Cascade Crew

Dewey316 · Last edited by Dewey316 on Thu Sep 29, 2005 6:18 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello,

As some of you may have noticed, we have had many regestrations of 'questionable' users on the forums as of late. With the influx of new users trying to direct you to porno sites, couple with the recent SQL errors, and also the 3 virus' we have gotten in the last year, causing a couple of members to have computers issues.

Jess and myself had a conversation via e-mail this afternoon, talking about what options we had to try to curb these problems from happening. The current version of phpBB that we are runing is v2.0.6, in this version the only regestration verification option we have is via e-mail. While this may keep some of the bots from regestering, neither of us think it will stop them. The bots also do not seem to be posting, so the other posting ability options we have, will also not stop the problem.

The newest version of the forum software phpBB 2.0.17, includes a CAPTCHA feature that can be implemeted during the regestration process. This feature will require new regestration to look at the series of letters and numbers contained in an image file, and type these in durring regestration. Enabling this features, will mean that only people sitting in front of a PC and actualy reading that string and typing it into the box will be able to regester.

We both feel that this is likely our best solution for preventing these problems.

The current plan is to upgrade the forum software thursday evening (9/29/05). We are going to get backups of both the SQL database, and all the HTML documents on the server. Hopefully if we run into any issues during the upgrade, we should be able to restore everything back to its current place.

As with every upgrade, there is always the chance that something will happen and we will lose all the current posts. We will of course try out best to keep this from happening, but you never really know what may happen. I would urge anyone who may have information they need stored in PM's or anywhere else on the boards, to copy that information prior to thursday.

Any questions or comments, feel free to post and/or PM myself or Jess with those questions.

Thanks,
John

Schultzy89GTA · Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2005 3:14 pm Post subject:

Awesome. Good job guys!

-Schultzy

rjmcgee · The Hammer Joined: 08 Jan 2004 Posts: 2320

Damn, there goes all of my porn links. Mad

Seriously though, good job guys.

ET phone hoME · Member Joined: 13 Mar 2005 Posts: 237 Location: Oregon

horrays for bustin the bots!

Twilightoptics · Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 11:02 am Post subject:

Groovy guys!

alloy · Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:41 pm Post subject:

I'm glad you are doing something about this. I logged on for several days and saw our newest member was "inc*st" something. Just what my grand daughter doesn't need to see when she comes out to see what grandpa is doing on the computer.

Schultzy89GTA · Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 8:52 pm Post subject:

word Dan. that is the one that sent the lads into action.

Jess · Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 6:11 pm Post subject:

Ok, we're all upgraded... Just time to find our new options...

Dewey316 · Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 6:17 pm Post subject:

Ok, I think we got it. Wasn't to bad at all, and we don't seem to have lost any data at all.

For everyone who is interested, this is what has been added. When someone signs up, they now get a visual confirmation box.

Schultzy89GTA · Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 8:59 pm Post subject:

Excellent gentlemen... thanks again!

-Schultzy

alloy · Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:54 pm Post subject:

And to you both my thanks also.