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 AAC Episode (43.2 MB) | Download MP3 Episode (84.2 MB)
Download Episode Chat Log Sorry, somehow got deleted from the server.

Episode Duration: 1:27:42
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

Our penultimate episode of 2009 was also Douglas’ last episode of 2009 coming from Washington, DC. David and Douglas actually spent a lot of time at the beginning comparing notes about finals, the weather, Christmas trees, etc. Douglas also offered an early review of Google Chrome for Mac, and placates the many demands from everyone in the #startrekguide IRC channel who wanted it mentioned that SyntaxError90 is the newest member of the MOD team.

Our main topic of discussion on this episode takes a look at a question posed this week in the phpBB Discussion forum asking if phpBB is falling behind, to which we share our thoughts. We also take a look at some early (and unconfirmed) details about phpBB4 that appeared on the phpBB Development Wiki and discuss what they would mean for the potential long-term future of phpBB.

Finally, we recognize the winners of the 2009 phpBBHacks.com Awards, including the MOD and Style winners, which are our MOD and Style of the Week. The MOD of the Week is Censor Block by Thoul, and the Style of the Week is 1impression by gokin.

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 (80.7 MB) | Download Episode Chat Log

Episode Duration: 1:28:07
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty)

Okay, maybe the title of this episode overstates it just a little bit, but there’s no doubt that this past week’s announcement of some major phpBB development changes has significant and far-reaching impacts to the phpBB community, which will significantly affect how future phpBB releases are managed and supported. Most importantly, these changes help to clarify the groundwork for Ascraeus (which will now be phpBB 3.1, not 3.2), subsequent releases after Ascraeus, and the eventual phpBB4 coming a few years down the road. Probably most significant, the new roadmap will allow new features (that don’t require a significant rewrite of the phpBB core code) to be brought in to phpBB 3.x sooner than has been the habit with prior releases of phpBB.

On this episode, we go into very hefty detail about both the short-term and long-term impacts of these changes to phpBB’s release strategy, and of course, we’ll be keeping a very close eye going forward as these changes start to become implemented with future phpBB releases.

We also spent a bit of time discussing the fun that took place at the recent phpBB Developer Meeting in Cologne, Germany. Not only is it clear that Bertie had a good time, but a lot of discussion took place, some decisions were made (with the aforementioned development changes likely being one of them), and some touring of the city also took place. We also discussed a bit about the next official phpBB event, which will likely be held in New York City sometime in 2010 (“Libertyvasion”), though obviously it may be a few more months before details come out from the teams.

Finally, we briefly covered a few highlights from some recent commits to the Subversion repository for 3.0.6 (subscribe to the SVN mailing list). There are even more new features coming in 3.0.6 now, such as the ability to report private messages and the ability for a moderator to delete all unread private messages in a user’s outbox (anti-spam measure).

The MOD of the Week is Static Pages by ameeck, and the Style of the Week is Quilting ‘n’ Sewing by billstur.

Be to join us on next week’s episode, when Tom Beddard (subBlue) will join us as our special guest!