Welcome / About This Forum

[Zack C]

Our phpBB software version hasn't changed in the move; any missing capabilities are most likely the result of our previous host's customizations. Regardless, I'll attempt to update our software this weekend (the latest version is actually 3.2). The board may experience some disruption during that time. Since any security breaches will be my responsibility now, I intend to keep the software up-to-date going forward (our previous host was unable to do this due to their customizations).

Videos - YouTube, Vimeo - aren't displaying.

I'll look into this this weekend.

Mixed results on Google searches. They know we're here but a lot of links need tweaking.

Let me know about any links that don't work, minus the ones containing topic titles mentioned above.

Regarding your PM archiving efforts...had you installed MySQL, restored a backup of our database onto your computer, and learned some basic SQL, you could have written a query in minutes to get the information you want. Learning about databases may seen daunting at first, but with all the archiving and querying you do, you may find it worthwhile.

[Tad Eareckson]

The board may experience some disruption during that time.

It'll hafta be pretty ugly to bother me much relative to the Tapatalk takeover.

Regarding your PM archiving efforts...had you installed MySQL, restored a backup of our database onto your computer, and learned some basic SQL, you could have written a query in minutes to get the information you want.

Looking for a silver lining for my approach. Not coming up with much.

Learning about databases may seen daunting at first, but with all the archiving and querying you do, you may find it worthwhile.

Hope so. Right now by brain feels like it's on the verge of bursting or melting down. And there's still a lot of email traffic to deal with.

Thanks zillions again for all this. And don't put anything more worthwhile on a back burner for further forum tweaks. We're in pretty good operational shape now and can live with what we have for many weekends to come. Just be extra conscientious about looking both ways before crossing the street. And it's best to do that just prior to crossing rather than with the five or ten minute delay hang gliding insists upon using to interpret as just prior.

[Tad Eareckson]

Houston, we have a problem...

As we've said and/or noted we have some problems with our dated phpBB installation Version 3.0.11. The biggie, I thought until two days ago, was the issue with video embedding/display - 'specially non YouTube (mostly/all Vimeo). But I've been so happy to have gotten back out of the clutches of Tapatalk that my mindset has been "If it ain't broke too much...".

But I was also noticing that we weren't picking up any new membership applications. Not much of a big surprise 'cause our activity in terms multiple member participation peaked years ago and has tapered off as people have grasped understandings of The Industry's zero tolerance stance with respect to crash reporting, competence, responsibility, reform, decency. Our last legitimate registrant was cloudbased - 2017/07/11 03:08:50 UTC. But (s)he was also our last registrant of any kind - we haven't even gotten any spammers since then. And, yeah, that's not too long before Zack got us fixed - just over a year ago.

So then I logged out and tried to start the process of new member registration. Clicked that I agreed to these terms and immediately had a pile of "Fatal error" machine mumbo jumbo blow up in my face.

Probably not a great loss on the membership front. The forum's pretty much as open to a nonmember as it is to regular members. And moderators and other members aren't that hard to contact through other channels if anybody REALLY wanted in and that hasn't happened. (Right?)

But that also means that:
- I'd be unable to do anything to get anybody else registered
- bots may not be able to register as bots and unregistered bots artificially inflate our hit counts into the stratosphere

I started on the steps to upgrade but chickened out pretty quick. I'm afraid the jump from 3.0.11 all the way to 3.2.3 may be beyond my pay grade and suspect that going forward is a whole lot easier than going back. I'll be running to Zack shortly after posting this.

P.S. Benign. What you be after you be eight. (Thanks, Car Talk.) We'll benign in another nign days.

[Tad Eareckson]

Good News / Bad News...

Zack got our registration issue fixed but subsequently:

2018/11/15 02:39:17 UTC - loriejd3
2018/11/15 20:25:05 UTC - tolikkk
2018/11/15 21:21:31 UTC - ClementArchie
2018/11/16 02:02:55 UTC - Foxydoxyx
2018/11/16 02:36:51 UTC - DervolanP
2018/11/16 10:54:11 UTC - Wokaln

and we might get a legitimate registrant once or twice a year - if we're lucky. Those are spammers and that's an unprecedented rate. I was much happier when we were broken. Hopefully we can set something up whereby a legit can get in touch by contacting a member and be registered manually by a moderator (and just about all active members are also moderators).

Or maybe it's just a surge related to our suddenly becoming accessible again and not a new/real problem. Time should soon tell.

Hopefully, in whatever case, bots will be able to register as bots as the system's supposed to work - if that's not the situation already.

Videos...

Until a little while ago we were able to display YouTube videos. But in the Administration Control Panel I stumbled across POSTING > BBCodes > TAG > video, youtube. Thought I might be able to get ALL our videos displaying as before. Thinking I was just switching the youtube option off I clicked on its red X and deleted it. Thought I'd be able to restore it using the video entry as a model but that didn't happen. Hopefully that's something that Zack can fix in short order. (PLEASE!)

Zack says that while a phpBB upgrade to current would be desirable it's a big freakin' job that needs to be done by someone who knows what he's doing and he won't have time for some weeks to come. Fine, I could easily live with what we had a couple days ago for another year or more.

[Tad Eareckson]

As you've noticed if you've seen my/the most recent post in the TOPICS section:

http://www.kitestrings.org/post11188.html#p11188

Zack restored our YouTube display functionality. It was a helluva lotta code that he just grabbed off of a Google search return. And I wouldn't even know where to begin to be able to do that. But I've got it copied and saved and know how the buttons work now so much wider safety margins.

Picked up another three spammers since yesterday so I've "Disabled registration" - according to Zack's instructions. Anybody who wants in... See the second post in "Welcome", contact another member, convince us you and your interest are legit. Then we can open up a window for ten minutes or so.