phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:07:51
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Lorelle VanFossen

Surprise! Sure, we’re on a three week break, but we couldn’t just leave you in the lurch without an episode of phpBB Weekly to regale yourself with. We’re joined on this special non-live episode by one of Douglas’ good friends, Lorelle VanFossen.

Lorelle is primarily affiliated with the community of WordPress, the popular open-source blogging/CMS software. However, we invited her on this show to discuss her experiences with WordCamps, various WordPress community events that have been organized all over the world during the past few years. On this episode, Lorelle shares some of the energizing experiences from past WordCamps that she’s been to and spoken at, and David and Douglas also share some of their experiences from Londonvasion and OSCONvasion.

More importantly, though, Lorelle shares some guidelines for individuals interested in organizing local community meetup events, and share some of her opinions on how the phpBB community could help ignite more local community meetups for our project.

But this podcast isn’t all just talk, this is probably one of the funniest episodes we’ve had to date, because Lorelle is a riot. Without a doubt, one of the craziest moments comes when Douglas shares that he won the grand prize from the OSCON Passport Program, a Pogo Linux Intel Workstation.

Links mentioned in this episode:
Douglas’ Previous Podcast Interview with Lorelle
No Fact Zone
SOBCon
Kickstarter
WordCamp Whistler
Teens in Tech Conference
An Open-Source Look at the Cost of WordCamp Dallas
WordCamp Hong Kong
WordCamp Portland and the Fairy Blogmother
Beer and Blog
Now if those links don’t get you interested in listening to this episode, nothing will!

Other Resources for Organizing Meetups:
Upcoming
Meetup.com
Tips for Planning and Organizing a WordPress Event and WordCamp (via The WordCamp Report)
WordCamp and WordPress Meetups – The Events Heard Round the World (via Lorelle on WordPress)
phpBB Events and Meetings forum
And a new resource for phpBB event/meetup organizers that we’re going to start working on soon…

Find Lorelle at…
Lorelle on WordPress
The WordCamp Report
Camera on the Road
Her AWESOME book: Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging
… and almost every WordCamp event out there!

That said, enjoy this special episode of phpBB Weekly, and join us when we return on Saturday, August 29th at 1 PM EDT (1700 UTC) when we return live on uStream!

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Episode Duration: 51:40
On this Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), Micheal Cottingham (Techie-Micheal), and John Wells (Jhong)

We’re joined on this episode by John Wells (Jhong), the guy behind the WP-United project, an integration between WordPress and phpBB3. He joins us all the way from Shanghai, China, where it is after midnight during this episode. And, courtesy of the Chinese government, we have a little bit of audio quality fun along the way, along with an unexpected encounter with a cheesy arrangement of “Ode to Joy.”

But I digress. John tells us all about WP-United, including why he started it, some of its history, some of its very interesting features (such as the ability to “blend” WordPress and phpBB elements on the same page), and how an administrator would get it to work. We also discuss a little bit about programming the integration for phpBB2 vs. phpBB3, and compare it to phpBB3′s Hook System which makes other integrations like the RokBridge-Joomla! integration possible.

Then, Micheal takes the opportunity to go over the phpBB Support Toolkit, which just had its first RC release this week. This is sure to be a very powerful and useful tool once it goes final, and we’ll continue to keep an eye on it on this show.

Our last phpBB Weekly Poll was “What would be another feature you’d like to see added to 3.0.6?” There were 35 votes cast, shattering our previous record of 20. Here’s the results:
10 votes (29%) for an “Automatic idiot user filter.”
6 votes (17%) for a “Rocket launcher (David’s suggestion).”
6 votes (17%) for “A front that doesn’t fall off.”
5 votes (14%) for a “Coffee maker. (Take that, Starbucks!)”
3 votes (9%) for “The kitchen sink.”
3 votes (9%) for “Insurance from Paul’s continuous slapping.”
And 2 other votes (6%): “no new features!” and “Nicole Scherzinger”.

