phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:09:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

phpBB Weekly is back, Douglas is on a normal computer, and all is right with the world!

We cover a lot of ground on this episode. Douglas recaps our interest to find a phpBB Weekly Clerk (Editor’s Note: we’ve now found one!), voting for the CAPTCHA Plugin Competition begins, and a few new members join the phpBB teams.

In addition, we spend some time discussing a post made on phpBB.com concerning accessibility issues with CAPTCHA plugins, particularly for the visually impaired. We also look at the MOD team’s recent blog post on the MOD Validation workflow, and ponder why “Insta-Deny” is a trademarked term. Also, David tells us a bit about the upcoming new StarTrekGuide MOD Manager, which they are currently soliciting feedback on.

Our next phpBB Weekly Poll Question, which goes until Saturday 10/31 (a week longer than indicated on the podcast), is “If you were to add a step to the MOD validation workflow, what would it be?” Cast your vote here!

The MOD of the Week is Forum SEO by stokerpiller, and the Style of the Week is Gerbang Kasih by napy8gen.

Join us on Saturday when we’ll continue our discussion about CAPTCHA accessibility with special guest Bernard Maldonado of Solona!

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Episode Duration: 1:36:42
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty)

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“Hooray…new features!” was the headline of this episode of phpBB Weekly as the long-awaited phpBB 3.0.3 update was released. We take another look at some of the new features in this release.

Also, Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty) joins us on this show to talk about his recent promotion to Support Team Leader and to give us a glimpse of the direction that the future Support Team will be taking.

Finally, in the third segment of our Building a Successful Community series, we talk about the things you should know about recruiting and maintaining quality staff members on your forum. Yuriy shares some experiences that the phpBB.com teams have learned, David shares his experiences from StarTrekGuide, and Douglas shares some experiences from communities that he ran in the distant past.

The MOD of the Week is Milestone Congratulations by MartectX, and the Style of the Week is coffee_time by abble.

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

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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)

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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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Episode Duration: 1:01:20
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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.