phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:27:33
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Paul Sohier (Paul)

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The news media is busy traveling from one convention in Denver to another in St. Paul, and that means that they’re all ignoring the most important convention of all: the 2008 phpBB MOD Authors Convention! Well, we didn’t, and our panel of experts (Douglas, David, and Paul) report live from the MOD Authors Convention, providing their analysis of the events and presentations of the convention, as well as wondering why the MOD team didn’t nominate someone to run for president.

Anyway, we did discuss the various sessions at the MOD Authors Convention and talk about some of the highlights that were discussed. For example, in the “future of MODding” session, there was a certain amount of discussion about the possibility of introducing “Junior Validators” into the validation process. If this went forward, this would be like allowing certain users to be able to participate in the “testing” phase of validation, but not the line-by-line/security/etc. phases, and could also serve as a way for the MOD team to evaluate possible new additions to the team.

We also recapped the announcement that Paul hinted about last week, which was that the MOD team’s MOD pre-validator (MPV) tool is now publicly available. We discuss MPV in detail, including how it works and how it compares to the previous mEAL tool that was chiefly written by David Smith (smithy_dll).

There was also discussion at the convention about the phpBB Wiki (which was formally announced towards the end of the day), which will serve as the primary source of development, MODding, and (possibly) styling documentation for phpBB, and like all wikis will be user-contributable. We talked a bit more about the Wiki and how the MOD team’s goal of streamlining its documentation (we’ve talked about this a few times recently) ties into this new announcement.

And of course, this episode took place during the second “phpBB3 MODding & Best Practices” session, which was supposed to be David’s session, except he kinda played hooky from that so he could join in on this episode. However, he does summarize the main points from his session for us, answers a few questions from us, and fields requests from our chat room and from the #phpbb-mod channel to publish his session as a book.

Additional links mentioned in this episode:
MAMP/MAMP Pro
Wiki article: Creating Modules for phpBB3
Wiki article: Adding Modules to phpBB3

And finally, we ran out of time to mention it on this episode, but you should really check out the recent blog post on CAPTCHAs in phpBB, which gives a very interesting look at the evolution of phpBB’s CAPTCHA (aka “visual confirmation image”) and some of the inherent problems with CAPTCHAs and other anti-spambot security techniques.

The MOD of the Week is Tabulated Survey at Topic Head by asinshesq, and the Style of the Week is prosilver Special Edition by Styles Robot (or, more accurately, the phpBB.com Styles Team).

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Episode Duration: 1:35:15
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

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We return from our three week break energized and ready to go with our fall “season” of phpBB Weekly, and we kick it off with the realization that there’s a whole bunch of news for us to cover from just the past few days.

The MOD and Styles Databases have been upgraded with the ability to subscribe to individual MOD updates by e-mail (and, according to Paul, there’s a secret RSS feed as well). Speaking of the databases, thirteen phpBB3 styles have finally been approved for the Styles Database. In addition, the Styles Team has announced a new styles validation policy regarding how they will handle new releases of phpBB and how it will affect style validation. The Londonvasion videos are now available as well, and David shares some of his recommendations for the best ones to watch if you don’t have time for all of them.

The MOD Team will be holding its third annual MOD Authors Convention next Saturday, August 30 in the #phpbb-mod IRC channel. We briefly describe what sessions will be presented at the convention on this episode, and will be providing complete live coverage of the convention on next week’s episode. And finally, PHP 4.4.9 has been released, signifying the last release of PHP 4 as the PHP Group drops support for it, plus PHP 5.3 is in early release candidate stage, and we discuss some of the development team’s recent changes in the Subversion repository in response to the new version of PHP.

We then bring you a tutorial on the ways you can optimze search engine optimization (SEO) in phpBB3, from our local SEO expert, David Lewis, whose blog post on SEO and phpBB3 just appeared on the phpBB.com Blog.

Links from the SEO Tutorial and Other Recommended SEO Tools:
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Analytics
SEO MOD
Advanced Meta Tags MOD
What are Google Sitemaps?

