phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:29:49
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Tom Beddard (subBlue)

On this episode, we’re joined by a very special guest, Tom Beddard (subBlue), the designer of the subSilver and prosilver themes for phpBB2 and phpBB3, respectively. We chatted with Tom about his experiences working with phpBB and with the teams, and what it’s like to write a completely new phpBB style from scratch (unlike most phpBB styles which are usually based somewhat on either subSilver/subsilver2 or prosilver). He also shared some thoughts for people interested in making styles for phpBB. (If you want a good read, be sure to check out his featurette on designing prosilver.)

David and Douglas also spend a bit of time discussing the future of community bulletin boards, and whether or not they may be on the decline in the future what with all the other new means of communication popping up around the internet. In the course of the conversation, David describes Google Wave and Douglas describes P2 and discuss how bulletin boards could borrow some of these ideas to improve usability and become more like a modern web application.

There is no MOD or Style of the Week. Our last phpBB Weekly Poll Question was “What would be the coolest CAPTCHA plugin to have installed on your board?” Here are the answers:
“If they’re using Internet Explorer 6, who cares if they’re a bot or not? You know what to do with them…” 10 votes / 56%
“Ask the user what CAPTCHA stands for. If they know the correct answer, they’re probably a robot.” 3 votes / 17%
“Ask them to explain why the front REALLY fell off. That will weed out bots AND Australian senators.” 2 votes / 11%
“Attempt a Jedi mind trick on the user. If it doesn’t work, they’re probably a robot, or too smart to feel at home on your board anyway.” 1 vote / 6%
“Burn them at the stake. If they survive, they’re probably a robot. (Well, it worked at the Salem Witch Trials, right?)” 1 vote / 6%
And 1 “Other” answer:
“Pick the Bertie -captcha.”
Total Votes: 18

Finally, Douglas and David announce that this episode is our last episode on TalkShoe, because we are moving to uStream! They give a rundown of all of the details. As a reminder, there will be no live episodes on August 15 or 22; our next live show will be on Saturday, August 29. That episode will be our first episode broadcasting on uStream, and our first episode to adopt our new 1 PM EDT recording time. Keep an eye on phpBBWeekly.net as we make this transition over the next few weeks.

Finally, we close out the show by wishing a happy birthday to Meik Sievertsen (Acyd Burn) in our usual phpBB Weekly way.

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Download MP3 Episode (33.2 MB)

Episode Duration: 58:02
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Francis Lewis (Handyman)

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Douglas had another test to complete during this episode of phpBB Weekly, and David apparently had a harder time hijacking team members for this episode, so he was joined this time by his brother, Francis Lewis (Handyman). With the retirement of phpBB2 still holding the #1 slot for phpBB discussions across the internet, David and Francis talk a bit more about the retirement news, albeit from somewhat more of a teams-based angle. During this episode, they talk a bit about how the EOL of phpBB2 will help the phpBB3 branch (as well as 3.2 Ascraeus development) in the long run. They also discuss some of the enticing phpBB3 features that users and MOD authors can see as they slowly transition over to phpBB3, including a look at how and why phpBB3 is more “stable” than phpBB2, some of the interesting aspects of phpBB3′s Database Abstraction Layer (DBAL) and an overall analysis of why phpBB3 doesn’t require as much MODding as phpBB2 did.

In other news, the MOD Database Cleanup is slated to be completed in full on Wednesday, April 30th Saturday, May 31st, and David and Francis talk a bit about will be taking place. They also provide an update on the latest news with Londonvasion and the Star Trek Guide MODs Manager, as well as a status update on the MOD Team’s upcoming Package Manager (codenamed Blinky).

The MOD of the Week is Full Syndication Suite for phpBB3 by Schumi, and the Style of the Week is Avalon for phpBB3 by CyberAlien.

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

Per my last post on Sunday, David and I have decided to test out an episode on a new service from Skype called Skypecasts in the hopes that it will be a more viable and reliable service than TalkShoe. Again, this will primarily be a test, and we will decide after the fact whether we want to permanently move our show to Skype’s new network.

So, if you want to be here on Saturday, what do you need to do? Well, on Saturday, the phpBB Weekly Skypecasts page will have a “Join this Skypecast” link. You will need to have a Skype account and have downloaded the latest version of Skype for this to work.

Skypecasts does not include a chat room, so we will be congregating on irc.freenode.net in the #phpbb-weekly channel. I will also try to keep my eyes on the Star Trek Guide chatbox as well.

We will not be participating in the TalkShoe Live! chat room, however as a courtesy to our regular TalkShoe streamers, I will try to hook the Skypecasts call in with TalkShoe so that you can listen to the call through TalkShoe’s live stream. Of course, this assumes that TalkShoe cooperates, I’m able to get Skypecasts to connect to the TalkShoe phone number, and I’m only guaranteeing that we will do this for this particular episode.

Also, unless there’s some hidden button or setting that I can’t find until David points me to it, Skypecasts is really nothing more than a public Skype conference call, which means that if you call in, you will be live immediately. Therefore, please make my life so much easier by calling in with headphones in order to prevent echo and background noise, otherwise, I’ll have to stop what I’m saying to scroll through the list and find out who’s making the gossip in order to mute them. I don’t know, if we end up using Skypecasts, we may end up having to hire someone to be an ad hoc call screener. :/

Have any questions about this Saturday’s setup? Leave a note in the comments below or go to the phpBB Weekly forum topic. Also, for those of you who do participate in the show live, we will be asking you to post your feedback in the phpBB Weekly forum (with a feedback link to be announced during the show) to help us decide if we want to make the switch.

Again, thank you for working with us as we evaluate this transition. Going through these growing pains now will help us make phpBB Weekly a better show in the future.

Update 11/10: The link above has been updated, and the old link is no longer valid. Please note the new link.