Hello Guest :hello:

In this issue of Star Trek Guide Subspace communication relay
Sixth Edition of the Subspace Communication Newsletter
RC7 Released, Handyman Invited to the MOD Team, phpBB Weekly coming to Skypecast, DavidMJ Special Guest
phpBB3 Release Candidate 7 (RC7) released
Important Security updates with the new RC7 release.
Congratulations to Handyman!!
Welcome the newest member of the phpBB.com Modifications Team
Switching from Talkshoe to Skypecasts - Guest DavidMJ
phpBB Weekly Episode #38 coming to Skypecast Today
[phpBB Weekly] Any questions for DavidMJ?
Don't miss this opportunity to speak with a developer of phpBB3, DavidMJ.
Security Update: AJAX Chat 2.0.0 Beta
Important Security Update for the AJAX Chat MOD
MOD of the Week: Filebase 2.0.RC3
Adds the possiblity to allow groups to upload files which are managed in categories



Sixth Edition of the Subspace Communication Newsletter

by Highway of Life on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 00:55

Greetings phpBB Fans!

I?m writing to you once again while driving, this time I?m going back to Nashville from Dallas Texas. ~ Handyman and I just finished our onsite contract with the company we?ve been working for and we now begin our offsite contract, working for the same company.

We have an exciting Newsletter this month, many new things since I wrote you last.
First, its that time again, time for another upgrade.

phpBB3 RC7 Released
However, by now I?m sure most of you have heard about the most recent pair of RC releases a few weeks ago.
But for those of you who may not have heard yet, RC6 was released on October 6th followed by an RC7 release the very next day.
Titled the ?We are sorry and love our support team? edition, RC7 was released after some critical bugs were discovered in the RC6 release.

Many users reported some issues upgrading to RC7 from an earlier version of phpBB3, I highlighted a few of the issues in one of the posts below so you can see at a glance what to do if you have had difficulty upgrading to RC7.
This was probably the bumpiest upgrade since the Release Candidate stage of phpBB3, with many individuals posting support questions. -- Fortunately, most of the support requests were rather common so it was fairly simple for most folks to find a solution to their problem.
Despite the difficulties with the upgrade, this Release Candidate brought on some of the best changes within phpBB3 core that we?ve seen in a while with a host of security improvements performed as a result of the Security Audit completed in the phpBB3 core.
I believe now that version 3 will gain phpBB a good reputation for the quality of the code, it?s stability and security. Competing now with the best Web-Application software out there for secure, solid code.

Also this week, StarTrekGuide has an exciting announcement to make...

Handyman is Invited to MOD Team
My brother, Handyman, has been invited to the phpBB.com Modifications Team as of Sunday. This is very special for both of us, and great for me, because it means I can stop keeping secrets from him. :D If you would like to Congratulate Handyman, please do so in This topic.

phpBB Weekly #038 Will Come to You Via Skypecasting
In a move of frustration and desperation, Douglas (Webmacster87 / Fountain of Apples) and I have decided to have phpBB Weekly Podcast episode #38 on Skypecast instead of Talkshoe this week.
The reason being that both Douglas and I have been frustrated with the performance and technical difficulties of Talkshoe recently. -- Audio Quality has been a long time problem with Talkshoe, bad enought sometimes that overseas listeners couldn't participate in the show and had to wait until the download was posted before they could listen in.
And the second reason being both of us have had such horrendous Technical Difficulties the last few weeks where we couldn?t even run the Talkshoe client.
You can read more about this move below.

Special Guest: DavidMJ from the Development Team
Some of you may recall that phpBB Weekly Podcast episode #34, DavidMJ was supposed to join us but had a family ermergency. He?s back now and has agreed to guest host episode #38 this weekend.
If you have a question you?ve been dying to ask a developer, or would like to hear about phpBB3 directly from the top, this will be a great opportunity to do so. If you are not able to make it to the show, please submit your questions, and we will be sure to ask them to DavidMJ.

Googlebot Posting on your AJAX Chatbox
We?ve had some recent reports of ?Googlebot? posting on users AJAX Chatbox.
This is a regular user masking himself as a Googlebot (or ask jeeves bot) and is not actually Googlebot.
However, Handyman has released an update to the AJAX Chatbox that disables the ability for anyone masking as a Bot to post.
This update is encouraged for all users.

