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18-11-2013, 04:04 PM,
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RE: Upgrading forum
I don't understand any of this. 
In other news, went for a run yesterday.
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18-11-2013, 08:20 PM,
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RE: Upgrading forum
(18-11-2013, 04:04 PM)Seafront Plodder Wrote: In other news, went for a run yesterday.
Exciting news indeed SP ... very much so. 
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24-11-2013, 01:58 AM,
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RE:
The other thing that has changed, EG, is that the signature files are no longer reading HTML and [img] tags ... they've all been turned off and I can't see how you turn them on again.
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24-11-2013, 10:20 AM,
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RE:
I too had the signature problem. Resolved it by stripping out anything fancy, and it seems fine
χαιρέτε νικὠμεν
Next race(s):
In the lap of the gods
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24-11-2013, 11:18 AM,
(This post was last modified: 24-11-2013, 02:55 PM by El Gordo.)
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El Gordo
Administrator
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Posts: 4,591
Threads: 302
Joined: Feb 2003
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RE:
Sorry MLCMM, Tom / All. I have to take the rap on that one. (And it should now be fixed.)
In brief, here's the reason for the recent talk about moving:
I've had a major problem in recent weeks/months with spam bots signing up. The weird thing is that these IDs are not being used to post spam messages, as happened in the past. I don't know what the thinking is, or what they are doing, but these bogus registrations have been running at up to 100 a day. There are supposed to be safeguards against this sort of thing but somehow, they've got round them. I've been deleting chunks of them when I can.
Just recently the bandwidth has shot up to ludicrous levels -- 20GB a month or thereabouts, which for a relatively little-used forum makes no sense. So I've been trying all sorts of things, none of which had worked. In a moment of desperation last week I changed a number of settings, which included code in signatures. I meant it as an anti-spam measure as bots often create accounts with links in signatures to get picked up SEO tools etc. I momentarily forgot that we use this too. Sorry. I've turned these back on.
The good news is that I think I may have sorted out the registration problem by installing another barrier. So far, so good, but I'm only 18 hours or so into the new configuration. No registrations in that period, unusually -- though these nasty people have a habit of rapidly finding ways around the latest obstacle. We'll see.
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Edit: Well, I spoke too soon. I've just had another 60-odd registrations. Nearly all are from Hotmail accounts, so I've now banned Hotmail registrations to see if that works. If it doesn't, then.... erm, I'll let you know.
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
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24-11-2013, 11:28 PM,
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RE: Upgrading forum
Yep, looks better now, thanks.
God knows what those bots are after ... seems cyber-land has gone mad.
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25-11-2013, 01:20 PM,
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RE: Upgrading forum
Good idea....unless of course EG starts to receive 100's of emails a day.
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14-12-2013, 10:58 AM,
(This post was last modified: 14-12-2013, 10:58 AM by El Gordo.)
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El Gordo
Administrator
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Posts: 4,591
Threads: 302
Joined: Feb 2003
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RE: Upgrading forum
(25-11-2013, 02:02 PM)marathondan Wrote: (25-11-2013, 01:20 PM)Seafront Plodder Wrote: Good idea....unless of course EG starts to receive 100's of emails a day.
Well, I'm sure he's thought of it already. So there's probably a good reason he hasn't done it already.
Sorry Dan, I haven't visited for a while.
Yes, you are right -- on all points. It would be better to disable registrations and yes, I have thought about it already and inded have done it already -- but it is making no difference. In other words, a ‘real person’ trying to register gets a message saying that this is disabled, and yet I am still getting emails telling me that 100 or more new registrations are happening every day. They are not appearing on the behind-the-scences records. But the they are beating the hell out of my bandwidth usage.
I will think again.
El Gordo
Great things are done when men and mountains meet.
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16-12-2013, 07:46 AM,
(This post was last modified: 16-12-2013, 07:54 AM by marathondan.)
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marathondan
Back on the road
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Posts: 2,335
Threads: 89
Joined: Oct 2005
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RE: Upgrading forum
Hmm, so the bots are getting in through the back door...
As usual it's unlikely that I'm suggesting anything you haven't already investigated, but there's a thread here about bot prevention using plugins. Some options seem to be:
- "checkbox validation" plugin - sounds a bit of a waste of time, and anyway doesn't stop registrations
- security questions / captcha - again, doesn't stop registrations
- "Fassim" plugin - someone claims it works, but doesn't sound too exciting from the writeup
- "Registration Security Question" mod "with patch" - someone claiming this is doing the job for them
As I say you've probably seen all this stuff already but you never know...
PS - I'm sure you've already seen there's a whole security forum
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