phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:05:02
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

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Note: This episode was recorded before we learned the news of David’s leave of absence.

This episode of phpBB Weekly goes back to the show’s roots, to a darker time when the show only had one host. As David was away on a business trip, Douglas steps up and goes solo for the first time in who knows how long. And when he has the microphone all to himself, there’s no telling what he’ll talk about.

Well actually, there is. Douglas dusts off our old “Building a Successful Community” series and today’s topic is moderator etiquette. Douglas discusses the importance of locking topics responsibly, avoiding the “Why didn’t you search for it?” syndrome, and focusing on actually helping out your users.

And, partially inspired by this post, Douglas talks about a topic a bit more near and dear to his heart: eliminating age stereotypes among your members and staff and valuing the contributions of younger members. As a younger person himself, Douglas has quite a bit to say in this department.

Finally, Douglas sorts through the phpBB.com Events and Meetings forum to take a look at some of the upcoming events scheduled or in planning, including an update on the exciting San Francisco event that he and David will be putting together.

Our last Poll Question of the Week was “What’s the best Valentine to give to a forum moderator?” There were 4 votes (44%) for “A day off.”; 3 votes (33%) for “A chocolate bar with your forum rules engraved on it.”; 2 votes (22%) for “Singles Awareness Day propaganda.”; and no votes for “A rank image with little hearts on it.” or “A chance to be administrator for a day.”. This week’s poll is “What’s your favorite web browser” Vote in the poll on our right-hand sidebar, and leave a comment as well if you want to. The poll closes on March 14th.

The MOD of the Week is Special Chars by Mr_Simon and the Style of the Week is PS3 by Jester-fr.

Be sure to join us on Saturday, March 14th for our one-hundredth episode! It’s sure to be a blast.

We’ve had a number of people e-mail us and tell us that, you know, if phpBB Weekly is all about forum software, shouldn’t you have a forum for phpBB Weekly? Well, it’s a great idea, but managing a forum is a lot of work (as we’ve mentioned on the show), and so far, we’ve pretty much been content with the comments system on the blog and the nice form where you can submit your questions.

Well, thanks to our good friends at Star Trek Guide, which, not coincidentally, is co-administrated by phpBB Weekly co-host David Lewis, they have now created a brand new forum just for phpBB Weekly, which we will be taking advantage of and hope that all of our wonderful listeners will take advantage of. Keep an eye out on there for topics where we’ll invite you to submit questions for when we bring guests on the show and ask for occasional feedback on the show. If there’s any comments from the forum that we find noteworthy, we may decide to mention your comments on the show. And, a much-requested, we have a special topic for help connecting to TalkShoe.

We’re really excited to be expanding phpBB Weekly in all of these ways. phpBB is about creating communities, and David and I are really excited to be able to find more and more ways to make phpBB Weekly a community-driven podcast. We may be the hosts, but you, the listeners, are the community members that make phpBB happen.

So run, don’t walk, over to the phpBB Weekly forum over at Star Trek Guide!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3 Episode (16.5 MB)

Episode Duration: 41:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples)

Continuing our tour of the permissions system in phpBB3, Douglas talks about detailed management of users and groups. For users, this includes a guide through all of the features in the new User Administration panel, how to use the new Inactive Users panel, and the one or two updates to the Ranks admin panel. In addition, Douglas describes everything new for Groups in phpBB3, including the age-old question of the difference between Special Groups and User-Defined Groups.

Then, Douglas describes how to set Global Permissions for users and groups. This includes permissions for what users can and can’t do in their User Control Panel (including private messages permissions, etc.). Global Permissions also allows admins to grant users and groups full or limited access to the moderator or administration panels, with very detailed control over what users can and cannot access in these panels.

Finally wrapping up the tour of the Permissions tab, Douglas explains the layout of Permission Masks (a place to view current permissions set without editing them), and also goes through how administrators can create their own custom Permission Roles.

The MOD of the Week is Event Registration by NetizenKane, and the Style of the Week is Morpheus eXtreme by CyberAlien.