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New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:04 pm
by Ryme
As everyone should notice rather quickly, I upgraded the forums. I'm struggling mightily in the first few minutes just sorting out icons and such, but I'm gonna give it a few days and see what happens.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:05 pm
by Ryme
Oh: what I forgot to say was, if anyone sees anything that looks broken or abusable, please let me know.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 6:56 pm
by neocamp22
Cool!

I was quite confused for a minute >.>

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:09 pm
by Satan
I kinda wish we could get the old skin back, since this one's the same as I use on SR and it makes it hard to tell with just a glance which forum I'm on now >.>

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:14 pm
by Olaf
Satan wrote:I kinda wish we could get the old skin back, since this one's the same as I use on SR and it makes it hard to tell with just a glance which forum I'm on now >.>
I kinda wish we had a different one just because this one's too blue and cheery. :/
Also, look into the "avatars to the left side" plugin, maybe?

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:35 pm
by Ryme
Is that a little better? It's not quite what we had before, but it's a bit closer.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:38 pm
by Olaf
Jolly good, ol' chap.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:40 pm
by neocamp22
Yeah, I like it. It's easier on the eyes.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:41 pm
by TheK3vin
Sexy.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 8:53 pm
by Cristiona
Does this mean we can use CAPTCHA and such so you don't need to personally approve accounts any more?

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 8:57 pm
by Ryme
Probably not. I got my first spambot account literally two minutes after upgrading the forums, and I've gotten two more in the last hour. Spambots know how to beat this stuff. I think we're still going to get ~50 junk accounts a day, unfortunately.

On the bright side I've done a much better job of modifying the confirmation page on the forums and the activation email to make it clearer for people what they need to do, and I've got a pretty good system for activations. I only get a couple per week, so I can handle it easily. For now.

Edited to add: I'll keep testing for a day with the captcha, but at this rate I'm inclined to just turn it off, since it's not helping much.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:08 pm
by neocamp22
Are there any more successful alternatives out there we should look into? I've seen signups that have a text box and some extremely easy question which I imagine changes for every signup. I imagine that would be extremely effective...

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:16 pm
by MagiNinjA
Or a different type of CAPTCHA.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:19 pm
by TheK3vin
You could try xkcd's approach: http://xkcd.com/233/

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:20 pm
by Cristiona
Grr. Gotta get used to links not opening in a new window...

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:27 pm
by TheK3vin
Hm. I always middle-click links anyway. It's much easier.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:35 pm
by Cristiona
Work browser is set to force things that would open new windows to open in new tabs, so I've gotten lazy about it.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 9:50 pm
by Olaf
For some reason, it looks like you have a different captcha running than both I and Soul Raver have (the only phpbb3's I knew off the top of my head). After checking, under "Visual confirmation settings", there's "GD CAPTCHA", which is supposedly better. Or, if you want to be fancy, there's Asirra, though I've still yet to find an easy way to stick it in phpbb.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:05 pm
by Corrupt Shadow
Ryme, do what I did, and delete all the [Bot] users. They're a two-edged sword really.

This style is pretty sweet.
This style is more... "black" though.

Whatever, you can see more styles here, Ryme.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:08 pm
by MagiNinjA
No, I'd rather keep them to know who all my users are, if they are users.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:12 pm
by Corrupt Shadow
MagiNinjA wrote:No, I'd rather keep them to know who all my users are, if they are users.
Huh?

Well, if you just want to hide them from the "Who's Online" list:

1. Open includes/functions.php, find this:

Code: Select all

if (($row['session_viewonline']) || $auth->acl_get('u_viewonline')) 
2. and replace with this:

Code: Select all

if (($row['session_viewonline'] || $auth->acl_get('u_viewonline')) && $row['user_type'] <> USER_IGNORE) 
After this change only administrators will use bots in list of online users, other users won't see them.

Oh, also, I'd also do the following:
1. Turn off the attachment function (unless you want your server space to fill up rapidly)
2. Increase the posts-per-page limit.
3. Prune all 0-post users.

...but that's just me.


Corrupt Shadow will now shut up.

Re: New forums

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2009 10:18 pm
by Cristiona
Re: Styles

I don't mind having a zillion styles added, as long as the defaults are always available. Many style creators seem to try and make things as busy as possible (just like FF skin makers), and 99% of them give me a searing headache after about 10 seconds because they have no concept of color matching or understanding that "cool" and "easy on the eyes" frequently don't play well together. I may not like the defaults, but they're bearable.

Personally, the more minimalist the better as far as I'm concerned.

Re: New forums

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 7:46 am
by Hannahmaus
I love it! It's wonderful! Thank you so much! Huge improvement, mostly because the latest-unread-post-link works properly, plus I don't get dust all over my pc from the ancient phpbb2.

Re: New forums

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 10:16 am
by Corrupt Shadow
Hannahmaus wrote:...mostly because the latest-unread-post-link works properly...
It worked properly for me on the old phpBB2.

Re: New forums

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 8:41 pm
by Ryme
Cristiona wrote:Does this mean we can use CAPTCHA and such so you don't need to personally approve accounts any more?
Just to follow up, 35 spambots in 24 hours. That's basically just as bad as it was before. I'm going to go ahead and turn off the captcha, since it's no obstacle for bots, but it's a pain for people.

Re: New forums

Posted: Wed Feb 11, 2009 11:39 pm
by Satan
Really, Bamse? My SR forums, which have little activity at all, just started getting tons of spam accounts about a week ago as well, where before there were none. Maybe it does have something to do with the hacking.

Re: New forums

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 4:09 am
by Hannahmaus
Corrupt Shadow wrote:
Hannahmaus wrote:...mostly because the latest-unread-post-link works properly...
It worked properly for me on the old phpBB2.
Ah then it must just have been me, and Chineselegolas (with the same problem on 2 other forums), and the people who wrote the phpBB2 mod that fixes the problem.

Re: New forums

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 4:32 am
by Cristiona
They seem to be mobile-device friendly. Automatically resized itself when I took a look on my phone.

Re: New forums

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 6:23 am
by Corrupt Shadow
Hannahmaus wrote:Ah then it must just have been me, and Chineselegolas (with the same problem on 2 other forums), and the people who wrote the phpBB2 mod that fixes the problem.
Yay for sarcasm. All I saying is that it worked for me. Used it all the time. [sarcasm] But I guess there's just NO possible way it doesn't affect EVERYONE! [/sarcasm]

Re: New forums

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 7:25 am
by Ryme
Easy there buddy. I think the bug affected a large number of players. It may not have affected you, but everyone else is happy. Let them be happy.

Re: New forums

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2009 8:04 am
by Corrupt Shadow
Corrupt Shadow will now shut up.

Re: New forums

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 1:38 pm
by Ryme
Corrupt Shadow wrote:
1. Open includes/functions.php, find this:

Code: Select all

if (($row['session_viewonline']) || $auth->acl_get('u_viewonline')) 
2. and replace with this:

Code: Select all

if (($row['session_viewonline'] || $auth->acl_get('u_viewonline')) && $row['user_type'] <> USER_IGNORE) 
After this change only administrators will use bots in list of online users, other users won't see them.
Weirdly, the line you give (which shows up in online tutorials, too) doesn't exist on that page.

Re: New forums

Posted: Sat Feb 14, 2009 10:07 pm
by Corrupt Shadow
Hmm, that is weird. I'm pretty sure that's what I did. :?