New forums

[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.

[Ryme]

Oh: what I forgot to say was, if anyone sees anything that looks broken or abusable, please let me know.

[neocamp22]

Cool!

I was quite confused for a minute >.>

[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 >.>

[Olaf]

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?

[Ryme]

Is that a little better? It's not quite what we had before, but it's a bit closer.

[Olaf]

Jolly good, ol' chap.

[neocamp22]

Yeah, I like it. It's easier on the eyes.

[TheK3vin]

Sexy.

[Cristiona]

Does this mean we can use CAPTCHA and such so you don't need to personally approve accounts any more?

[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.

[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...

[MagiNinjA]

Or a different type of CAPTCHA.

[TheK3vin]

You could try xkcd's approach: http://xkcd.com/233/

[Cristiona]

Grr. Gotta get used to links not opening in a new window...

[TheK3vin]

Hm. I always middle-click links anyway. It's much easier.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[MagiNinjA]

No, I'd rather keep them to know who all my users are, if they are users.

[Corrupt Shadow]

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.

[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.

[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.

[Corrupt Shadow]

...mostly because the latest-unread-post-link works properly...

It worked properly for me on the old phpBB2.

[Ryme]

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.

[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.

[Hannahmaus]

...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.

[Cristiona]

They seem to be mobile-device friendly. Automatically resized itself when I took a look on my phone.

[Corrupt Shadow]

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]

[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.

[Corrupt Shadow]

Corrupt Shadow will now shut up.

[Ryme]

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.

[Corrupt Shadow]

Hmm, that is weird. I'm pretty sure that's what I did.