Hello everyone,

If you guys haven’t noticed, the month of June is quite a busy month for both myself and David. I had a trip to China earlier this month and will be leaving this Saturday and all next week on another excursion, and David just got back from a couple of days in Vancouver in addition to a very busy work schedule. So we’ve been kind of busy, but rather than cutting out almost all of our episodes for this month, we still wanted to try to get a full month of phpBB Weekly for you all, especially with everything that’s happening right now.

So here’s what’s up. Episode #065, which David recorded on June 7th, will be edited and released either today or tomorrow. David is in the process of getting the recording over to me. Episode #066 was already released on Tuesday.

Instead of doing the episode that we had scheduled for this Saturday live, we’re instead going to do it off of TalkShoe before I leave on my next excursion, which means that there will be no live episode this Saturday. It will be released tomorrow or really early on Saturday, unusually early for phpBB Weekly.
Our next live episode will be on Saturday, June 28th at the normal time. David will be doing it without me because I won’t be getting back until that afternoon, but we’ll try to get it edited and released on the usual schedule.

So that’s that; just wanted to fill you in. Thanks for your patience and thanks for continuing to listen to phpBB Weekly!
–Douglas Bell

Hello everyone,

I’ve gotten some notification from TalkShoe that they are making a minor change to their setup. Effective immediately, if you are not registered on TalkShoe and you enter the chat room as a guest (i.e. as Guest 1 or Guest 2, etc.), by default you will be blocked from having the ability to participate in the chat until I unblock you.

As was explained to me by Dave Nelsen (TalkShoe’s CEO), they have been hearing from many other calls on the network who have been affected by these anonymous guest chatters who have come in and typed a lot of porn and profanity into the chat, but once the hosts blocks them from the chat room, this person just has to close the window and reopen it to enter into the chat room as another guest, thus causing hell for the host of the TalkShoe call.

Luckily, phpBB Weekly hasn’t (yet) been affected by this, however for now, this change is universal (in May, they will be providing the ability to toggle this option once they build the toggle into the system). In the meantime, if you try to join in on the show as a guest chatter, you will not be able to chat by default until I notice and unblock you. It is annoying for me, and it’s annoying for you, but that’s what happens when a couple of rogue users spoil it for everyone. (I’m sure many of you have similar experiences in your own communities as well.)

If you would like to get around all this annoyance, feel free to register for free to TalkShoe. It only takes a minute, and once you’re registered, not only will you have your own username for us to identify you with, but you will not be blocked upon entering the chat room, and so neither of us will have to worry about this new obstacle.

Anyway, that’s just an FYI for you all to take note of. Hope to see you on Saturday!

Those of you who have eagle eyes, or perhaps actually care for some reason, may have noticed that TalkShoe, the website that hosts the live recording/streaming of our show, not to mention our infamous chatroom, has just launched a brand new version of their website, including new features. I thought that I might share the most important aspect of what’s new, mostly the things that are important to phpBB Weekly’s listeners.

The biggest new aspect is that TalkShoe now offers a web-based version of their client. That’s right, you no longer have to download the TalkShoe Live! client in order to listen to the show live and join in the chat room. The chat room operates directly in your web browser. Furthermore, you do not have to be a TalkShoe member to participate in the chat room! This means that the entire live phpBB Weekly experience is accessible to anyone, both chat room and calling in live, without registering on TalkShoe! (Although if you do register, you’ll get a more recognizable username than Guest205, for example.)

Note, however, that the downloadable version of TalkShoe is still available (now called TalkShoe Live! Classic). TalkShoe Live! Classic provides a more robust version of the chat room and audio stream, and is also required for using TalkShoe’s free ShoePhone service. Personally, I will continue to use TalkShoe Live! Classic to ensure that I can maintain a connection to the chat room.

Nevertheless, we’re really excited about the new version of TalkShoe, and we hope that it will open up the opportunity to be a part of the show, live as it’s recorded, and also to be a part of our thriving chat room, to a much wider audience. We invite you all to try it on our next live show!

Finally, as one additional reminder, if you have any issues connecting to the live episodes on TalkShoe, we have a special support thread available.

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We thought that we were going to do this episode of phpBB Weekly on Skypecasts, but we encountered problems with their service that made TalkShoe feel like the utopia of live audio streaming, so we decided to move back, and indeed, a brand new bugfixed update of TalkShoe was waiting for us. After spending some time talking about our interesting phpBB Weekly plight, congratulating David’s brother Francis Lewis (Handyman) for becoming a MOD Team member (the first time when two brothers have both been on the teams!), and talking about the recent Joomla!-phpBB meetup, we welcomed phpBB Developer DavidMJ as special guest for the show.

With DavidMJ, we talk about some of the many changes in phpBB3 over phpBB2, particularly in the areas of security and the improved accessibility of the codebase for MOD and style authors. DavidMJ also tells us about his particular areas of expertise in phpBB3, the database management system (DBMS). We also discuss the question over phpBB2’s fate, how much longer phpBB3 will support PHP 4, and some technical info on the various optimizations in phpBB3, and much more.

The MOD of the Week is Instant Post Redirect for phpBB3 by eviL<3, and the Style of the Week is Holiday Style for phpBB3 by Echo. (Yes, we did unintentionally pick styles from the same author on two consecutive episodes.)
Also, as the holiday season gets closer, we’re asking you to recommend any holiday-related MODs and Styles to us to feature on the upcoming episodes of phpBB Weekly. If you have one to recommend, bookmark it on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle” and we’ll consider promoting it on the show.

Editor’s Note: Apologies for the time it took to release this episode. I was having some difficulties getting my editing software to work properly until Apple pushed out an updated release which fixed everything. I look forward to when we’ll stop having technical difficulties on this podcast!

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

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This episode of phpBB Weekly was recorded on Saturday, November 3–right after Halloween, so I guess someone was playing a trick on us. However, this episode was pretty much ruined when TalkShoe froze up on me in the middle of the episode, however I notified TalkShoe and they have since released an update which has seemed to fix up these problems.

David and I debated whether or not we wanted to release this episode, but we decided to go ahead and do it anyway. On this episode, Douglas continues the countdown to the final release of phpBB3 by answering a number of questions about phpBB3 from our audience, at least until TalkShoe got stuck.

Link mentioned: Simple Syndication MOD for phpBB3 (in beta)

The MOD of the Week is ACP Site Announcement Centre for phpBB2 by lefty74, and the Style of the Week is Halloween Style for phpBB3 by Echo. As we get closer to the holidays, we’re asking for people to recommend holiday-related MODs and Styles to us. Bookmark them on del.icio.us with the tag “phpbbwmod” or “phpbbwstyle”.

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