phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:21:43
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), Cullen Walsh (Brainy), and Samuel Thompson (SyntaxError90)

We hit this episode of phpBB Weekly coming right off of the excitement from OSCONvasion (all except Micheal, who couldn’t make it). Despite the fact that it was just a small meetup, most of which was spent touring the OSCON Expo Hall and downtown San Jose, it was still a lot of fun, with a lot of good discussions that took place. And it does go down as the first-ever phpBB meetup event in North America, after all. Douglas, Cullen, and Sam (who were all there) spent the first half hour of this episode recapping the various things we did and discussed at OSCONvasion. Be sure to follow the OSCONvasion tag on Flickr to see some of the great pictures we took around OSCON. And of course, audio from our live session is on phpBB Weekly #115, and video will be posted this week by AdamR.

It was announced just a few hours before this show that UMIL 1.0.0 Gold was released. The Unified MODs Install Library (UMIL) truly is the missing tool to allow actions like making database table changes, adding permissions, config options, or modules to be done automatically, and now that it’s fully stable, MOD authors and MOD installers can take full advantage of it.

Finally, the MOD Team has announced a Best CAPTCHA Plugin Competition. This contest, which will help make a broad and diverse number of CAPTCHA plugins available for download and install at the launch of phpBB 3.0.6, offers free phpBB3 Berties to the best CAPTCHA plugins developed by MOD authors and submitted beginning in late August. The first submitted CAPTCHA plugin to be approved to the MOD Database will automatically receive a Bertie, plus a Bertie will be awarded to the team’s favorite CAPTCHA plugin and another to the favorite CAPTCHA plugin voted on by the community-at-large. We also take a look at the recently-revealed details of the default CAPTCHA plugins coming in 3.0.6, and go over what you need to know to build your own CAPTCHA plugin.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Vote in the poll on the sidebar at right; the poll ends on August 8th.

The MOD of the Week is Show First Post Only to Guest by Primy, and the Style of the Week is jblue by jbones.

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Episode Duration: 1:20:22
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), Adam Reyher (AdamR)

On this episode, we’re all pumped up in anticipation of the OSCON 2009 convention taking place this week in San Jose, California. OSCON (O’Reilly Open Source Convention) is one of the biggest and longest-running events focused on free and open source software, and thanks in part to the fact that it moves from Portland, OR to the Bay Area for the first time this year, phpBB is going to be there via our OSCONvasion 2009 Bay Area phpBB Users Meetup, exclusively sponsored by phpBB Weekly.

And so, as we get ready to mobilize to San Jose, we dedicate this episode to free and open source software. We discuss what free and open source software is, what it means (note the oft-quoted “Free as in speech, not as in beer”), and some of its history. We also discuss a bit about some of the legal documents that helps keep free and open source software free and open source, such as the Creative Commons licenses and the GNU General Public License (including some discussion about the differences between GPLv2 and GPLv3 and other GPL variations). We also discuss a bit about the idea of copyleft and how these licenses use copyleft to extend the freedoms and rights normally reserved by copyright. And finally, we talk a bit about how open source is actually helping to make all kinds of software better, and how it helps make phpBB and many other PHP-based web programs better as well.

If you’re going to be in the Bay Area this week, we hope that you’ll come to OSCON. There’s a bunch of free events and a great Expo Hall with lots of great exhibitors, all of which are available to you with a free Expo Hall Only registration. And of course, our OSCONvasion 2009 meetup, which will have involvement from lots of team members, live phpBB demos, and much more. And if you can’t come, we will be streaming OSCONvasion 2009 on a special phpBB Weekly episode this Thursday evening, and everyone is invited to listen live and join in on our TalkShoe chatroom and ask any questions you want to the panel that will be presenting, just like we did at Londonvasion last year! We hope to see you in person or in spirit (via the internet) on Thursday! It’s sure to be a blast.

