phpBB, which gives a very interesting look at the evolution of phpBB’s CAPTCHA (aka “visual confirmation image”) and some of the inherent problems with CAPTCHAs and other anti-spambot security techniques.

The MOD of the Week is Tabulated Survey at Topic Head by asinshesq, and the Style of the Week is prosilver Special Edition by Styles Robot (or, more accurately, the phpBB.com Styles Team).

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