Way back in 2009 phpbb.com was hacked via an exposure in the phplist mailing list software. (Just to be very clear, there was no exploit found in the phpBB code used to run the site, only this supplementary program used to run the email notification system.) One of the results of the hack of phpbb.com was that several thousand user passwords were exposed and posted on the Internet. They were exposed, frankly, because they were too simple, and that’s not phpBB’s fault. More…

No more blog posts from me for the rest of the year, as I will be taking some time off. See y’all next year! Happy holidays, and wishes of happiness and success to you and yours in the new year.

Some hosts overload their servers. No, really, it’s true. I know some of you know this, but many people don’t and are quite surprised when they ask me see what I can do to improve the performance of their board. One of the first things I do before taking on a client with this type of request is run a check to see how many other sites are hosted on the same server. If the number is over 100, I don’t bother doing much other than telling the potential client to get a better host. How do you find this out? It’s not hard, really.

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I was taking to someone via IM the other day about phpBB. This person runs a board that is fairly active and caters to a certain demographic that from what I can tell more challenging than some others to manage. During the conversation they mentioned that at one point they were talking to someone else who ran a similar board, and that person linked them to an article that they had read about separating the admin duties from regular participation on the board.

The link was the “Don’t Log In as Administrator” post that I made on the Doctor Board some time back. If you haven’t read it, the point of the article is that you should not make your user name (your “regular” user name) an admin account. Set up a separate account, even call it “Administrator”, so you can post whatever you want as your own account and then do the board management as the administrator account.

Anyway, the point was this other person had no idea the person they were talking to had already been using me for some small services for their board. It was quite rewarding for me, actually, as I never know who might be visiting or what sort of value they might be getting from my site. It’s nice to know that someone finds my ramblings useful.

So, it has started. I have a watch flag set on all of my MOD topics at phpbb.com (naturally) and I got one the other day for the release topic for Page Permissions. When I visited the link, it was from someone who wanted to know if the MOD was going to be updated for phpBB3.

I told them that the answer currently was “No.”

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I incorrectly reported that RC1 of phpBB3 was out some time back… when in fact all the phpBB Group had done was switch to the new prosilver style. I’ve just returned from a conference in Germany to find that RC1 is now, in fact, out. They have also started MOD Requests/Development/Writer Discussion forums for phpBB3 as well.

I’ll post more about what this means to me personally and to the phpBBDoctor.com in a future post. I’m still thinking.

We’ve closed out the end of 2006, and I felt like reflecting back on some of the events of the year. Some things that happened, some things that didn’t… the usual stuff. More…

With apologies to Anne Rice for borrowing a title…

A few days ago I was approached by someone I had met on phpbb.com with the idea of doing an interview. My first response was… “who, me?” followed by… “why me?” More…

Here’s another teaser about an upcoming offering from the phpBB Doctor: our MOD Compatibility Engineâ„¢ or MOD CE. This system is built off of the foundation provided by our MOD Managerâ„¢ mentioned in a prior post. This system is designed to check to see if a collection of MODs are compatible with each other, meaning it checks to see whether they can all be installed at the same time. More…

There are several main challenges that I’ve identified over the years as a MOD writer. This list is by no means exhaustive, and I welcome comments or additional feedback. The challenges are:

1. Design
2. Write
3. Document
4. Support
5. Update

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