phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 49:37
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Francis Lewis (GroovePlugs/Handyman)

For the first time, Douglas steps off of the air on a phpBB Weekly episode and lets David take the helm. It’s probably risky, particularly after our excellent episode last week, but Coastal Cleanup Day in the San Francisco Bay Area and Douglas once again goes to do his part this year.

Meanwhile, David spends some time talking about how phpBB3 parses styles and how you can use certain styles only within specific forums in phpBB3. He then moves on to talk a bit about how you can integrate BBCode throughout your site and in your MODs, and then he talks a bit about how the module system works and whether or not a MOD should use it or not.

The next release (either RC-6 or final) of phpBB3 will include a new hooks functionality and a new DBAL tool, and what will this mean for MOD authors and how can they be implemented? This also means that MOD authors no longer have any excuse to not support all 8 DBMS types supported in phpBB3.

And for our weekly dose of MOD Team news, we talk a bit about MOD validation on phpBB.com and its importance, and we welcome Paul back on the MOD Team and also welcome Esmond Poynton (poyntesm) as the newest member of the MOD Team!

The MOD of the Week is ACP Add User MOD for phpBB3 by Highway of Life (that’s self-promotion for you!), and the Style of the Week is nDesign v2 for phpBB3 by Midnight Phoenix.

Additional links mentioned:
phpBB MODs Documentation
Geoffreak’s phpBB3 MODX Script Generator

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Episode Duration: 1:18:53
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

This episode turned out to be a packed episode as we added a number of last-minute topics right before the show. We ended up having an unexpected interview with Paul Sohier, MOD Team Member, and we chatted with him a little bit about the MOD/Style Databases (which he’s responsible for designing) and MOD validation.

Furthermore, the PHP teams have announced that they will be formally discontinuing PHP 4 after this year (and security fixes after 2008-08-08). We chat about whether or not this is a good idea and what this means for phpBB, particularly phpBB2, which is not even officially supported under PHP 5. Then, David and I debate whether or not the phpBB teams should advance phpBB2 a bit after the final release of phpBB3, and on whether or not it’s important for the teams to maintain a more “lite” version of phpBB alongside the more complete and more complex phpBB3.

Finally, David talks about the new concept of modules in phpBB3 and what it means for MOD authors and administrators, along with a basic tutorial on how to build modules in phpBB3 and install them. For more info on modules, check out the modules documentation.

The MOD of the Week is Disable Post Editing After X Hours by Throckmorton, and the Style of the Week is RedSilver by jozomannen. Both run on phpBB2. If you want to recommend a MOD or Style (great opportunity here for self-promotion!), bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

Just a note that we will be taking another 2-week intermission from live shows. We will be recording an episode #028 off of TalkShoe sometime during the next few weeks, followed by #029 back on TalkShoe on Saturday, September 1st. Also, thanks again to our sponsor, Audible.com.