Our new poll is “What would be the most likely impact of enabling Quick Reply on your board?” Vote in this poll in the sidebar on the right; this poll will be open until Saturday, July 11.

The MOD of the Week is User Notes/Warnings in Viewtopic by RMcGirr83, and the Style of the Week is AcidTech Tiger by CyberAlien.

And, credits for the closing bonus goes to a Muppet interpretation of “Ode to Joy”.

Remember that there will not be a live episode next weekend due to the 4th of July holiday (in the United States); our next live episode will be on July 11th.

Just a heads up for those of you who may be interested that I will be interviewed on WordPress Weekly this Friday, January 9th at 8 PM EST (0100 UTC on Saturday 1/10). Like our show, WordPress Weekly is a live podcast recorded on TalkShoe by Jeff Chandler (Jeffro2pt0), a good friend of this show, and he does a really good job with WordPress Weekly. We’ll likely talk a bit about phpBB Weekly, discussions on phpBB vs. WordPress from a code and/or interface standpoint, and maybe some of my experience with personal blogging (a subject that has nothing to do with phpBB whatsoever).

As a TalkShoe-based podcast, you can join-in to WordPress Weekly the same way you join in on our show (just use Call ID 34224 instead). Just wanted to mention it in case you’re interested in listening in!

Just a reminder, phpBB Weekly will NOT be live on January 10th or 17th. We will be releasing a non-live episode (#094) during the interim, and our next live episode will be on January 24th.
–Douglas Bell, Co-Host of phpBB Weekly

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Episode Duration: 1:15:09
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples), David Lewis (Highway of Life), and Eric Faerber (wGEric)

Eric Faerber returns for his second appearance on phpBB Weekly, and one which probably is a bit more informative than his first appearance was (and the blame for that can go directly to Douglas). It’s also the day after Douglas’ birthday, and so we do a short celebration for him as well. We also do our best to run the show while phpBB.com is down for “unexpected maintenance”, and we also launch a new feature on this episode: the phpBB Weekly Trivia Question.

During the interview with Eric, David mentions a few more new Support Team members, and mentions that Acyd Burn has confirmed that there will be an RC-6 release coming. We also take a look at the new hooks system that was recently added into CVS and will be coming out with phpBB3 RC-6 and ask what it means for MODs, and Douglas reiterates his wish for a WordPressish plugin system for the MODding of the future. We also talk about other new things for MODs in phpBB3, and then ask Eric some user-submitted questions about the MOD Team. Eric also reveals a couple of details of the upcoming EasyMOD for phpBB3 (Codename: Blinky).

Since phpBB.com was down, we had to take our MOD and Style of the Week off of Star Trek Guide, which is probably the best alternative. Anyway, the MOD of the Week is PM Alert Layer for phpBB3 by angelside, and the Style of the Week is Aqua Glass for phpBB3 by Trent.

Incidentally, if you would like to send your birthday wishes to Douglas, the Star Trek Guide folks have already setup a topic for that.

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

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Download MP3 Episode (38.4 MB)

Episode Duration: 1:07:01
On This Episode: Douglas Bell (Fountain of Apples) and David Lewis (Highway of Life)

This special non-live episode of phpBB Weekly was originally planned to be numbered as #023SE, but we had such a great discussion that it turned out to be a full show! This episode welcomes back David Lewis (Highway of Life), this time as our new co-host. We have a very extended discussion about the release of phpBB 3.0.RC3, David’s appearance on an SEO and Internet Tips Talkcast on TalkShoe (and his mention of phpBB Weekly), and about Douglas’ trip this weekend to WordCamp, along with doing a loose comparison between phpBB and the WordPress blogging platform. Enjoy this special episode, and join us on July 28th as we return to our regular live episodes of phpBB Weekly!

Additional links:
WordCamp 2007
Colorize It! by CyberAlien
phpBB3 Changelog
phpBB3 Bug Tracker
Remember to vote for phpBB in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards!