phpBB Weekly

Hello phpBB Weekly listeners,

Those of you who have seen our TalkShoe page recently have noticed that we have a very exciting month of May planned (as far as phpBB Weekly episodes are concerned), and so I thought I’d take the opportunity to sum up what’s on the agenda for the next few weeks.

First of all, as you’ve noticed, there will be no episode on Saturday, May 3rd. The reason for this is partially because Douglas is out of town, and also because he has been (and continues to be) busy prepping for AP exams at school, and this will neither give him the opportunity to be at an episode of phpBB Weekly nor to be able to edit it, so we’re just going to give him the week off. (Actually, he’s already out of town–this post was scheduled a week ago!)

Patrick O’Keefe (who was on episode #050 on February 9th) will be joining us again on May 10th for phpBB Weekly #061. His new book, Managing Online Forums, was recently released (Douglas just reviewed it on his blog, too), and so he will be joining David and Douglas to talk about his excellent new book in detail. Plus, we will be doing the prize giveaway for the listener survey that we launched back in March, so this will be an episode that you will want to be here for. (By the way, you still have time to fill out the listener survey–we’ve only gotten about 30 responses so far, so hie thee hence and add yourself to the lot!)

David will be doing another solo episode on May 17th (Douglas has to present a workshop that day) and so we will announce the topic of discussion at that time.

On May 24th (episode #063), we will be joined by Matt Mullenweg, the founder and “Chief BBQ Taste Tester” of Automattic, the people who produce the very popular WordPress blogging software, and also produce the up-and-coming bbPress forums software. We’ll break away from phpBB a bit on this episode to chat with Matt about bbPress and the very different philosophy that it utilizes for BB-based communities, as well as learn about some of the experiences that Automattic has had building WordPress and bbPress as open-source programs, comparing them a bit with phpBB’s open source life. It should be an interesting episode.

Finally, rounding out the month of May, we will be joined on episode #064 (May 31st) by the hosts of the recently-created phpBBIreland podcast. They’ll join us to talk a bit about their new show, as well as the phpBBIreland.com community and the Stargate Portal, a portal for phpBB3 that they develop.

Anyway, we’re certainly looking forward to some exciting episodes this month, and we hope that you’ll join us!

February, the shortest month of the year, is almost upon us, and so I wanted to fill you in on our plans for the next couple of episodes here on phpBB Weekly to give you a heads up on what we’re going to be covering.

This Saturday, February 2nd, is not only Groundhog Day (my most favorite obscure holiday of the year), but David has promised me that he will be back on phpBB Weekly! Also, now that the fanfare of the Olympus release has calmed down a bit, we are going to do our first phpBB tutorial in about two months. We will be focusing on BBCode. I have myself done some research on the history and purpose of BBCode, along with a bit on how BBCode worked in phpBB2. Then David will fill us in on what’s new with BBCode in phpBB3, including an overview of how to use the Custom BBCode maker in phpBB3, and we’ll see if it’s possible for us to get some more info on what to expect from the brand new BBCode system coming in phpBB 3.2. Also, we’re inviting anyone who wants to share your favorite custom BBCode syntax with us, which we’ll highlight to share some examples of custom BBCodes.

Next Saturday, February 9th, we will be celebrating the fiftieth episode of phpBB Weekly–a significant milestone for most podcasts to celebrate. So, what’s the best way for us to celebrate a significant milestone? Why, by featuring a special guest, of course! For what is sure to be an interesting discussion, we will be inviting Patrick O’Keefe, administrator of phpBBHacks.com, to join us to talk a bit about phpBBHacks.com, including how and why it was formed and where it is today. We will probably also have a friendly debate with David as we discuss the differences behind phpBBHacks.com and the phpBB.com MODs Database, and the differing philosophies behind those differences. Patrick will also be telling us a bit about his new book, coming out in April. It’s definitely sure to be a very interesting episode of phpBB Weekly and one that I’ve been looking forward to putting on for a long time.

I am going to be completely away from my computer (and thus, the internet) from February 14-23. Because of this, we are not going to be doing a phpBB Weekly episode on February 16, and we might not do a phpBB Weekly episode on February 23 (up to David whether he wants to do one solo or not). Furthermore, David will also be doing a solo episode on March 1, because I have to take a test that morning (aren’t SATs fun?). So, similar to how David just missed a month of shows, I’m going to be missing about a month’s worth of shows beginning in mid-February.

But anyway, that pretty much covers what we have planned so far for our next few episodes. I hope that you’ll be able to join us live on Saturdays at 12 PM EST (1700 UTC), or else continue to subscribe to the podcast version which I will usually release within 36 hours of the live episode. Have a good February, and stay healthy!

Per my last post on Sunday, David and I have decided to test out an episode on a new service from Skype called Skypecasts in the hopes that it will be a more viable and reliable service than TalkShoe. Again, this will primarily be a test, and we will decide after the fact whether we want to permanently move our show to Skype’s new network.

So, if you want to be here on Saturday, what do you need to do? Well, on Saturday, the phpBB Weekly Skypecasts page will have a “Join this Skypecast” link. You will need to have a Skype account and have downloaded the latest version of Skype for this to work.

Skypecasts does not include a chat room, so we will be congregating on irc.freenode.net in the #phpbb-weekly channel. I will also try to keep my eyes on the Star Trek Guide chatbox as well.

We will not be participating in the TalkShoe Live! chat room, however as a courtesy to our regular TalkShoe streamers, I will try to hook the Skypecasts call in with TalkShoe so that you can listen to the call through TalkShoe’s live stream. Of course, this assumes that TalkShoe cooperates, I’m able to get Skypecasts to connect to the TalkShoe phone number, and I’m only guaranteeing that we will do this for this particular episode.

Also, unless there’s some hidden button or setting that I can’t find until David points me to it, Skypecasts is really nothing more than a public Skype conference call, which means that if you call in, you will be live immediately. Therefore, please make my life so much easier by calling in with headphones in order to prevent echo and background noise, otherwise, I’ll have to stop what I’m saying to scroll through the list and find out who’s making the gossip in order to mute them. I don’t know, if we end up using Skypecasts, we may end up having to hire someone to be an ad hoc call screener. :/

Have any questions about this Saturday’s setup? Leave a note in the comments below or go to the phpBB Weekly forum topic. Also, for those of you who do participate in the show live, we will be asking you to post your feedback in the phpBB Weekly forum (with a feedback link to be announced during the show) to help us decide if we want to make the switch.

Again, thank you for working with us as we evaluate this transition. Going through these growing pains now will help us make phpBB Weekly a better show in the future.

Update 11/10: The link above has been updated, and the old link is no longer valid. Please note the new link.