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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.

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Douglas returns from picking up around the Bay Area, and after telling an interesting and disappointing story from his excursion (which has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with phpBB3), he takes the reins and very thoroughly goes over the topic of banning. Covered on this show is why would you want to ban users? How do you ban users using phpBB? What are the differences in banning controls between phpBB2 and phpBB3? We also talk about how the phpBB3 warnings system can fit in here and discuss the importance of having set rules and guidelines on your forum, along with a cautionary warning about not getting carried away with banning users. (After all, you want to attract users to your forum, not send them away!) And then, Douglas selects two MODs of the Week which bring some of phpBB3’s enhanced banning functionality within the grasp of phpBB2 administrators. David also gives us the latest lowdown on recent changes to the phpBB teams, including a brand new Support Team leader, and then we announce some of the exciting episodes that will be coming up.

The two MODs of the Week this week are Ban Reasons and Temp Ban, both by eviL<3 for phpBB2. The Style of the Week is Thor by Wizardly for phpBB3.
If you would like to recommend a MOD or Style of the Week to us to be featured on a future episode (subject to our approval), bookmark it 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.