Our last phpBB Weekly Poll Question was “What would be the most likely impact of enabling Quick Reply on your board?” Here are the answers:
“The front will fall off.” 8 votes / 31%
“The energy saved by not loading the reply forms will qualify me for a tax rebate for being ‘green.’” 7 votes / 27%
“The ‘Post Reply’ button will go on strike and accuse me of hiring scabs.” 6 votes / 23%
“The earth’s magnetic field will suddenly turn upside down, and we won’t be able to hang things on refrigerators ever again.” 3 votes / 12%
“Truckloads of pointless ‘I agree’ replies to sort through.” 0 votes / 0%
And 2 “Other” answers:
“The universe WILL implode! And ketchup will taste like mustard.”
“It still doesn’t make me coffee ”
Total Votes: 26
There will not be a Poll Question this week, our next poll will be announced next Saturday.

The MOD of the Week is Syntax Highlighter by UseLess, and the Style of the Week is polyethylene by Zergall.

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Episode Duration: 1:41:13
On this Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

It’s just like old times on this episode of phpBB Weekly! Douglas and David are solo-hosting the show, David makes up a fake name for himself at the start of the show, and the episode lasts forever.

But on the contrary side of things, the main focus of this episode is an unprecedented announcement from the Development Team describing new features coming in phpBB 3.0.6, a “maintenance/bugfix release,” for Pete’s sake! We thoroughly analyze each of the announced new features and discuss what they’ll do, why they will be added, and what the effects will be for MOD authors in particular.

The new features include a new CAPTCHA plugins architecture, ATOM (RSS) feeds, support for four new cache/ACM plugins (and a no-cache option), exempting group leader permissions for groups, group management changes for the post queue and other permissions, separation/clarification of the Reply/Reply to All functions for private messages, pagination for smilies and icons, the ability to search logs, and other tiny features and bugfixes. And quick reply. Yes, Q U I C K R E P L Y, as Meik posted, representing a significant about-face from the phpBB teams which have traditionally been firmly against the inclusion of a quick reply feature since who knows when, and Douglas and David spend a bit of time talking about the significance of this quick reply concession and why we think it’s a good thing.

Then, Douglas formally announces the full details of the OSCONvasion 2009 meetup he is organizing, happening in San Jose, California in late-July. If you’re going to be in the Bay Area or are planning to come to OSCON, we hope you can make it!

Our last phpBB Weekly Poll question was “Who would be your favorite guest on phpBB Weekly?” The top response was Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) with a whopping 13 votes (65%), followed by “The guy who made the front fall off” with 5 votes (25%), in closing up with Steve Wozniak and “The father of the internet” each receiving 1 vote (5%). President Barack Obama received 0 votes.
Our next phpBB Weekly Poll will be “What would be another feature you’d like to see added to 3.0.6?” The poll runs until Saturday, June 27th; vote in the right-hand sidebar on our site.

No MOD or Style of the Week this week. The episode’s closing music is Do You Know the Way to San Jose – Dionne Warwick, and the quick reply clip comes from the Discussion Panel at Londonvasion, and was also heard on phpBB Weekly #072.

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Episode Duration: 1:16:54
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

This special episode of phpBB Weekly was recorded off of TalkShoe because we were unable to be available for a live show on Saturday, March 15th. Instead, utilizing our favorite utility, Skype, we recorded this special non-live episode where we broke with tradition and had a non-binding, somewhat hilarious discussion about the various issues and non-issues for phpBB.

During the episode, we discuss the recent appearance of a “code sniffer” in the phpBB3 Subversion. However, David has no idea what it’s about either (at this point), and so we mostly end up speculating. We also talk about phpBB’s new QA Team–it’s supposed to stand for “Quality Assurance Team,” but we inadvertently come up with a wacky new name that you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

In addition, we talk and joke a bit about such topics as phpBB’s impact on global warming, and phpBB’s plans for World Domination. Douglas also introduces his roommate to Bertie, and then talks about what “features” should be included in phpBB 3.2, and David argues why they shouldn’t be there.

All in all, this episode was mostly an opportunity for us to take a break from the normal drawl of what we normally do on phpBB Weekly and have a bit of fun while breaking some of the rules. We hope that you enjoy it, and we’ll be back to our usual professional selves next week. Incidentally, please also don’t forget about completing our listener survey while you’re here.

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