BWINT IS MOVING

[Sapphire]

Hi everyone,

I hope this message finds you all well. I apologise for my absence. I've been so busy with life, bogged down with health problems and seriously distracted by my work as a career feminist (but that's a rant for another time).

Today I am announcing that I am moving bwint.net over to a new webhost. I am not sure how this process works as I've never done it before, but I have a general idea how to make the transition. What I don't know, though, is if it will result in any downtime for the site. If it does, please don't panic! I haven't abandoned the site, I am just moving it to a much more affordable (and eco-friendly) webhost.

I am also seriously considering moving the forums. We are having so much trouble with spambots and new user registrations, notification emails and the like with this old phpBB software and I really think it is time for a change. I am not very clued up about what software/platforms people are using for message boards these days (these are pretty much the only forums I go to!) so I am absolutely open to suggestions! I am also looking to find software that will transfer the current forum pages over to the new platform, but I am not sure how/if this is possible. I don't want to lose the RPG. In any case, I will probably keep the old forums up and just link to the new forums on the website until everyone and everything has been moved over.

I am looking to make the move for the site this weekend or next, so if you have suggestions and the site is down, please email them to me at malachite157@yahoo.com

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

--Sapphire

[WorpeX]

I use SMF (Simple Machine Forums). It's super easy to install, use and its free. It has tons of mods/themes that you can add onto it and its very customizable. I don't know if the messages will transfer, I would say that its very unlikely.

[Phoenix]

Eh.. I would be rather annoyed if our existing forum threads disappeared, if that's what you mean by 'messages'. In fact I've been meaning to save copies of past rpg episodes just in case, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Did the board already move?

[Sapphire]

I am in the process of moving the site's domain name to a different webhost. I have to keep downloading the forums everyday to make sure they are up to date once the move has finalized. After that I will investigate moving the boards. If it is at all possible, I will try to transfer the threads, but I cannot promise. In any case, I can upload the old forums( these ones) to a different address so people can access them for reference. Ultimately, though, I need forums that do not require us to manually delete/approve over 200 spam bots *a day*. It's too much hard work for myself and Nurann.

As mentioned before, suggestions are appreciated.

EDIT: The domain name transfer will occur within the next 5 days. The site and the forums might go down during this process. I will upload the last version of the forums I have in my records to the webhost once the transfer is complete.

[Phoenix]

The hubby offered to help you out with that. He's transferred forums to new servers before back when he ran the website we met through. I'll coax him to get on here after dinner. He's registered here as Warwulf.

[Sapphire]

That would be appreciated Phoenix. If the forums are down by then please have him email me at malachite157 [at] yahoo.com

[Phoenix]

He actually managed to get rid of all the spam bots at his previous site using a couple of tricks. He just went over it in short, but I would not be able to explain properly so I'm just going to have him talk to you about it.

[Warwulf]

Hey all,

Greetings from your favorite lurker. Sunny mentioned that you were planning on moving the site to a new host. Thought I would offer to help, since I presided over a similar move back at the CA.

Similarly, I had trouble with spam bots at the CA, but ultimately was able to get rid of them after reverse engineering some spam software. The long answer is that you need to define a forbidden path in robots.txt. Then make an invisible (to humans) link to that path. Bad robots will still follow it, where a php script is ready to permaban that IP from the entire site.

Second (and more importantly) is to change the registration URL from register.php (I forgot offhand what it is) to a unique one, like bwintadd.php or something. Keep the link for both in the registration form, but make the old register.php invisible to humans. Any bots that automatically try to refill and submit to the old one get permabanned from everything.

I'd also recommend adding a hidden input in the registration form that's refilled with an MD hash. The registration should check to see that this is correct (changing daily based on md5 hash). Any input that doesn't including this was done with an auto form submission... permaban.

I'd be willing to implement these upgrades,, if you like.

[Sapphire]

Hi Warwulf,

Thanks for all the advice. I will be frank and say I really don't have a clue how to implement those changes, so if I give you admin privileges, would you be able to do this for us? It would be HUGELY appreciated. I think I have your email address (it should be registered on the forums) so if I get your OK, I will send you an email with all the details.

Many thanks!!

[Warwulf]

Sure, I can do that.

I'll need FTP access in order to edit the php files and create the global ban file. My only condition is that you don't make me owner of the site. Last time I helped out with a little PHP, I ended up running the CA. I'll double check and make sure the e-mail is up to date.

[Warwulf]

Why, hellloooo....

Checking to see if this works. Just a quick note for things for people to look for:

• Are all the forum attachments present?
• Is everyone able to access the forums they're suppose to have access to as a user, moderator, admin, etc.?
• All posts, polls, forums, topics, etc. accounted for?
• Are your post counts correct?

Once everything is up and running, I'll begin to make some improvements to limit spam an increase functionality. Just FYI.

[Optimal Optimus Primal]

I think things look good on my end, Warwulf. Awesome job, guys!

[Warwulf]

So.... slight unforeseen complication.

Apparently, the post counts/dates/last poster information displayed on the main page is incorrect. Until I get this rectumfied, you're going to have to go to each forum you frequent to see if there were any recent posts as the index on the main page does not work. So don't fret if the RPG doesn't report any activity in a while, it may still be active just not correctly displayed. I apologize for the inconvenience while I hunt down the last lingering gremlins of the move.

'Wulf

[Optimal Optimus Primal]

No worries! Thanks for the heads-up.

[Warwulf]

I think everything is more or less fixed.

I have created a bot trap that automatically bans robots who disobey the robots.txt rules and who follow a hidden link at the bottom that's clearly (as far as search engines go) marked as do not index and do not follow. Spambots and e-mail crawlers typically don't obey these rules. Just mentioning it in case you find a hidden link at the bottom of the page taking you to a "data" directory (irresistable for spam bots) DO NOT CLICK IT. You'll get yourself accidentally permabanned from the entire site (not just the forums) until you send us your IP address to remove from the ban list.

I'm going to work on fixing the spam bot issue when I get a chance. The current forum software is a different version from what the CA used to use, so they've changed several things between phpBB2 and phpBB3 with that regard. I'm going to have to spend a few minutes going through the code to figure it out. Once I do, spam bots will more or less cease. I've also turned on reCAPTCHA, as it tends to be a little bit better than the standard GDLib based CAPTCHA. But the two countermeasures should already start having a decrease of spambot registrations.

Saph, if you approve, I'd like to make a few minor modifications:

• Include a "Who's Been Online in the Last 24 hours" section below the currently signed on users (which I've increased to reference the users in the past 15 minutes).
• Mechanism to save drafts. Whether it just copies your text to your local clipboard or saves it in the database, I think it would be useful to have a mechanism to prevent us from losing our posts in the event of a browser crash or misclick.
• Update forum software to the latest version. This includes some bug fixes and security updates.
• Enable SSL. It's just a nerdly thing that improves security but really doesn't make much visible difference.
• Include a forum banner/header. It just looks a little naked on the top. I think a per forum header/banner would look pretty slick. There are some members here who are more talented than me in drawing and photoshopping, and I think it would be a nice way to showcase their talents.
• Facebook Integration. Would be nice to be able to sign in or register using your Facebook for an integrated login.

Let me know what you think and what you approve of. Whatever you'd like done, I could make it happen.