phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:20:16
On this episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Francis Lewis (Handyman), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

Talk about one whacky reunion episode. Douglas comes in fresh off of his high school graduation and is stumped as to why he is not entirely fast asleep during the show. David and Francis make their grand return after 3 months’ absence, and as a skit, they hold a SCOFF News-style interview of Australian Senator Collins about a crashed oil tanker. Paul will slap Douglas to high heaven if this episode isn’t released before the end of May, and we have all kinds of crazy technical difficulties throughout the show. (And yes, that stuttering that happens during the first 2-3 minutes? That’s David’s fault too.)

Nevertheless, we have kind of a random discussion episode, during which Micheal shares a bit more about the FTP Trojans that we discussed last week, we share rumors on what’s taken so long for the release of phpBB 3.0.5 (and typical to fashion, it was just released today), and David shares the incredible saga that has taken him and Francis away from phpBB for the past few months and continuing for the next few months as well. Douglas takes the opportunity to share some plans for helping to revitalize phpBB Weekly during the remaining summer months of David’s prolonged leave of absence, and we also talk a bit about the best readme file ever.

There is no MOD or Style of the Week this week. Our phpBB Weekly Poll Question is “Who would be your favorite guest on phpBB Weekly?” Vote in the poll in our sidebar on the right; the poll closes Saturday, June 13.

And don’t miss the little bonus featurette at the end of the episode; I spent a lot of time editing that!

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Download MP3 Episode (38.5 MB)

Episode Duration: 42:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

Michael and Douglas are joined on this episode by an old friend, Paul Sohier, who is now on a new team: the Support Team. For obvious reasons, Micheal is pleased and Douglas a bit confused, but Paul explains that he’s been working in support longer than he’s been working with MODs, and has been enjoying the change of pace.

The MOD Team, however, hasn’t been standing still. Once again, a new release to talk about: AutoMOD has hit RC-1. Exciting, you bet, particularly since EasyMOD never made it out of beta! While it’s not approved for fully-stable use yet, AutoMOD is about to hit the big time, and we’ll continue to follow its progress over the summer.

Micheal mentions that this old blog post simply identifies possibilities that injections could be created by MODs if the authors aren’t careful–it does NOT list actual injection vulnerabilities in phpBB3! Beware the naysayers!

And for our main topic of discussion, a new phpBB.com blog post discusses the Gumblar and Martuz trojans, two trojans which track down your FTP credentials and then use them to trash your site(s). We go over the blog post and discuss what these trojans do, how they work, and how to keep yourself safe (hint: keep your antivirus definitions up-to-date!). Also be sure to keep regular backups of your site so that if it does get hacked (it may not be your fault if your site IS hacked), you can completely wipe the hacked site and start fresh. If your site has been hacked, use Unmask Parasites to do a thorough check once you’ve cleaned house.

The MOD of the Week is Posting Template by eviL<3, and the Style of the Week is Prospace by spaceace.

Be sure to join us on Saturday, May 30th, for David Lewis’ return to phpBB Weekly and important announcements about this show, as well as Douglas’ post-graduation attempts to stay awake!