FORUMS HAVE BEEN UPGRADED -- SEE INSIDE FOR WHAT'S CHANGED
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- Gambit37
- Should eat more pies
- Posts: 13715
- Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
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FORUMS HAVE BEEN UPGRADED -- SEE INSIDE FOR WHAT'S CHANGED
Hi all
Just to let you know that I will be doing some maintenance work on the forums this weekend. I do not know how long it will take. If the forums are unavailable, please try again in a few hours.
Admins: You can still login during this process but I recommend you don't! Things might be broken temporarily.
Just to let you know that I will be doing some maintenance work on the forums this weekend. I do not know how long it will take. If the forums are unavailable, please try again in a few hours.
Admins: You can still login during this process but I recommend you don't! Things might be broken temporarily.
Last edited by Gambit37 on Fri Mar 21, 2008 2:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
- Gambit37
- Should eat more pies
- Posts: 13715
- Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
- Location: Location, Location
- Contact:
Hi all
Everything went pretty smoothly, although I did spend over 12 hours on this today. My eyes are very sore.... At one point I thought I'd lost the entire database but luckily I panicked before actually testing things fully. It was a real "Phew!" moment! You shouldda been here....
So, here's what's changed:
1) Guest posting has been disabled - if anyone has a problem registering, they will need to email an admin -- I've updated that post accordingly. Beo, please add your email address too in the obscured format shown.
2) A new Textual Confirmation has been added to the user registration process. Questions and answers can be added in the Admin section, at the moment there are only three very simple questions. Feel free to suggest some! Visual Confirmation CAPTCHA has been disabled. When a registration fails, the main board Admin will get an email and an email is also sent to a central database to be added to a list of known spammers if it's valid spam. So I've changed the board email address from Cows to me as I'm probably much better positioned to deal with this.
3) Spoiler tags have finally been added! Simply wrap your text with [ spoiler ][/ spoiler ] (without spaces) to have it hidden in a blue bar. When displayed, rolling your mouse cursor over the text with show it. For some reason the Spoiler button doesn't appear in the Quick Reply box, but you can still write the tags manually in there and they will work. Note that they are a lot prettier in Firefox/Safari/Opera than IE. Example:
4) A fix for Firefox has been applied to stop problems in the Admin section with it replacing a different user's password with your own stored password.
5) EasyMod has been installed which should make it easier and quicker in future to add new MODS.
6) Admin User List: One for the Admins, this allows you to easily set ban/unban/activate/delete users from one central screen.
7) Although multiple skins are no longer available, I have cleaned up the subSilver default so that it's a bit crisper and the text is larger. I also added back in some of my other customisations, such as the Quicklinks and minor formatting tweaks. I'll probably make the skin much more "DM like" in future but that can wait.
That's it! Hopefully the new security will stop spammers -- the main reason for the upgrade.
Everything went pretty smoothly, although I did spend over 12 hours on this today. My eyes are very sore.... At one point I thought I'd lost the entire database but luckily I panicked before actually testing things fully. It was a real "Phew!" moment! You shouldda been here....
So, here's what's changed:
1) Guest posting has been disabled - if anyone has a problem registering, they will need to email an admin -- I've updated that post accordingly. Beo, please add your email address too in the obscured format shown.
2) A new Textual Confirmation has been added to the user registration process. Questions and answers can be added in the Admin section, at the moment there are only three very simple questions. Feel free to suggest some! Visual Confirmation CAPTCHA has been disabled. When a registration fails, the main board Admin will get an email and an email is also sent to a central database to be added to a list of known spammers if it's valid spam. So I've changed the board email address from Cows to me as I'm probably much better positioned to deal with this.
3) Spoiler tags have finally been added! Simply wrap your text with [ spoiler ][/ spoiler ] (without spaces) to have it hidden in a blue bar. When displayed, rolling your mouse cursor over the text with show it. For some reason the Spoiler button doesn't appear in the Quick Reply box, but you can still write the tags manually in there and they will work. Note that they are a lot prettier in Firefox/Safari/Opera than IE. Example:
Spoiler
This is a funky new spoiler! Hope you like it!
5) EasyMod has been installed which should make it easier and quicker in future to add new MODS.
6) Admin User List: One for the Admins, this allows you to easily set ban/unban/activate/delete users from one central screen.
7) Although multiple skins are no longer available, I have cleaned up the subSilver default so that it's a bit crisper and the text is larger. I also added back in some of my other customisations, such as the Quicklinks and minor formatting tweaks. I'll probably make the skin much more "DM like" in future but that can wait.
That's it! Hopefully the new security will stop spammers -- the main reason for the upgrade.
Thank you very much for your many hours of hard work!
Even just logged into the admin now (goodness knows what was happening there) and it all seemed cool. Theuser list will defintiely help, need to look at it more to see the limits of it!
Anyway, get some sleep - it's almost 3.30am!
And thanks very muchly again. Here's hoping no more nasty spammer posts!
Even just logged into the admin now (goodness knows what was happening there) and it all seemed cool. Theuser list will defintiely help, need to look at it more to see the limits of it!
Anyway, get some sleep - it's almost 3.30am!
And thanks very muchly again. Here's hoping no more nasty spammer posts!
- cowsmanaut
- Moo Master
- Posts: 4378
- Joined: Fri Jun 30, 2000 12:53 am
- Location: canada
- ChristopheF
- Encyclopedist
- Posts: 1538
- Joined: Sun Oct 24, 1999 2:36 pm
- Location: France
- Contact:
Thanks for your time!
While not very DM, I find the subsilver theme is quite nice in fact.
While not very DM, I find the subsilver theme is quite nice in fact.
Christophe - Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia
- Gambit37
- Should eat more pies
- Posts: 13715
- Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
- Location: Location, Location
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I've cleaned it up a lot. This is a default subSilver install:
http://www.styleswarehouse.com/phpbb2_d ... ilver.html
http://www.styleswarehouse.com/phpbb2_d ... ilver.html
- ChristopheF
- Encyclopedist
- Posts: 1538
- Joined: Sun Oct 24, 1999 2:36 pm
- Location: France
- Contact:
Indeed your changes make it nicer. The default subSilver looks more dated, less polished, while still nice enough for me.
Christophe - Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia
- Gambit37
- Should eat more pies
- Posts: 13715
- Joined: Wed May 31, 2000 1:57 pm
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Sorry, nope, I ended up modding the default install and because all the mods and patches are now bound in to the template, I'd have to do the work twice which is what I'm trying to avoid.
As noted, effort on new skins is wasted if we will upgrade to v3 anyway. These upgrades were for security purposes and to get some better control over the mess the forums had become (in the backend). I still intend to upgrade to v3 once it's a bit more road-tested by the wider phpBB community.
As noted, effort on new skins is wasted if we will upgrade to v3 anyway. These upgrades were for security purposes and to get some better control over the mess the forums had become (in the backend). I still intend to upgrade to v3 once it's a bit more road-tested by the wider phpBB community.
- Sophia
- Concise and Honest
- Posts: 4240
- Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2002 9:50 pm
- Location: Nowhere in particular
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Hehe, I've been using phpBB3 on a different board for about 6 months now. The level of use is quite a bit lower than here, but it seems to work nicely. The administrator controls are a little wonky (it took me way too long to figure out how to allow myself to make sticky posts) but I like the security and stuff-- haven't had a single spammer!
Of course when you're supposed to see letters in something that looks like Salvador Dali vomited all over a bunch of legos, I guess the spambots don't have a chance.
Of course when you're supposed to see letters in something that looks like Salvador Dali vomited all over a bunch of legos, I guess the spambots don't have a chance.