I don’t know if you’ve been by our phpBB Weekly forum recently, but a lot has been happening there recently. David and I have been discussing the idea of making phpBB Weekly’s branding a little more “Olympusy”–that is, more in tune with the phpBB3 artwork. While I have been and continue to remain to this day a big fan of the phpBB2 “hut” image that graced the phpBB.com website until March 2007, times have changed, people have upgraded, and the upcoming “end of life” of phpBB2 has shown us that it’s time that we start getting caught up.

David has designed a cool new album artwork proposal which we’re currently seeking feedback on and are considering adopting sometime in the next month or two. However, we’re also hoping to adopt a new theme for our phpBBWeekly.net website that reflects the new artwork but still has some originality. Star Trek Guide member Midnight Phoenix is custom-designing a brand new WordPress theme just for us (and donating his services as well, by the way), but he’d be interested in hearing your suggestions, particularly since David and myself only have a very short wishlist. If you’d like to contribute your comments and participate, check out the discussion topic on our forum!

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On this very special episode of phpBB Weekly, we are joined by Johan Janssens, the Project Manager and Lead Developer of Joomla! Johan tells us a bit about the Joomla! project, how and why phpBB and Joomla! are collaborating together, and about how the upcoming RokBridge integration between Joomla! 1.5 and phpBB3 will work. David also talks a bit about how the Joomla! integration prompted the addition of the hooks/plugins system for phpBB3, and how it opens up the possibility for many other third-party integrations with phpBB.

But, of course, we can’t forget the other big news of the week. phpBB 3.0.0 “Olympus”, dubbed the “gold release”, was published on December 13th at 17:00 GMT (coincidentally, the same time of day that phpBB Weekly is recorded live). We take a final look back at the countdown to the release, look at the press coverage of the phpBB3 release, and just reminisce and marvel at the five year process. Plus, we examine what’s next for the developers, the teams, an the community as we look down the road ahead.

Additional links mentioned:
Thoughts on Preventing a 2013 Release of phpBB 3.2
phpBB3 Digg Article
Joomla! Roadmap/Development Strategy
Questions for Johan Janssens - phpBB Weekly forum

The MOD of the Week is phpBB3 Error Logging Tool for phpBB3 by Highway of Life, and the Style of the Week is proChristmas for phpBB3 by topdown.

The intro to the episode is David’s Gold Day Prize Video, narrated by our very own illustrious Douglas Bell.

There will not be a live episode next week as Douglas and David will be doing holiday activities with our families, but there will be a Best Of 2007 episode published on Sunday, December 23rd. Feel free to share your favorite moments for the Best Of episode. Douglas will return on December 29th for a Year 2007 Wrap-Up episode, and David will return with Douglas on January 5th.

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