Site has been converted to SMF

[sheepdog]

After a week and a half battle (when I wasn't working) trying to find a converter that worked, and crashing the forum today... We are now on SMF, a more modern forum software than we were using. This one has some serious spam fighting ability and I will be working with the staff on how to manage bans and such.

As you can tell the look is a forum default, I will be working on that as well.
As for the logo contest, that is still on and I will be contacting the winner shortly as I settle things in. I still have another forum to deal with as well, but now that I have a working system I can finally progress.

As some of you may have noticed the URL has changed, old links will no longer work, sorry about that. On the other hand, attachments DO work. Something that has been broken for a looong time. With luck it will stop some of the double posting as well.


A lot still needs to take place, and you may find some hiccups, but I am working on it.
I am still settling some permissions and such, and things still need some tweaking.
A thanks system is installed
Tapatalk is installed
Hardcore anti-spam is installed (still need to process current members to remove existing spammers)
A new theme will be installed with the new logo

By the way, you will have to enter your password twice to log in the first time, but after that all will be fine.

[sheepdog]

The new spam system was run on registered users and miss-identified about a dozen people as spammers, which I caught. However, this pales in comparison to the 7000(!) it did catch. Even if it does this to legitimate new registrations, that is one out of every 500 or so, and spread over time that false positive is actually even less due to how the system works. Anyhow, the user database has been purged of these cretins.

This was something the former forum was unable to do.

Tomorrow I will work on setting up the looks, settling the logo contest and writing some tutorials for the staff on how to ban spammers. Though, they most likely will figure it out as this new one is much easier and will block known spammers from even seeing the registration page and those it only suspects as spammers are placed in a holding area to be approved by staff.

All of this means less spammers, less visible spam, and less work for the staff.

[danlolasdad]

will the forum get the old look or layout back? tapatalk is a problem for me today too

[sheepdog]

Tapatalk had issues first when I accidentally crashed the old forum during testing, and after the conversion, when I didn't realize I had to turn it on after installing it. Should be fine now.

It was a lot of things that had to be done to get things working, and that took priority over how the forum looks. I will be incorporating some of the old as well as some new into the look later today. It will be different from before but won't be a massive change.

This is just the default theme for the software, I just needed a break and to get some sleep.

[deansweet]

A sincere Thank you! for all yours and others who worked on it as well!

It is appreciated.
No double posts! 

[bme30]

Thanks!

[colin86325]

Thanks for the hard work!


BTW, when you do a Google search, the threads that it unearths result in 404 errors.  In other words, is there a way to restore the old links that I have saved?

[sheepdog]

Thanks for the hard work!


BTW, when you do a Google search, the threads that it unearths result in 404 errors.  In other words, is there a way to restore the old links that I have saved?

Unfortunately, no, this forum links pages entirely different.
However, the thread id number may actually interchange, if you copy out the thread id from the url, you may be able to convert it.

It shouldn't be giving 404 errors from Google, and it's probably related to the htaccess file problem I had. Once I get that solved, any links to the old forum will go to the index here. Not as good as a link to the thread itself, but at least it's not a 404. Google links should be fixed in a few days regardless, as they regularly come though here.

[sheepdog]

Anti-spam update (sorry, but I love seeing these guys get shut down)

I just looked at the anti spam system, in just under an hour and a half, it caught 60 spam registration attempts, one every minute and a half. That doesn't even count the .ru registrations I blocked. With the old system we had no way of seeing just how many were even trying, all we saw was what got through. Now we can see not only how many were blocked, but also how many were able to register but were blocked once they entered their info. You can't spam if you can't get in the door.

This is what any decent site this size deals with on a daily basis.


I have actually slackened the registration requirements, the captcha is easier now and there is no Q&A.  Before anyone freaks, here is why. The best bots are so good at this point that they can beat captcha easier than human, so a complex captcha is just making it hard on people. As for questions, like captcha it can stop some bots, but to stop all of them, it can again make it hard on people.  In the next few years, computers will get to the point where they can defeat any system we can put in place, and therefore username, IP and email are the only way to stop them going forwards unless we start requiring actual real names on the internet along with verification, and frankly, I oppose that whole Idea.

As such, all we are now using is simple captcha and email verification. However this system compares username, email, and IP address against a known spammer database. If it's clearly a spammer, they never even get to the register page. If it's questionable, as in still waiting for more complaints, it goes to a holding area. The old system did this to some extent, but not as well and like I said, we couldn't see how effective it was.

[keflaman]

I also appreciate the hard work and lack of sleep in making the transition from the old system to this one. I'd rather go without Facebook than my M42Club!

[DesktopDave]

Excellent work.  Seems that most of the really important stuff is just as easy to do & SMF seems faster as well.

Less spammers means more time to read, post & help out other M42 drivers...sweet!

[sheepdog]

Thanks guys.

I think the major theme-ing and work is done, I may add some small touches and details to fix, but for the most part this will be the new look. If you spot anything wrong, give it a few minutes, I may be working on it, but if it stays, let me know. I have checked the site with Chrome, Firefox and IE, as unregistered, registered and admin accounts, all seems fine, but things can show up later.

[danlolasdad]

ok spotted the recently unread topics option on top right i was going to ask for that ;0 what about a button for subscribed threads?

[sheepdog]

ok spotted the recently unread topics option on top right i was going to ask for that ;0 what about a button for subscribed threads?

I'm not sure how that works, or if it;s even supported but I will look into it.

[danlolasdad]

This is what I meant like the old site

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/--Rxfy1v37GA/UT5m9a_0lBI/AAAAAAAAAPc/C_Wp8ocplZw/s640/quick%2520links.jpg