MX5 Forum downtime - what happened, and a bit of an update..

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Moderator: zorruno

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zorruno
Black is the new black.
Black is the new black.
Posts: 601
Joined: Thu Apr 13, 2006 11:20 pm
Location: An Eastern Beach

MX5 Forum downtime - what happened, and a bit of an update..

Post by zorruno » Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:54 pm

Hi all, this is a bit of an update from me about what has been going on.

Firstly, apologies for the amount of downtime. I know many of you were more than a little worried about the possible loss of a good MX5 Community in NZ.

Well, we are back, and this was the quickest I was able to manage it. As many of you know I do this with no financial assistance and also now have a young child, new house (that needs work...!) and of course my busy 'Real Job' (TM).

What happened?
There have been a few questions asking what happened, and will it happen again. Well basically, there was an 'exploit' in the phpBB software (actually the modification that handles the email to forum linking, so nothing really to do with the main phpBB) and before I knew too much about it, some loser (that was apparently proud to be Albanian) had defaced the website and stuffed up a bunch of stuff. I did some patch ups, but I eventually ran out of time to work on it and shut the site down.

What's been done?
Over the past few weeks (err.. yes, my wife was away for a couple of them) I managed to reinstall all the necessary base features, and as you'll see from the feature list... a bunch of other new features. I also reworked the theme a little (graphics are not my strongest skill sorry!) and managed to reimport the original database. Yes, nothing should have been lost.

Will it happen again?
I can't promise it won't, but one of the reasons it wasn't quickly fixable was that I wasn't totally familiar with the phpBB code (the base of the forum) and fixing up the M2F modification required a bit of learning. Because I have now put the whole thing back together by myself, I am very familiar with the code... it should be no problem to fix things if other potential problems are found. Also, backups & database snapshots will happen more regularly and a few other things have been installed to make code problems more resistant to exploiters.

Some thanks...
Thanks to the few that offered some assistance during the downtime:
simple - for the work gone in to importing all the old MX5 Club list emails and getting them looking pretty. Also help with lots of testing and site feedback. Without Simple's help there would be no archives of the NZ MX5 List.
DBM58 - for the help with the Garage colour/model database, early release feedback and also keeping others informed by email of what was happening.
poison - for early site feedback

Other News/Comments:
  • List vs Forum
    There are still the odd question from some people of 'Bring back the list' or 'Why not an email and not a forum?'. Well, my main answer is that this works. This is a private forum so there is nothing stopping anyone going and setting something else up (and I encourage you to do so), but if you set your settings up correctly here, it is much better than the old NZ Club list. If you have problems getting this to work as a mailing list, ask someone to help. In fact, if you click the right boxes it should work exactly the same as the previous list, with the only difference is that if you pose a question, you should really email it to the right address e.g. electrical@ or preformance@ which has got to be better. And of course, if you don't like it, and don't have the knowledge to set something else up, there is the US Miata List and a bunch of others available to subscribe to.
  • We need Moderators:
    We are in need of volunteer moderators to keep the peace and generally tidy things up. Moderators will need to do some work though, such as moving posts that are in incorrect categories, trimming large posts that come from emails (and telling the offender off!) and other general peace keeping duties. We also need some short term moderators to clean up the old NZ List emails a bit more. Training provided, contact an admin if you are interested.
  • We need Graphics Help:
    We are still in need of help with site graphics. I'm not really happy with the little 'group icons' as they are at the moment so if someone wanted to create a set that would be appreciated. Also, it is my intention to change the background photo in the header, so if you wanted to supply some samples, that would be a help. Finally, I have some ideas for extra graphical items like 'Avatars', 'Smilies', and a few other things to tidy up the theme.
  • Email Munging:
    If you know what that means... you probably have some Geek in you. The question has been asked, 'how far should this forum go to protect people's email addresses and other information from being posted on the internet?'. We have decided (At the moment... and our decision may change) that it is unlikely we will do any automatic email stripping (or munging). If you post your email address to a forum, it will stay on the internet for people to see (sending an email to the forum won't specifically show your address though). We suggest NOT putting your email address in a forum topic, and also you shoudn't post phone numbers or other personal information. If you have done in the past (or it appears in an archived NZ MX5 Club list post), you can ask (nicely) the moderator of the forum to delete it. We recommend sending this information to people via Private Messaging (PMs).
  • Future Plans:
    There are moves afoot to install the site on a new server (a telehoused box shared by one other) so it should mean a faster site, and more space for attachments etc. No doubt I will install more phpBB modifications & features when I get some more time too one day.
(z)

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