And finally, to top of this long newsletter, the guys over at Joomla! had some awesome things to say about the Joomla!/phpBB Team Meet in London and the phpBB3 code they have been working with, I encourage everyone to go checkout the blog post from our friends at Joomla!

Well, thats all for now, 11 hours later, I?m just finally arriving in Nashville now, been a long trip and I?m exhousted, but hopefully I didn?t exhoust you with this Newsletter. :D

Until next time,
- David "Highway of Life" Lewis

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Highway of Life
Highway of Life
STG Jedi Master


phpBB3 Release Candidate 7 (RC7) released

by Acyd Burn on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 00:55

Hello,

We are very pleased to announce the availability of the phpBB3 RC7 package, the "We are sorry and love our support team" edition. This release fixes some critical issues which arised with the recently released Release Candidate 6, basically fixing some bbcode problems as well as missing form tokens. On the downloads page we provide two update packages this time, one for going from RC5 to RC7 and one for going from RC6 to RC7.

This release is mostly the outcome of an external security audit performed by SektionEins. All items tagged as [Sec] were found by the company doing the audit and revealed some fundamental problems we were able to fix. We are proud that the audit revealed no sql injection vulnerability or critical command execution vulnerabilities.

For release candidates full support is given, allowing language packs as well as modifications and styles. We only give support to those having a clean RC installation or updates from previous release candidates. Previous conversions or updates from betas will not be supported here. We encourage only those running the release candidates wanting to test out the new version, it is still recommended to wait for the full release; after all this is a release candidate.
Please also note that we urge you to update - we only support the latest version. Bug reports submitted for previous releases will be closed as well as only the latest version being supported here.

RC6/RC7 has seen some improvements as well as fixing some security issues. Some important fixes are:

Read More...

Acyd Burn
phpBB Team Member


Congratulations to Handyman!!

by John Hjorth on Saturday, November 03rd, 2007 23:55

New MOD Team member!! :yahoo: :clapping:

Read More...

John Hjorth
John Hjorth
STG Moderator


Switching from Talkshoe to Skypecasts - Guest DavidMJ

by Highway of Life on Tuesday, November 06th, 2007 00:55

Switching to Skypecasts
Douglas and I will be switching phpBB Weekly Podcast from Talkshoe live to Skypecasts starting this Saturday.
After a series technical difficulties and users complaining about the quality of the podcasts, Douglas and I decided that it would be best to switch to a better hosting solution.

Thanks to Techie-Michael, who pointed out that Skypecasts exist, this Saturday, phpBB Weekly will be held live over Skype as a "Skypecast".
Handyman and I have already tested this solution and it seems to work very well. -- Douglas and I will perform final testing on Thursday and Friday.
Anyone with a Skype application can now join in by clicking on the link to join into the podcast.
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts ... lk=3558812

Daylight Savings Time Change
Due to Daylight Savings Time change in the US this past Sunday, please pay attention to the time the show will begin this Saturday.
Start time will be: Saturday November 10th at 17:00 UTC, 12:00 noon Eastern (EST), 9:00 am Pacific, 17:00 (5pm) London time.
Click here to view the start time for your timezone.

Special Guest: DavidMJ - phpBB.com Development Team
If you have never listened to a phpBB Weekly Podcast live, now is a great opportunity to do so.
We will have a very special guest with us this Saturday: DavidMJ from the Development Team. -- Do not miss this great opportunity to catch a chance to Speak with one of the Development Team Members who is the heart and soul of phpBB3, Be there to ask him questions and let him know what you think about phpBB3, good and bad. Or just listen in to hear DavidMJ talk about some of the major improvements in phpBB3 and perhaps some facts and information that has not been revealed publicly until the show on Saturday. ~~ Please try to be there if you can, you won?t want to miss it.

We hope to see all of you there!!

