Talk-Polywell.org

Hi all,

I attempted today to do a simple upgrade of this forum through DreamHost's provided script. It failed horribly. So, I've restored everything back the way it was.

I'm giving them a chance to fix their script, but if they don't have it working within a week, I'll try a manual upgrade.

So, if you come by one day in the next few days, and the site is down, don't panic — it just means I'm in the middle of wrestling with phpBB, and you should just check back later.

Cheers,
- Joe

P.S. We're now getting about 5-10 spam accounts created per minute. (No, that is not a typo.) I'm hopeful that the upgrade will stem that tide.

JoeStrout wrote:P.S. We're now getting about 5-10 spam accounts created per minute. (No, that is not a typo.) I'm hopeful that the upgrade will stem that tide.

YOUCH! The forum I administer gets 5-10 spammer accounts / day past the captcha and email confirmation. Then again, a much smaller forum without the same search engine profile. I also suggest the SpamHammer mod if it works on the new phpbb version.

hanelyp wrote:

JoeStrout wrote:P.S. We're now getting about 5-10 spam accounts created per minute. (No, that is not a typo.) I'm hopeful that the upgrade will stem that tide.

YOUCH! The forum I administer gets 5-10 spammer accounts / day past the captcha and email confirmation. Then again, a much smaller forum without the same search engine profile. I also suggest the SpamHammer mod if it works on the new phpbb version.

yeah I am seeing that on the forum I help moderate. The owner can't or won't put filters or other measures to weed out the spambots. I delete close to a 500-1000 posts a day.

On a forum i sorta help admin we ended up blocking most Asian (primarily chinese) ip ranges and the signal to noise went WAY up. Instaed of accounts per minute it dropped back to accounts per day.

This suggests that it isn't 'bots but cheap Chinese workers. For mine it was Russians.

Skip phpBB3... upgrade the forum to pB11

The email-me-for-manual-account-activation step stops almost all the spammers. So, there's no real harm done by all those spam accounts, except that the new-account notifications clog up my email, and of course the "Memberlist" link is utterly useless.

JoeStrout wrote:Hi all,

I attempted today to do a simple upgrade of this forum through DreamHost's provided script. It failed horribly. So, I've restored everything back the way it was.

I'm giving them a chance to fix their script, but if they don't have it working within a week, I'll try a manual upgrade.

So, if you come by one day in the next few days, and the site is down, don't panic — it just means I'm in the middle of wrestling with phpBB, and you should just check back later.

Cheers,
- Joe

P.S. We're now getting about 5-10 spam accounts created per minute. (No, that is not a typo.) I'm hopeful that the upgrade will stem that tide.

Noted.

JoeStrout wrote:The email-me-for-manual-account-activation step stops almost all the spammers. So, there's no real harm done by all those spam accounts, except that the new-account notifications clog up my email, and of course the "Memberlist" link is utterly useless.

What I meant by email confirmation is the software sends out an email to the new registrant with a link to validate the email address. No manual work until they decide to post, and their post is moderated. Occasionally I find a spammer who's registered their own domain for such emails, but those are easy to block and clean once found. But yes, I end up with a great many registered members who aren't contributing to the community.

hanelyp wrote:

JoeStrout wrote:The email-me-for-manual-account-activation step stops almost all the spammers. So, there's no real harm done by all those spam accounts, except that the new-account notifications clog up my email, and of course the "Memberlist" link is utterly useless.

What I meant by email confirmation is the software sends out an email to the new registrant with a link to validate the email address. No manual work until they decide to post, and their post is moderated. Occasionally I find a spammer who's registered their own domain for such emails, but those are easy to block and clean once found. But yes, I end up with a great many registered members who aren't contributing to the community.

That is normal.

I am most willing to pitch in some $ to defray any cost related to allowing downloaded graphics (moderated if required). That way some of the more common graphics can stay with and be part of the forum.

KitemanSA wrote:I am most willing to pitch in some $ to defray any cost related to allowing downloaded graphics (moderated if required). That way some of the more common graphics can stay with and be part of the forum.

As moderator the only thing I do is turn images that cause page bleeds into urls. I hate page bleeds. I don't like having to do horizontal scrolling to read a page. It is annoying.

Shrink images if they cause page bleeds. That can be done by hosting them at photobucket or some such.

MSimon wrote:

KitemanSA wrote:I am most willing to pitch in some $ to defray any cost related to allowing downloaded graphics (moderated if required). That way some of the more common graphics can stay with and be part of the forum.

Shrink images if they cause page bleeds. That can be done by hosting them at photobucket or some such.

Yup. But then they are hostage to the photobucket account holder.

OK, Dreamhost's "one-click" upgrader is hopelessly FUBAR. I am about to attempt a manual upgrade.

This will mean exporting the data from the current DB, and re-importing it into the new DB. Any messages posted after this one, and before the new system is ready, may be lost. Please be patient and bear with me; we'll get through this shortly.

Well, here we are, on phpBB3. That took all day. I apologize for the downtime.

I also apologize for the missing theme, Polywell icon, etc. All that will be made right in the next day or two. But it should be safe to start using the board again now.

Cheers,
- Joe