phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:28:46
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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Don’t ask why David has this pipe dream of a short episode of phpBB Weekly, but this episode sure didn’t turn out to be what he was looking for. Which might be a good thing. While we did ramble off of our expected script a bit, we had a pretty good, in-depth discussion in the middle of the show.

phpBB 3.0.2 has been released, and we discuss what’s new and the various bugs that have been fixed, along with a few minor new features.

We then go into a bit of a discussion about the duties that the phpBB MOD team has and discuss a bit about their documentation and how their phpBB3 MODding documentation differs a bit from the docs that they had back when phpBB2 MODding was the “in” thing.

Also, the phpBB Blog has been unveiled as a new way to bridge the gap between the team members and the community, as well as a partial replacement for the now-dormant Official phpBB Podcast, and David leads us in a short game of musical chairs. You’ll just have to find out what that menas for yourself.

Finally, in our Londonvasion Update (and yes, we remembered the jingle this time), David shares what his personal travel itinerary will be in London, and we share our finalized Londonvasion plans and Douglas talks about Londonvasion Central.

There is no MOD or Style of the Week this week.

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

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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.

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Episode Duration: 1:26:52
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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On this non-live episode of phpBB Weekly, David and Douglas go through a bunch of old news, recapping it and covering some new developments. We start by briefly mentioning the new phpBB Weekly theme/album artwork project that is in progress right now, and invite anyone who’s interested to participate.

You can now register for Londonvasion, which opened up a few weeks ago, along with a number of other details that Yuriy made available. We also (once again) do a recap on our latest plans for Londonvasion coverage, as well as answer a few questions that we’ve heard about it.

David gives us a recap on the MOD Team’s Package Manager (Blinky). In doing so, he also unveils some of the new features in the upcoming release of the MODX 1.2 spec for the first time.

Douglas and David then chat a bit about Sphinx for phpBB, another project in the phpBB Code Forge that is being put together by Development Team member Nils Adermann (naderman). Sphinx is an SQL full-text search engine that is already being used on phpBB.com and will likely be made available as an additional search plugin for a future release of phpBB3.

David then reveals that the new phpBB3 Styles Database has finally been completed and has been opened up! (The new Styles Demo only has one style in it at the moment: subsilver2.) You can now expect to start seeing styles hopefully be added to the database, and we’ll certainly be keeping our eyes open on there. We also speculate over whether or not there will end up being a Styles Demo for phpBB2 as well, but that question has yet to be answered…

And finally, we do a recap from our vBulletin Weekly April Fools joke by chatting about the recent vBulletin 3.7, which is virtually your own Facebook in a box. But since Jelsoft really knows the right way to celebrate a new release, we also take some time to discuss their simultaneous announcements of immediate end-of-life for vBulletin 3.0 and 3.5, along with end-of-life in six months for vBulletin 3.6; as well as unprecedented licensing changes (aka price increases) for vBulletin licenses. If you thought that phpBB’s end of life announcement was sudden, you probably won’t think that anymore!

The MOD of the Week is Forum Sponsor for phpBB3 by EXreaction, and the Style of the Week is VidoStyle for phpBB3 by [urban] & Shadow_One.

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

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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Download MP3 Episode (33.2 MB)

Episode Duration: 58:02
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Francis Lewis (Handyman)

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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.