This week’s MOD and Style of the Week are the winners of the recent phpBBHacks.com Idol (which means that these two authors won over $1200 worth of prizes for their products!). The winning hack/MOD is Log Connections by Elglobo and the winning style is Soul City by Abble CoSa NoStrA.

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Episode Duration: 1:16:30
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

We start this episode with some updates from the Subversion front. Recent updates in Subversion are showing that phpBB 2.0.23 and phpBB 3.0.1, both primarily bugfix updates, are going to be on their way soon. Also, in the weird description of the MOD team, the MODs Manager (codename “Blinky”) was “leaked on purpose,” as revealed in this Star Trek Guide thread. You can now check out the MODs Manager on the new phpBB Code Forge. (We also learned that the Code Forge is powered by a program called Redmine.)

However, the focus of this episode is a tutorial on BBCode. In this show, we discuss the reasons why BBCode was created and why it’s more secure to use than HTML (which is also why phpBB3 does not allow HTML to be used), and then discuss a bit about how adding custom BBCodes in phpBB2 and phpBB3, along with a recap of the significant changes coming to BBCode in Ascraeus.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:
BBCode (Wikipedia article)
phpBB BBCode Guide
Adding Custom BBCodes in phpBB3 (Flash Tutorial)
phpBB2 Multiple BBCode MOD
Popular Custom BBCodes for phpBB3

The MOD of the Week is First post on every page for phpBB3 by rxu, and the Style of the Week is envision for phpBB3 by AkaNSu.

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: 1:30:41
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

The first day of December means that the end of the year is staring straight at us as we plunge into the holiday season, but here at phpBB Weekly, we prefer to plunge into another tutorial.

After wishing happy birthday to phpBB team members Paul and Anon, we dissect through the release announcement of phpBB3 RC8, which was announced just hours before this episode. And, as usual, we ask the same question that everyone has been asking since May: will this RC go golden master, or is there yet another RC coming down Santa Claus lane?

This week also saw the execution of the MOD Database Cleanup. We take a look at why and how it was done, and learn a bit about Douglas’ early MODding life in the process.

Finally, David guides us through a mini-tutorial on registration settings and usergroups in phpBB3. For more information on usergroups in particular, check out the Group management and Permissions sections of the phpBB3 documentation, or check out the Custom usergroups Flash tutorial.

The MOD of the Week is Vote Manager for phpBB2 by soapergem, and the Style of the Week is Christmas for phpBB2 by CyberAlien.

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: 1:26:00
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

We were hoping that this episode of phpBB Weekly just might turn out to be a shorter show, but apparently it wasn’t going to happen. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a rather interesting and informative show that came bundled with a rather interesting and informative live audience.

phpBB3′s Permissions system is one of the most powerful and most comprehensive new features, but also one of the most intimidating, as Douglas can tell you from experience. We go through the basics of using phpBB3′s permissions system and also look at a number of common things that can confuse people about the system (like why no one can see the forum you just created or the difference between Yes, No, and Never). For more information on the Permissions system beyond what we’ve covered in this episode, check out the Flash tutorials on managing forums and on custom usergroups. You can also check out the Setting Permissions quick start guide, or the more detailed section on users and forum permissions.

Then, Douglas gives us a phpBB History Lesson, as we take a look back to the release of phpBB 2.0.11 which took place exactly three years ago on November 18, 2004. We look back at the highlighting exploit that caused that released and which caused the infamous Santy worm of December 2004 which defaced over 40,000 phpBB-based bulletin boards and hurt phpBB’s security reputation, and we look at some of the changes that the phpBB teams in response to the uproar. Josh W. (A_Jelly_Doughnut), one of the MOD Team members, also comes on briefly to look back at the Santy worm with us. Finally, we take a look at what has changed with security in phpBB3 and the various steps that have been taken by the teams in the last three years to ensure that nothing like this happens again.
Additional links mentioned:
howdark.com “exploits”
howdark.com exploits – follow up
phpBB 2.0.11 released – Critical update
phpBB 2.0.11 upgrade reminder
Netcraft: Santy Worm Spreads Through phpBB Forums

The MOD of the Week is User Shield for phpBB2 by Wo1f, and the Style of the Week is DAJ_Glass for phpBB2 by Krezno.

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