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 MP3 Episode (39.6 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:09:07
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Jordan Lewis (Hank the Cowdog, representing Albertie Einstein)

Sponsor: Online meetings made easy. Try GotoMeeting FREE for 30 days! www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/

The era of change must be upon us. Not only did Barack Obama get elected as the next American president, but the changes within the phpBB teams just keep on coming with each passing week. This week it was announced that Ashley Pinner (NeoThermic) is stepping down as Support Team leader (but is staying as a member of the Support Team) and will be replaced by Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty). We briefly discuss this announcement, and there’s word that there could still be more structural changes coming soon to the phpBB project; stay tuned…

In the more immediate future, however, phpBB 3.0.3 RC-1 has been sent out to the QA Team for testing, which means that the long-awaited next update to phpBB3 is likely on the way very soon. Why is it long-awaited? There’s actually a number of new features coming in this release, such as template inheritance, changes to the moderation queue, and new permissions for sending private messages to multiple recipients. We go through the new toys coming in this next release in detail.

Finally, our President Bertie contest has officially ended with two elections that were held during the week, and on this episode, we announce the winner of the Bertie Mons Presidential Election: Albertie Einstein of the Intellectual Party, sponsored by Hank the Cowdog! We perform Albertie Einstein’s inauguration ceremony live on the show, and Jordan (Hank the Cowdog) delivers an inaugural address as well. The contest may be over, but Bertie Mons will continue to thrive on StarTrekGuide. Oh, and if anyone has figured out where the good people at SCOFF Media have disappeared to, please let us know…

The MOD of the Week is Activation Justification by TerraFrost and the Style of the Week is 4poziomSEO_orange by gokin.

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

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 (46.1 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:20:35
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), Eric Faerber (wGEric), and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

Sponsor: Online meetings made easy. Try GotoMeeting FREE for 30 days! www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/

After all the um, interesting results we had on last week’s episode involving multiple people connected via SkypeOut on their cell phones, you’d think that we’d want to jump back to normal this week, but no. David and Francis were both out of town this weekend in the Middle of Nowhere, Montana, at a horse show, and joined us on this episode via their phones in the middle of the horse show, as could be somewhat easily heard throughout the episode. In addition, we were joined on this episode by phpBB’s new Operations Manager, Eric Faerber (wGEric), by former team member Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), who claims to be married to Bertie on Facebook, and by Francis Lewis (Handyman) who is serving as the head manager of SCOFF Media, Bertie Mons’ independent media organization.

The phpBB teams made some dramatic reorganizational changes this week by expanding their group of Team Leaders into a new “Management Team,” which in addition to the team leaders consists of three “managers.” wGEric is the new Operations Manager, ChrisRLG is the new Business Manager, and dhn continues his work under his newly-renamed title, Website Manager. And, taking Eric’s place, Igor Wiedler (eviL<3) is succeeding Eric as the new MOD Team leader. Douglas, David, and Eric talk in-depth about these changes, why they were made, and what they mean for the future of phpBB.

Oh, and by the way, the MOD Team just posted a Q&A with the MOD Team topic, so if you have questions you’ve been dying to ask the MOD Team members, hie thee hence to that topic!

Finally, our panel of guests analyzes the campaigns in our President Bertie Election Contest, looking at the progress of the four candidates and discussing what strategies they’ve done well and what more they could/should have done. Voting for the candidates in our contest begins Monday, November 3rd at 9 PM EST (0200 UTC on Tuesday), so be sure to participate! More details will be posted later this week in the contest forum.

The MOD of the Week is Post Count Requirements by SyntheticChaos and the Style of the Week is AZ_Retro by ayashazoelle.

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 People’s Choice Podcast Awards! Voting ends this Thursday, so don’t miss out!

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 (47.7 MB)

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)

Sponsor: Online meetings made easy. Try GotoMeeting FREE for 30 days! www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/

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!

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 (42.9 MB)

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

Sponsor: Online meetings made easy. Try GotoMeeting FREE for 30 days! www.gotomeeting.com/techpodcasts/

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!

The United States presidential election is now only four weeks away, and boy, am I excited! After a seemingly endless campaign season that began over 18 months ago, I’m looking forward to all of this craziness ending and a new president getting elected.

But here at phpBB Weekly, I couldn’t resist doing something to parody the whole election process, and I wanted to do something fun on the podcast. So, as a result of a bunch of noodling around ideas in my head, we’re announcing the beginning of the “President Bertie” Election Contest!

So what is this contest? Well, in a nutshell, this is an opportunity for you and your Bertie to run for the office of President of Bertie Mons. (Bertie Mons is the new name for the capitol of Mars, which phpBB recently took over.) During the next four weeks, you and your Bertie (only one Bertie per entrant, please) will have the chance to do such presidential-campaign things as submitting a nomination petition and getting signatories for it, participating in a live debate on phpBB Weekly, campaigning within the phpBB Weekly community to get people to vote for you, and (of course) voting for the next President Bertie!

At their core, all elections are essentially popularity contests, and this contest is no different. So, you’ll be highly encouraged to take pictures of your Bertie looking “presidential,” or at least downright interesting, whatever you construe that meaning to be. And of course, during the campaign process, you’ll be able to talk about how qualified your Bertie will be as the potential president of Bertie Mons. And finally, everyone will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite presidential candidate during a 36-hour election on November 3-5, and (if needed) another 36-hour runoff election on November 6-8. More details about the later stages of this contest will come up later on during the contest.

What’s the prize? Well, we don’t have one yet. (Other than fame and fortune, of course! Well, fame, anyway.) It would be great if someone could donate a prize that we can give to the newly elected President Bertie on his “Inauguration Day.” If you would like to donate a prize, please let us know!

How do I get started? If you want to nominate your Bertie to participate in this contest, you will need to submit a nomination petition, and get it signed by ten unique people who have not signed anyone else’s petition by the end of the day (UTC time) on Friday, October 17th. This process, and everything else having to do with this contest, will take place in a new President Bertie forum within the phpBB Weekly forum on StarTrekGuide. Note that there are a lot of laws/rules that pertain to elections in real life, and we’re going to be paralleling as many of them as we can in this contest, so please make sure that you read all of the rules for participating found in the President Bertie forum! As the contest progresses, the details of each step of the contest will be posted there.

But I don’t own a Bertie! Well, you won’t be able to “enter” or “win” this contest, but there will still be many opportunities for you to participate in this contest and influence the results during each of the three stages of this contest (Nominations, Campaigning, and Voting). And you won’t have as many rules to follow, either! Right now, you can head over to the President Bertie forum and sign one of the candidates’ nomination petitions, and there will be more coming later on, so stay tuned.

In just over four weeks, we’ll be ready to inaugurate a brand new President Bertie! So all you Bertie owners, what are you waiting for? Without further ado, let the Bertie Mons campaign season begin!