Upgrading Forum

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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Indeed, it's easy until something goes wrong, but at least there is plenty of information out there related to it, although I eventually solved the issue all by myself so that was good for the ego. :)
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Fab
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Fab »

Your perseverance has paid off. And the new forum looks much better than the old one. So, congratulations!
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Hi Fab! It's nice to see some new messages, makes the upgrade worth while. :)

You had done some Zzap website stuff in Ruby and Rails a few years ago didn't you and then converted back to PHP?

I'm at the start of doing the ZzapBible V2 in RoR to keep my hand in RoR since I got made redundant from my RoR job last month. :(

If it was you, I remember you saying the DevOps stuff was a hassle, although I wanted to gain experience of the whole setup, so I have created a RoR server on Digital Ocean, along with fancy automatic deployments and everything! :)
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Professor Brian Strain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Professor Brian Strain »

Looks nicer... But I always hated when php updated it so avatars are on the RIGHT. Not natural.
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Yeap, I don't really like that either. I guess one will get used to it, but maybe it's an easy CSS change to just get them on the LHS of the message.

I think it's better to see the avatar of the person before you read their message (i.e. going form left to right), sure the name is there in text on the left but it's not as noticeable.
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Well, looks at that, it was just a profile float change from "right" to "left". Good 'ol CCS.

You may need to "shift" reload etc. to stop seeing the older cached version in your browser.

p.s. It does seem so much better having the profile back on the left hand side. :) Thanks for bringing it up Professor!
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Mayhem
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Mayhem »

Hopefully same as usual then, good work!
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Email sending is working again, so password resets, notice of private messages etc. should be all good. I think I will try to open new registrations again with better countermeasures.... but I'm a bit afraid!!
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Registration is open again with image thingy and admin check. It only took a few minutes for the first spam one to come though, so I guess the image check isn't too hard to get through. Will try something else...
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Mayhem
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Mayhem »

We found asking very specific questions about the subject matter of the forum on a couple boards I admin really put off a lot of spammers...
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

Yeap, I had one about Zzap and Ludlow before but that only worked for a while. I now have a number of questions related to the subject matter, so hopefully that'll stop them for a bit, I also have an admin check before they are actually registered, it's more hassle for real people but I don't think they'll be too many new people looking to register anyway, so hopefully not too much of an issue.

I think the bots use search engine to try and guess the answers to questions as well, or maybe refer them to a real person and it seems once one bot has it, they all have it...
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Mayhem
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Mayhem »

I think we’ve got multiple questions on one forum, so the answer won’t always be the same heh.
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Iain
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Iain »

These bots are smart cookies, interesting from a programming point of view, pity they are used for evil. Maybe they will become self aware and rebel against their evil overlords!! ;-)

Next step is to reduce / remove some of the crawler type bots that seem to be here all the time and aren't from search engines and then I have to try and ban IP ranges from the Russian bots. They must be using the vast percentage of my bandwidth these days. At least it's a fixed price for a fixed amount.
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Fab
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Re: Upgrading Forum

Post by Fab »

Iain wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 1:06 pm I got made redundant from my RoR job last month. :(
Nooo, so sad to hear. Good luck for the future, and hopefully you'll have an occasion to improve your RoR skills (and upgrade this site)
Iain wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 1:06 pm You had done some Zzap website stuff in Ruby and Rails a few years ago didn't you and then converted back to PHP?
Sadly I have no RoR experience, and very limited sysadmin experience, even though I'd like to help
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