EDIT

phpBB Weekly #038 Will Come to You Via Skypecasting
Webmacster87 wrote:Per my last post on Sunday, David and I have decided to test out an episode on a new service from Skype called Skypecasts in the hopes that it will be a more viable and reliable service than TalkShoe. Again, this will primarily be a test, and we will decide after the fact whether we want to permanently move our show to Skype?s new network.
So, if you want to be here on Saturday, what do you need to do? Well, on Saturday, the phpBB Weekly Skypecasts page will have a ?Join this Skypecast? link. You will need to have a Skype account and have downloaded the latest version of Skype for this to work.
Skypecasts does not include a chat room, so we will be congregating on irc.freenode.net in the #phpbb-weekly channel. I will also try to keep my eyes on the Star Trek Guide chatbox as well.
We will not be participating in the TalkShoe Live! chat room, however as a courtesy to our regular TalkShoe streamers, I will try to hook the Skypecasts call in with TalkShoe so that you can listen to the call through TalkShoe?s live stream. Of course, this assumes that TalkShoe cooperates, I?m able to get Skypecasts to connect to the TalkShoe phone number, and I?m only guaranteeing that we will do this for this particular episode.
Also, unless there?s some hidden button or setting that I can?t find until David points me to it, Skypecasts is really nothing more than a public Skype conference call, which means that if you call in, you will be live immediately. Therefore, please make my life so much easier by calling in with headphones in order to prevent echo and background noise, otherwise, I?ll have to stop what I?m saying to scroll through the list and find out who?s making the gossip in order to mute them. I don?t know, if we end up using Skypecasts, we may end up having to hire someone to be an ad hoc call screener. :/
Have any questions about this Saturday?s setup? Leave a note in the comments below or go to the phpBB Weekly forum topic. Also, for those of you who do participate in the show live, we will be asking you to post your feedback in the phpBB Weekly forum (with a feedback link to be announced during the show) to help us decide if we want to make the switch.
Again, thank you for working with us as we evaluate this transition. Going through these growing pains now will help us make phpBB Weekly a better show in the future.

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Highway of Life
Highway of Life
STG Jedi Master


[phpBB Weekly] Any questions for DavidMJ?

by webmacster87 on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 23:55

Well, here we go again. This weekend, we've got phpBB Developer DavidMJ on phpBB Weekly (between him and Highway of Life, I'll probably have a hard time with the two different Davids!) to talk all about phpBB3. Do you have any questions that you would like us to ask him? (Or, if you plan to be on the show live, perhaps you would like to call in and ask them yourself!)

This is a rare chance to get to talk virtually face-to-face with one of the phpBB Developers, make your voice heard!

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webmacster87
webmacster87
Lieutenant


Security Update: AJAX Chat 2.0.0 Beta

by Handyman on Saturday, November 10th, 2007 02:10

AJAX Chat MOD 2.0.0 Beta 8 Released.

This version addresses a security issue where guests and users posing as Bots (i.e. Googlebot) were able to post.
Also, a MOD Version Check has been added to this MOD, so you can see when an update is available.

View the MOD Topic for upgrade instructions to upgrade from previous versions.

This version is not final? you will see at least 1-2 RC's before final release.

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Handyman
Handyman
Rear Fleet Admiral


MOD of the Week: Filebase 2.0.RC3

by jumper85 on Monday, September 24th, 2007 23:55

Classification: Add-on
phpBB Part: Full script

MOD Name: Filebase
MOD Version: 2.0.0 RC3
Author: jumper85
MOD Description: Adds the possiblity to allow groups to upload files which are managed in categories

Works with:
  • phpBB 3.0 RC4 +
  • MySQL >= 4.1

Works not with:
  • MySQL 4.0

Features for users
  • User can upload files and preview images
  • User can comment and rate files
  • Files can be downloaded, or reported if the are illegal oder broken
  • Statistics
  • User can create password protected files *new*
  • It's possible to upload files with same name in different categorys *new*
  • User can only upload, if limit is not reached, or no limit is set *new*
  • Uploadform renewed *new*
  • Navigation like in forum *new*
  • Template completely new
  • Direct link to user who uploaded the file *new*

Features for admin
  • Admin can add user defined fields
  • Admin can manage categories, files and general settings over ACP
  • Admin can give groups the right to edit comments
  • New rights for downloading, adding comments and creating password protected files
  • Password protection alloweable for all, for special groups, or none *new*
  • Categorys can be sorted manually to special order or alphabetical or by date *new*
  • User- and/or groupquota (limit) can be set *new*
  • You can add as many external server as you like (to upload files to this server, you need an ftp user) *new*
  • External server can be changed and deleted *new*
  • Better structure of categorys and subcategorys in ACP (files are better distinguishable)
  • Files can be locked and dislocked *new*

Read More...

jumper85
jumper85
MOD Author