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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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Sponsor: Try GotoMeeting free for 30 days! For this special offer, visit www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/.

Douglas was off taking a test during this episode, so he couldn’t make it, but then again, David forgot that it was Saturday, which is why the live stream of phpBB Weekly never happened! Whoops. Anyway, David managed to grab together a couple of team members to talk to for what could almost pass as another episode of the Official phpBB Podcast. So, on this episode, he’s joined by Paul Sohier (of the MOD Team), Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty of the Support Team), and Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic, Support Team Leader).

Anyway, this past week, the inevitable phpBB 3.0.1 was released featuring dozens of bugfixes, including two security-related fixes. As this marks the first non-RC-related update to phpBB3, they spend a little bit of time reviewing the process for updating from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1 and the importance of keeping your boards up-to-date. In addition, they discuss other common support issues with upgrading and how upgrading relates to the importance of keeping core code changes in MODs down to a minimum for compatibility.

They then discuss the recent alpha release of a MOD by naderman (of the Development Team) of the Sphinx Search Plugin for phpBB. Sphinx is a free open-source SQL fulltext search engine that is now another option that you can use for indexing your board’s content on your search page, and will quite possibly be showing up in phpBB 3.2 “Ascraeus.”

Yuriy gives us a quick update on the latest Londonvasion details (and by the way, you should also check out phpBB Weekly’s latest Londonvasion plans), and David tells us about Star Trek Guide’s new MOD Manager, as well as how you can obtain the “Borg Invasion” style that was used for STG’s recent April Fools joke.

No MOD or Style of the Week was selected this week, but we promise that we will make up for lost time next week and get back into the MODs and Styles selections.

Technical Note: Apologies for the background sounds in this episode–David discovered after the fact that he forgot to turn off his Skype sound effects!

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