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: 1:00:21
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal)

Again, sorry about the late release on this one; it’s been near-impossible to find a chance to get this episode edited! In our defense though, phpBB 3.0.5 STILL hasn’t been released, even though we talked about it on this episode eleven days ago!

On this episode, due to a late start, we wound up being joined again by phpBB Support Team Leader Yuriy Rusko (Marshalrusty) alongside Micheal Cottingham and Douglas Bell. Having missed out of two weeks’ worth of episodes, we primarily spend this episode recapping on a bit of phpBB news.

UMIL’s third release candidate is out, and so we spend a little bit of time recapping UMIL and its future importance for phpBB3 MOD authors. We also note that RC-1 of phpBB 3.0.5 has been released to the QA Team for testing, which contains a number of new features and changes and lots of bugfixes. (It has, after all, been more than five months in the making.) It should be released on phpBB.com fairly soon.

Finally, the MOD Team announced that they have released policies for MOD validation which contains details on what they look for during validation, insta-deny/repackage policies, etc. All MOD authors planning on submitting to the MODs Database should read these policies carefully, as following this policies will help you avoid having your MOD be denied!

Our last Poll Question of the Week was “What’s the most importance advice to give to a phpBB Supporter?” The top answer was “No matter what your signature says, you can kiss the sanctity of your PM box goodbye” with 5 votes (42%). Next up was “If someone actually figures out that they should use the Support Request Template, then they deserve premium service” with 4 votes (33%). Next up was “Let the Support Team deal with idiots. That’s where they get their fun.” with 2 votes (17%). And last was “Speak softly and carry a big stick” with 1 vote (8%). Receiving no votes was “Never tell people to ‘search,’ only to ‘follow directions.’”

The MOD of the Week is phpBB Mood Swings by Xanta Media, and the Style of the Week is SkyLineBlue by MartectX.

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Episode Duration: 1:23:18
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), Paul Sohier (Paul), Sean (House, representing Lyndon Bertie Johnson), Tim (T50Webmaster, representing Sir Bertie Jr.), harmlessgoat22 (representing Barack O’Bertie), and Jordan (Hank the Cowdog, representing Albertie Einstein)

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The excitement in our President Bertie Election Contest is really heating up, now with four very strong, very active candidates, campaigning to be elected the next president of Bertie Mons. We invited the campaign managers of the candidates to join us on the show (since Berties can’t talk for themselves unless there’s a ventriloquist nearby) to participate in a presidential debate discussing each candidate’s plans for the future of Bertie Mons if they are elected.

Unfortunately, running an eight-way Skype call (with half of those participants happening via SkypeOut on the phone) caused technical difficulties, making Douglas impossible to be heard by anyone except David, so that wound up flubbing us up a bit. Nevertheless, we did have an interesting debate, with some, um, interesting conclusions. It will be up to SCOFF Media to detect any gaffes that the candidates made during this debate. Also, two of the candidates were forced to leave early towards the end; we will be posting their answers to the questions that they missed on the forum within the next day or so.

We also spent a little time discussing the phpBB MOD Team’s announcement about Junior Validators, a new group of potential MOD team members who will help out with validation and get trained for the future potential of becoming a full-fledged MOD validator. If you want to apply, make sure you’re familiar with the validation checklist, and fill out the application form.

We did not have a MOD/Style of the Week this week. However, please note that due to a number of countries changing their Daylight Savings Time during different times over the next few weeks, the time that phpBB Weekly is live in your local time zone may be changing. Beginning Saturday, November 8th, phpBB Weekly will begin airing at 17:00 UTC instead of 16:00 UTC, but that does mean that if you’re changing Daylight Savings Time this week instead of next week, our next episode will seem to be an hour earlier. Please double-check your local time so you know when our upcoming episodes will stream live.

phpBB Weekly is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network. Check them out for other great technology podcasts. Also, be sure to check out and vote in the 2008 Peoples Choice Podcast Awards!

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Episode Duration: 49:37
On This Episode: David Lewis (Highway of Life) and Francis Lewis (GroovePlugs/Handyman)

For the first time, Douglas steps off of the air on a phpBB Weekly episode and lets David take the helm. It’s probably risky, particularly after our excellent episode last week, but Coastal Cleanup Day in the San Francisco Bay Area and Douglas once again goes to do his part this year.

Meanwhile, David spends some time talking about how phpBB3 parses styles and how you can use certain styles only within specific forums in phpBB3. He then moves on to talk a bit about how you can integrate BBCode throughout your site and in your MODs, and then he talks a bit about how the module system works and whether or not a MOD should use it or not.

The next release (either RC-6 or final) of phpBB3 will include a new hooks functionality and a new DBAL tool, and what will this mean for MOD authors and how can they be implemented? This also means that MOD authors no longer have any excuse to not support all 8 DBMS types supported in phpBB3.

And for our weekly dose of MOD Team news, we talk a bit about MOD validation on phpBB.com and its importance, and we welcome Paul back on the MOD Team and also welcome Esmond Poynton (poyntesm) as the newest member of the MOD Team!

The MOD of the Week is ACP Add User MOD for phpBB3 by Highway of Life (that’s self-promotion for you!), and the Style of the Week is nDesign v2 for phpBB3 by Midnight Phoenix.

Additional links mentioned:
phpBB MODs Documentation
Geoffreak’s phpBB3 MODX Script Generator