phpBB Weekly

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (38.5 MB)

Episode Duration: 42:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

Michael and Douglas are joined on this episode by an old friend, Paul Sohier, who is now on a new team: the Support Team. For obvious reasons, Micheal is pleased and Douglas a bit confused, but Paul explains that he’s been working in support longer than he’s been working with MODs, and has been enjoying the change of pace.

The MOD Team, however, hasn’t been standing still. Once again, a new release to talk about: AutoMOD has hit RC-1. Exciting, you bet, particularly since EasyMOD never made it out of beta! While it’s not approved for fully-stable use yet, AutoMOD is about to hit the big time, and we’ll continue to follow its progress over the summer.

Micheal mentions that this old blog post simply identifies possibilities that injections could be created by MODs if the authors aren’t careful–it does NOT list actual injection vulnerabilities in phpBB3! Beware the naysayers!

And for our main topic of discussion, a new phpBB.com blog post discusses the Gumblar and Martuz trojans, two trojans which track down your FTP credentials and then use them to trash your site(s). We go over the blog post and discuss what these trojans do, how they work, and how to keep yourself safe (hint: keep your antivirus definitions up-to-date!). Also be sure to keep regular backups of your site so that if it does get hacked (it may not be your fault if your site IS hacked), you can completely wipe the hacked site and start fresh. If your site has been hacked, use Unmask Parasites to do a thorough check once you’ve cleaned house.

The MOD of the Week is Posting Template by eviL<3, and the Style of the Week is Prospace by spaceace.

Be sure to join us on Saturday, May 30th, for David Lewis’ return to phpBB Weekly and important announcements about this show, as well as Douglas’ post-graduation attempts to stay awake!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (82.9 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:12:25
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), and Michael Williams (mtotheikle)

Sponsor: Online meetings made easy. Try GotoMeeting FREE for 30 days! www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/

NOTE: These show notes do not contain as many links as we would like them to due to the phpBB.com outage. We will add more links where appropriate once phpBB.com is back.

Douglas was at a conference in San Francisco during this episode, and you know what that means: David brings on guest team members to help him out. He was joined on this episode by Paul of the MOD Team, Francis Lewis (Handyman) of the MOD Team and StarTrekGuide, and Michael Williams (mtotheikle), Development Leader of StarTrekGuide. And the topic of discussion? Our well-known favorite topic of discussion–MODs.

First off, MODX 1.2.2 and AutoMOD 1.0.0 beta2 have been simultaneously released. MODX 1.2.2 mainly contains a number of XSL fixes and tweaks, and AutoMOD 1.0.0 beta2 includes a few new features and a number of bugfixes. The four of them also discuss some of their favorite MODs, take a look at some of the biggest MODs for phpBB3 and phpBB2, and chat about how MODding has evolved from phpBB2 to phpBB3.

February 1st marked the last day that the Development Team would release security patches for phpBB2, thus ending any and all support for phpBB2. It also marked the last day that any phpBB2 submissions would be accepted into the MODs Database. We talk about the ending of security patches as well as discuss how long it would take for very large boards to upgrade from phpBB2 to phpBB3. Finally, they also discuss the recent blog post on phpBB.com discussing why team members don’t give private support to users.

Last week’s poll question, “If you could add one more feature to the new WhiteHouse.gov website, what would it be?”, is still open and will run through Saturday, February 7. So go vote!
The MOD of the Week is Mods Database by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is Hermes by CyberAlien.

Be sure to join us next week when we will have a special edition phpBB Weekly episode with featured discussion of the ongoing phpBB.com outage, joined by members of the phpBB teams who have been busy this week rebuilding the site.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (40.4 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:10:35
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

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

Londonvasion is now officially over (can you believe it?), and to wrap-up the big event, we bring on a great panel of team members to tell us all about their experiences at the conference. MOD Team Member and phpBB Weekly Co-Host David Lewis (Highway of Life), Support Team Member and Londonvasion Coordinator Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty), and MOD Team Member and phpBB Team-Slapper Paul Sohier (Paul) join us for a delightfully fun and interesting episode as we look back on the accomplishments made in order to pull off the first-ever real-life gathering of the phpBB team members. We also look ahead at what 2009 will possibly bring. Plus, keep your eyes open for the videos from Londonvasion which will be coming out later this week, hopefully.

Douglas also gives us another update at the phpBBHacks.com Idol where Round 2 of voting is now open.

Additional Links Mentioned in the Episode:
Dave Rathbun’s Londonvasion Recaps
phpBB.com Announcement: Beyond Londonvasion
phpBB.com Blog Post: Things We Took from London
Londonvasion Central
David’s Londonvasion Photos
Yuriy’s Bertie Lawyers
The Magnificent Seven Touring London
Paul on the Bus
Yuriy’s Bertie Collection (mentioned in the after-show)

The MOD of the Week is Highlight from Search Engine by joebert, and the Style of the Week is Dark Fantasy by Daniel Exe.

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

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (35.3 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:01:37
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life), Paul Sohier (Paul), and Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic)

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

Is your website secure? What if you learned that half a million websites have been hacked via SQL Injections just since last January? On this episode, David Lewis is joined by Paul (of the MODs Team) and Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic, Support Team Leader), in which they discuss how site owners can be aware of SQL injection vulnerabilities, how they can prevent vulnerabilities in their own site, and how you can identify possible SQL injections within MODs that you download. And for MOD authors out there, they discuss the phpBB3 framework and how you can use it to prevent SQL injections in MODs.

Plus, have you ever run phpBB3 and made a change to your site, but nothing changed? That’s probably due to phpBB3′s caching of content, templates, and themes. David and the others discuss how to properly purge the cache with phpBB3, as well as discussing the differences between the different kinds of cached content.

And of course, Londonvasion is getting ever-closer, and so we’ve got your latest fix on Londonvasion news right here, as usual. Stay tuned as we finalize phpBB Weekly’s own Londonvasion plans over the next few weeks; we’ll be keeping you posted.

The MOD of the Week is Purge cache from any page for phpBB3 by Elglobo, and the Style of the Week is Day Song for phpBB3 by APT92.

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

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (27.3 MB)

Episode Duration: 47:40
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Paul Sohier (Paul)

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

Douglas was away on a tour of Beijing, China with his school during this episode (which partially explains why this episode was somewhat late in its release), so David was joined on this episode by Paul (of the MOD team) to go through the latest flurry of phpBB news.

In this episode, David and Paul began by talking about the release of MODX 1.2.0, covering the changes and the benefits that the new version provides to the MODding community, as well as the much much easier MOD packaging policies. In addition, the Styles Database and Demo were officially opened, meaning that phpBB3 styles submissions will finally start to be validated! Yay!

They also recap on BertieZilla’s experiences at LinuxTag Berlin, where the phpBB guys shared a booth with Joomla! and gave out gummy-Berties. And, speaking of Berties, it looks like Bertie 3.0 is about to be shipped!

Finally, David, Francis, and two other team members will be at Joomla!Day Vancouver on June 14th, and David gives a preview of what to expect.

The MOD of the Week is Display user’s age in viewtopic for phpBB3 by EY, and the Style of the Week is ComicBook for phpBB3 by thecharmed01.

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