Preparing a new home

[Reno]

Hey all,

I\'m sure you\'ve noticed the sudden surge in spammers.

Unfortunately, the forum software we\'re currently on is so distressingly old, there\'s really not all that much that can be done to deal with them. The default spam-resistant options are in place, and they don\'t do anything. Honestly, I think they\'re probably using an exploit to post directly somehow, as if you look, none of those obvious spam users are even activated.

I\'ve mentioned before I\'ve been looking at setting up a new forum, however the issue is, as mentioned, this forums\' version is stupifyingly old(I think it\'s actual RC1 of mybb. ....yeah.)
With that, there\'s no easy way to move to a new forum and retain ANY of the current content. Threads, posts, usernames, etc.

Part of what\'s kept me from moving on with it is trying to think of a way to deal with that.
I could deal with threads and posts being lost if required, but I feel that losing the user accounts and logins would be a much harder blow.

However, given the boon in spam, I think a solution needs to be moved on soon, regardless.

So, what I\'ll be working on is prepping the new forum, and once it\'s ready, I\'ll have the current forum URL direct to that, while keeping this one live on oldforums.ttrgame.com or something of the like.

That way, anyone needing to recover their account for the new forum can log in on these old boards and PM me via their existing account with what they want the new board info to be. I\'ll set the user up for them so they\'ll be good to go.

I feel this is a good middleground. I\'ll see about doing some kind of query script to recreate the bulk of the user data, but the passwords would be in no way portable as the way they are handled is completely different now, hence the PM-me solution.

So yes, this week I\'ll be putting in time to get those boards underway and get as much content moved over as I can. At which point, I\'ll do the URL swap(with a helpful sticky directing to the old ones as needed) and we can start moving into our new home.

From there, I can provide additional news about work-things that have been happening recently, and where we\'re going from here.

-Reno out

[Jackeh]

bit of a shame to loose everything, but needs to be done.. and can test people on how attentive they are

[Reno]

Well, like said, I\'m trying to port over as much as possible. I just know for a fact I can\'t retain passwords, so they\'ll have to be restored manually, thus the PMs thing.

I\'ve been able to restore the users, and am working on threads/posts. It\'s a bit of a pain, but it seems to be going well.

[Smithcraft]

You know, most people here have an account at =D.C.L.I=. wink wink

Those who don\'t can contact me, and I\'ll create an account for them if this is an acceptable iDea.

Otherwise, can\'t you just close the registration?

SC

[Reno]

I double checked, and I don\'t see any specific way to disable registration(remember, this is an OLD version. I just looked and it\'s 1.0 RC4.)

I could potentially do some weird stuff like making the allowed number of characters in a name to be 0, but I don\'t know if that would even work.

And, like said, I\'m fairly certain at this point they\'re just exploiting vulnerabilities in the board software, given how old it is. I have no idea what other kinds of holes could be milling around that haven\'t been exploited yet.

[Smithcraft]

Since the view new posts option doesn\'t work anymore, I haven\'t noticed the spam, but we started getting hit with the spammers, so I closed the registration

SC

[tomcat ha]

what has to be done, has to be done i guess!

[Gego]

tomcat ha Wrote:what has to be done, has to be done i guess!

:tup:

Lets give an end to the propaganda spreading through this forum!

[Reno]

So, as an update(been busy the past few days, sorta hectic):

I\'ve managed to manually port the bulk of the forum content to a new, updated forum. Users, sub-forums, threads, posts, etc are all carried over.

However, I lost my job and with it was some of the free hosting I was getting(ttrgame.com is unaffected) and with it was the new place I was going to put the updated forums as the current hosting plan I have for ttrgame.com is limited.

So, a question: do any of you guys have recommendation for web hosting? There\'s quite a few pretty good looking options, Just trying to settle on something. Once that\'s sorted, I\'ll get the new forums up and running for everyone to use.

[Smithcraft]

I don\'t know if you missed my offer above, but if you can convert it to vB, the two \"active\" admins at =D.C.L.I= are in favor of welcoming the TTR fans to our humble abode.

SC