phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 50:34
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life), Paul Sohier (Paul), Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty), Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic)

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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.

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.

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Episode Duration: 42:37
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Paul Sohier (Paul)

On this episode, David is joined by Paul (MOD Team Member), as they talk about the Moderator Control Panel in phpBB3. They cover the various controls and settings available for moderation; including dealing with reports; the moderation queue for posts and topics; moving, splitting, and merging topics; checking the IPs of users; user notes; and warnings.

In addition, they take the opportunity to talk a bit about the international versions of phpBB.

The MOD of the Week is Soft Delete for phpBB3 by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is X-Treme Style for phpBB3 by jimaniac.

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: 1:05:20
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life), Paul Sohier (Paul), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

Douglas missed this episode because his return flight from Long Beach the day before suffered a seven hour delay (read more if you’re interested), effectively turning it into a red eye flight, so he slept in during this episode. TalkShoe apparently wasn’t being cooperative, but in a fairly Official Podcast-esque episode of phpBB Weekly, he is joined via a Skype conference call by phpBB team members Paul and Techie-Micheal.

This episode, like about a third of our episodes to date, is all about MODs. David, Paul, and Micheal talk extensively about MOD Development, the MOD Database, and other things MOD authors may want to know. Finally, they talk a bit about the tribulations of giving support for boards with MODs on them, and what the Support Team can and cannot do to help you when a MODded board needs help.

The MOD of the Week is Prime Memberlist Filter for phpBB3 by primehalo, and the Style of the Week is Brushed Metal for phpBB3 by Robin Huurman.

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: 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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Download MP3 Episode (45.1 MB)

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.