A new spam-free website and forum!

This topic has 8 voices, contains 18 replies, and was last updated by gav 120 days ago.

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January 16, 2012 at 6:37 am #21976
Josh	We’ve been having some issues with spam on the StarShipSofa lately, the human variety posting links here in the forum, and the bot variety injecting pharma links into the blog and podcast feeds. The human spam is just a nuisance, but the bot spam was causing some serious issues, breaking the feeds for some subscribers and leaving holes for even nastier exploits! I have rebuilt the site and stepped up the security, so with any luck, these issues should be resolved. RSS Feeds Now that the feeds are spam free, podcatchers should be able to read it without errors. If anyone is still having issues subscribing or updating their feed, let me know which app you are using so I can test it out and get that working for you. Forum Updates While rebuilding the site, I moved the forum and the Sanatorium site into the main site, securing them a bit more and getting everything onto the new design. Though the forum looks quite a bit different, it is still the same software(bbPress), it’s just a newer version built into the site so the default layout and features have changed somewhat. I started this migration process last week with the hopes of merging in any new content from the forum before making the switch but that didn’t work out so the last few days of forum posts have gone missing. Sorry about that, consider it a cyber-timequake! On the plus side, we also lost over 4,000 spam users. I went through all the forum users and deleted any users without posts. So if you had signed up and never posted, your account was deleted too, shame on you for never posting! You can create a new account, but spammers can’t. All new users are moderated and I’ll be approving them before they can login and post. For everyone else who has an account and has posted, you should be able to login fine, but you might need to clear your cookies and log back in. As a bonus, you can now post comments in the blog and podcast posts with your same forum account. If anyone has trouble logging in, please email me so I can get you sorted out. I’m still tinkering with the forums to get them to match the design of the rest of the site and adding some additional features. Right a few things like private messaging and signatures are missing, but I’m really liking the new editor bar, you can finally upload images, and choose between linking to or embedding a video! If anyone has any questions or is having any problems with the site, please let me know.
January 16, 2012 at 12:05 pm #21978
Gonzalo	Thanks Josh, the new forum layout looks good too! FYI, it looks like not all the profile data made it through the migration, as I had to recreate my signature. Not a big deal at all, but people might want to check their profiles when they log back in. http://plus.tl/gonzalo
January 16, 2012 at 1:08 pm #21981
elke	Who’s our hero? I raise a cup of morning coffee in your honor.
January 17, 2012 at 4:51 am #21985
Josh	@Gonzalo Yeah, the signatures aren’t part of the default profile. I added them with a plugin, and I had to switch plugins when I updated the forum. @elke Ha, I’ll drink to that!
January 17, 2012 at 5:29 am #21986
LarrySantoro	Tbanks, Josh.
January 17, 2012 at 12:45 pm #22005
Robyn Bradshaw	Psst, Josh – looks like the Tales… site needs a forum tab at the top.:) I also struggled a bit to find the log in button on this new forum, but maybe it’s just me being a little thick this morning. Josh, I say again – you are the best! Thanks for everything!
January 17, 2012 at 5:37 pm #22006
Josh	@Larry You’re welcome! @Robyn The sidebar of the main forum page has a login widget, but I still need to extend this to all the other forum pages.
January 17, 2012 at 8:32 pm #22009
expatpaul	Very shiny… I’m suitably impressed Am I right in thinking the forum RSS feeds are now gone? Not that it’s much of an issue – I shall just have to remember to pay a visit a bit more regularly http://www.expatpaul.eu/
January 17, 2012 at 9:44 pm #22011
Gonzalo	Funnily enough I was also using RSS to keep up with interesting threads. I’m using the “Subscribe” feature, which sends you emails instead, and that works fine. http://plus.tl/gonzalo
January 17, 2012 at 10:21 pm #22012
Josh	The feeds aren’t gone, but the forum URLs have changed, so the old feeds are broken. I use the feeds too, you can subscribe to the whole forum here: http://www.starshipsofa.com/forums/feed/ Or you can add the “feed” slug after any forum or thread to subscribe to that.
January 17, 2012 at 10:37 pm #22013
Judy__	Thanks Josh. The new look gave me a start [I get so used to doing things one way and then bam! I have to adapt. LOL) and I wasn’t able to log in early Sunday — I finally figured (after strong coffee) that you must be working on the site and that I wasn’t mistyping the password. It looks good and I KNOW it will be nicer without the spam.
January 18, 2012 at 10:10 am #22014
Gonzalo	Just noticed something. If I go to a specific thread or post, there’s a search box near the top right corner, just below the banner. However, if I go to the “Forum” link from the navigation bar at the top, the search box is missing. Am I missing something? Also, does search work on the forum posts? I see to only get results that point to the rest of the site… http://plus.tl/gonzalo
January 18, 2012 at 10:25 am #22015
expatpaul	Thanks Josh – that’s exactly what I was looking for. The email notifications are a useful addition, but I do like the fact that I can see what’s happening in the Sofaverse every time I launch my RSS reader. http://www.expatpaul.eu/
January 18, 2012 at 6:31 pm #22017
Josh	@Gonzalo The forum homepage has a different sidebar just for the forum with a login/profile widget and eventually more forum specific widgets. But right now the rest of the forum pages use the default sidebar, pretty soon they will all use the forum sidebar. That search box is for the rest of the site, can’t search the forums at the moment. There are two ways I can do this, one sitewide search for the whole site including the forum, or one for the forum and another for the rest of the site, which setup do you think would be more useful?
January 18, 2012 at 6:33 pm #22018
Josh	@expatpaul No problem, I like having an email option, but I get so much email already that I try to funnel as much info as I can to my feed reader so I can manage the flow easier.