Mumbles Posted February 23, 2007 Author Posted February 23, 2007 I'll have to look into it. I know for one between books, rent, and tuition, I can barely afford food at the moment. I also have to accomodate for PGI membership, which I really need to send in this weekend.
Mumbles Posted September 6, 2007 Author Posted September 6, 2007 Ok, I have taken another step in ridding outselves of the bots. I think it will actually work this time. I set it up so one must have at least 1 post before starting a new topic. I considered doing more to keep newbies from posting questions right away, but you will see in a little bit why I didn't. The spambots register, post their porn/pills/etc threads, and leave. If they can't start new threads, they shouldn't be able to post at all. Now the slightly inconvenient news. Not a big deal, but may strike you as odd if you're trying to start a new thread anytime soon. In order to be automatically promoted by the software, like I said you must have one post. I recently found out with the testuser, that this means 1 post since I implemented it. So every normal user will have to post at least once before being able to start a thread. This shouldn't affect admins, Judges, HE qualified members, or info pool members. Just thought I would let everyone know about my steps, and warn about the post thing so I don't get a million freaked out messages and e-mails.
TheSidewinder Posted September 7, 2007 Posted September 7, 2007 Well, it appears to have worked. Today, for the first time in ages, I haven't had to delete a porn and/or spam message in the Supplier Review section. Good job! M
hst45 Posted September 7, 2007 Posted September 7, 2007 Jeez, I'll really miss the Viagra/nude photos of Senator Craig ads. Mumbles, could you set up the software so that someone has to have, say, 10 posts before starting a new thread? That might stop the "HI dudz, I'm new here and I was wondering, does anyone know how 2 make black powder?" threads.
qwezxc12 Posted September 7, 2007 Posted September 7, 2007 ..or, "I'm in the 7th grade and don't feel like doing my science homework. Can someone tell me how many kCal it takes to vaporize 100g of water starting as ice at -5deg C?", etc... Anyway, thanks for the posting rule change; it sure cleaned things up.
Mumbles Posted September 7, 2007 Author Posted September 7, 2007 I considered that hst, but then every single person would have to make 10 posts before they could start threads starting now. It is something I am considering down the road though, say 6 months to allow for ample time to get the requisite posts in. I am only one person, and bypassing this requires manual promotement of each individual. There were about 1800 members in the Members group when I changed over, but lets say I was going to promote everyone that had over 10 posts already. The number of members is up around 300, which would probably take the better part of a full afternoon. It's not actually as bad as it sound, because a fair proportion of those people either don't come here, or are HE qualified, so they are already automatically exempt. I'd probably just have the active individuals remaining send me a PM, or give them a junk section to post whore in. I really wish I could apply it only to new members, but this is as close as I could get. I've mentioned this before, but I am planning to switch hosting companies at the end of the year, when this contract expires. God forbid, I have to get new software and can't transfer the data from here, I would set it up to do this automatically, and make a post whore section for the first month or two. I am going to be very pissed if I have to start a brand new forum again. If you're really missing the ads and such, I can forward the bulk of my forum e-mail account to you. Some of you may remember Llamazares. Well he sent me an offensive private message, and got his ass banned. He said someone hacked his account just to send it or some bullshit, but I obviously didn't buy it. This was after an initial banning for being a fucktard. He sent me many messages trying to explain it was someone else, and he got hacked, blah blah blah. Tried to make me feel bad because he said he was handicapped and some other stuff. I just stopped responding to him. Right after his last message to me, to the day, my mailbox started to get flooded with spam, viagra, porn, free software, cheap AutoCAD, just about everything else e-mails. There is plenty if you are going through withdrawl from it.
hst45 Posted September 8, 2007 Posted September 8, 2007 Mumbles, thanks for the offer, but I'll take a pass! By the way, I do appreciate the effort that you and the other Mods put in to keep the Forum up and running. The offer still stand to ship you a couple of bucks to defray your costs of software, licensing, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm as cheap as the next guy, but I don't want you to be sleeping in doorways because you spent your last $12.50 on the Forum. I can see you now. Standing in the rain in the median strip in front of a traffic light holding up a ratty cardboard sign that reads "Will balance equations for food."
Mumbles Posted September 8, 2007 Author Posted September 8, 2007 Reminds me of last april, when I had about $15 for everything for the entire month. A lot of canned soup and stealing food from my roomates was done. I won't be out on the street, but I appreciate your concern I appreciate the offer by the way. I fronted everything last year, and that wasn't really a problem. This year, I am going to try to move servers, like I said before. I am looking at a few. They are all in the same price range. Between 90 and 120 a year. I need to talk to Mr. Yuk too to see if I can get the domain transfered over to my name. I got lucky and guessed the details for the server so I could change that over, but I can't get the domain. I'm probably going to be asking for some ideas as far as hosts, etc in october or so. Perhaps work on donations then as well.
frogy Posted September 8, 2007 Posted September 8, 2007 About how much bandwidth have you been getting in the past years? I know a few good places to get hosting from and I could look for you if you know the amount of storage\bandwidth you need.... You obviously need PHP/MySQL support, but almost everyone has that...
Mumbles Posted September 8, 2007 Author Posted September 8, 2007 It's a bit of a weird situation at the moment. We have 5 gig of storage, and I believe 10 gig of transfer. They have, since we got our account, upgraded everything, but wont increase our stuff. This is a GREAT deal to do with why I want to switch. I am looking at the following two hosts.http://www.dreamhost.com/hosting.htmlhttp://www.bluehost.com/ I've heard only very good things about dream host. Some of the members here use it. All in all, I'm looking for at least 100gigs of storage and a terabyte of transfer. Under $10 a month is ideal. I've had various hosting offers before, but we feel most of them would compromise what we want the forum to be.
frogy Posted September 9, 2007 Posted September 9, 2007 Ohhhh... Dreamhost looks very very nice... I myself use a combination of DynamicDNS's free Static DNS service and host my website from my comp... But I only got a few hundred hits a week before my server got hit by lightning, now only like a hundred a month... I have access to host a server at a local university for free though...
Mumbles Posted October 10, 2007 Author Posted October 10, 2007 Well, there is new very good news. They decided to upgrade the forum account. I feel it's now acceptable for the price and am willing to stay. Might get to work on some new stuff now that I know we may be staying.
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