phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:23:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Paul Sohier (Paul), Sean (House, representing Lyndon Bertie Johnson), Tim (T50Webmaster, representing Sir Bertie Jr.), harmlessgoat22 (representing Barack O’Bertie), and Jordan (Hank the Cowdog, representing Albertie Einstein)

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The excitement in our President Bertie Election Contest is really heating up, now with four very strong, very active candidates, campaigning to be elected the next president of Bertie Mons. We invited the campaign managers of the candidates to join us on the show (since Berties can’t talk for themselves unless there’s a ventriloquist nearby) to participate in a presidential debate discussing each candidate’s plans for the future of Bertie Mons if they are elected.

Unfortunately, running an eight-way Skype call (with half of those participants happening via SkypeOut on the phone) caused technical difficulties, making Douglas impossible to be heard by anyone except David, so that wound up flubbing us up a bit. Nevertheless, we did have an interesting debate, with some, um, interesting conclusions. It will be up to SCOFF Media to detect any gaffes that the candidates made during this debate. Also, two of the candidates were forced to leave early towards the end; we will be posting their answers to the questions that they missed on the forum within the next day or so.

We also spent a little time discussing the phpBB MOD Team’s announcement about Junior Validators, a new group of potential MOD team members who will help out with validation and get trained for the future potential of becoming a full-fledged MOD validator. If you want to apply, make sure you’re familiar with the validation checklist, and fill out the application form.

We did not have a MOD/Style of the Week this week. However, please note that due to a number of countries changing their Daylight Savings Time during different times over the next few weeks, the time that phpBB Weekly is live in your local time zone may be changing. Beginning Saturday, November 8th, phpBB Weekly will begin airing at 17:00 UTC instead of 16:00 UTC, but that does mean that if you’re changing Daylight Savings Time this week instead of next week, our next episode will seem to be an hour earlier. Please double-check your local time so you know when our upcoming episodes will stream live.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts. Also, be sure to check out and vote in the 2008 Peoples Choice Podcast Awards!

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Episode Duration: 1:14:56
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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Man, it seems like we can’t seem to get our episodes recorded weekly, doesn’t it? Well, hopefully we’ll start to turn that bad habit around, starting with this episode.

We start on this episode with an update from our President Bertie Election Contest, in which two candidates, Lyndon Bertie Johnson and Sir Bertie Jr., have qualified for the ballot. The two-week campaign season has now begun, and the fun is happening now in the forum!

Speaking of new forums, the teams announced earlier this week the launch of a new Events and Meetings forum for people to organize local phpBB events and meetups around their locality.

Finally, for the main portion of our show, we turn to a blog post made this week by Support Team member iWisdom on handling support requests. We talk a bit about how Support Team members and community supporters go through the Support Forum to help users out with phpBB, discuss some of the more common support requests, and finally offer our tips for interested users who want to start contributing in the support forum.

The MOD of the Week is Topic Solved by tumba25, and the Style of the Week is Jedi Knights by Scott Stubblefield.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts. Also, be sure to check out and vote in the 2008 People’s Choice Podcast Awards; voting begins on Thursday!

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Episode Duration: 58:47
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We actually had the chance to carve out a shorter episode of phpBB Weekly today, thanks to the fact that the recent surge in phpBB news has finally started to calm down. We took more of a MOD author’s/developers angle on this episode of phpBB Weekly.

For starters, MODX 1.2.1 is out. This update mostly consists of an updated XSL which brings a long some nice user interface enhancements, and gives Douglas the opportunity to rediscover how much better MODX has become since the last time he looked at it seriously a year or two ago. (We won’t rewrite the changes in MODX 1.2.1 here when you can see them by clicking on the link.) Plus, David also talks about the possibility of introducing new action tags into MODX in the future and asks for feedback from MOD Authors on what they would like to see. More about MODX is available at the MODX Resource Centre, and you can also see a sample of MODX 1.2.1.

Then, we go into-depth with the new phpBB Code Wiki, and discuss in-depth the purposes of the wiki, what kind of articles can be found on the wiki, and most importantly, how anyone can help contribute to the wiki to make it better. Our discussion is based on a blog post about the wiki that David posted last week.

The MOD of the Week is Upcoming Birthday List by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is RedSilver 3 by jozomannen.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts.
Also, be sure to check out the People’s Choice Podcast Awards. Nominations are now open (through the end of the day on September 30), so if you really like phpBB Weekly, consider nominating us!

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Episode Duration: 1:41:40
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic)

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Now that we’ve emerged from Londonvasion, we came on this episode still a bit hungover from the excitement of the event, and a little but unsure of what to cover, so we decided to talk about some of the latest news from phpBB.com, not expecting that the episode would turn out to be as long as it did. We’re also joined on this episode by Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic), the Support Team leader.

The phpBB Discussion forums have been reorganized into one basic, general phpBB Discussion forum. We talk about what the change means and some of the reasons why it was implemented.

Then, there’s a new post on the phpBB.com Blog about template inheritance, a new feature coming in phpBB 3.0.3 based on some requests that originated at Londonvasion, and provides a way for style authors to simplify their styles by basing portions of them on other templates (like prosilver or subsilver2, for example). We talk a bit about template inheritance and describe how it will work.

Finally, for a topic that David requested, we discuss an ongoing discussion on the phpBB.com forums relating to the recent blog post on MOD Author feedback. We cover some of the issues that were brought up in this discussion and talk about how the MOD team should and better communicate with the MOD community, and some of the other documentation, ongoing projects, and tools that the MOD team is working on to help out MOD authors. The MOD team continues to accept feedback on the MOD Database and the validation process.

The MOD of the Week is RedBar3 by cherokee red, and the Style of the Week IS AeroBlue by jrolson.

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: 51:31
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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On this episode, we were expecting to be joined by Matt Mullenweg of WordPress/bbPress/Automattic, but he didn’t make it to the episode. Instead, this episode primarily is the culmination of our attempts to stall for time in the hopes that Matt might make it. As we pass the time, we have a Picky Correction of the Week segment to correct some of the comments that David made last week about the phpBB.com Styles Demo. David also talks briefly about the phpBB team’s upcoming involvement at LinuxTag, and about his plans to go to Joomla! Day Vancouver (more on that coming soon).

The MOD of the Week is Activity Stats MOD for phpBB3 by Highway of Life (and he also unveiled an exclusive premiere of what’s coming soon for the MOD), and the Style of the Week is Grand Theft Auto 4 for phpBB3 by John Olson.

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