zen Posted February 6, 2007 Report Share Posted February 6, 2007 I have never used invision power board. Just vBulletin, XMB, and phpBBBut one thing I know is that it's usually a very good idea to keep it patched to the latest version.I would offer my expertise, but as I said, I have no experience with IPB.Who is administrating the IPB software here? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachTheZip Posted February 6, 2007 Report Share Posted February 6, 2007 They're up to version 2.2 now. This site uses version 1.3, but there are too many things going on in Zips sports right now to shut down this site and do the upgrade, if they upgrade at all. Maybe over the summer someone can do it, or they could do it now and we could use UofAZips.com until they get everything back up and running. But if they don't want to do the upgrade, please do SOMETHING about the spam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zen Posted February 6, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 6, 2007 I don't know specifically about the spam hitting this site, but much of it is usually done by registration bots that crawl the internet logging the various Bulletin Board sites and the type of BB system they use. If the site doesn't have visual confirmation, then the bot can simply register automatically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachTheZip Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 Woah, talk about awkward.We definetly need an upgrade to the registration process. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zip81 Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 Woah, talk about awkward.We definetly need an upgrade to the registration process. Do you guys also have to constantly refresh a page after you go to it?Why doesn't the page refresh on it's own?I'm always refreshing pages on this site.Is it just me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachTheZip Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 Woah, talk about awkward.We definetly need an upgrade to the registration process.Do you guys also have to constantly refresh a page after you go to it?Why doesn't the page refresh on it's own?I'm always refreshing pages on this site.Is it just me? There was a post in between there before. I guess it got deleted. It wasn't directed at you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zippyrifle32 Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 i've been having the refreshing problem and thought it was just my computer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zip81 Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 i've been having the refreshing problem and thought it was just my computer I don't experience this on any other board that I post.But on Zipsnation, after I go to a page, I have to refresh it to ensure that the latest posts are listed. That's a lot of refreshing.You would think that by just going to the page that it would already be updated.Do you ever click on "view new posts" and an error message comes up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zen Posted February 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 I noticed the "view new posts" error, but I think the problem with not seeing new posts is a browser cache problem. I am not blaming it all on the browser, because there could be a no-cache setting that isn't used here that should be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zip81 Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 I noticed the "view new posts" error, but I think the problem with not seeing new posts is a browser cache problem. I am not blaming it all on the browser, because there could be a no-cache setting that isn't used here that should be. Thanks...Is there a setting on the browser that I can change?You know what else I constantly do, is click on "report" instead of "quote."Ever do that, are they too close together?I dont' want this to come off as a b!tch session. I really like Zipsnation and appreciate all the work they put into it.It must be a labor of love.But, if they're seeking input.....you know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zen Posted February 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 I dunno about IPB, but in XMB you can turn off post reporting as a feature.and if you don't want to turn it off, it's probably just a matter of editing the templates to locate the report button somewhere else.Caches.If it's server side (or proxy) there's not much you can do about it. It's up to the server (or host) admin to change some settings, depending how it's being cached. There are some settings that can be included in meta-tags of the pages, such as Cache-Control and document expiration.If it's happening client side, I'm not sure, but I bet there's a way to tweak how sites get cached in the browser options. The easy way would be to turn down the amount of memory allocated in general for caching, but that wont help you specifically with zipsnation. IE calls them "temporary files", mozilla just calls them cache Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FearTheRoo Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 If the site doesn't have visual confirmation, then the bot can simply register automatically.That won't stop it completely. Some of it may be bots, but some is also human-controlled. I am not an admin here, so please don't think I am speaking on their behalf. I am familiarr with phpbb which has several third-party plug-ins for this problem. Another solution is to force an approval email to be sent only after an admin has approved it, but that can be a real PITA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachTheZip Posted February 7, 2007 Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 I agree that having visual confirmation won't completely stop the spam, but it is a start. I'm sure some of the spammers are just bots. Either way, I'm sick of having to sift through 10-15 spams every other day. Doing it for e-mail is bad enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zen Posted February 7, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2007 Yup. I was going to suggest either approval email method or admin confirmation method (or both).With email approval, the registrant needs to be using an email address that they can actually check in order to finish the registration process. This stops spam bots and even a lot of human spammers because they dont' want to go through the trouble.Admin confirmation is a pain for the admin, but if you have to wait 24 hours before you get approved and can post, most spammers can't be arsed to wait.But that is why I was talking about an upgrade. Not only should you get security fixes, but also, the newer versions of IPB probably have some of these features built in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zip Watcher Posted February 8, 2007 Report Share Posted February 8, 2007 Thanks for the comments & suggestions.A few thoughts on the matters:#1: We have enabled validation emails and the confirmation security code things. That has reduced spambot activity pretty well.#2: I have also just implemented New Member topic & post moderation to further eliminate the problem. New posts by new members now need to be approved by one of the Moderators.#3: Full upgrade of IPB to v2+ is not really possible here, as V1.3 has been included in most server sets and v2 is not a free product as v1.x was.#4: As for the refresh problem, it is generally a browser cache issue. However, if you use the back button to go back to the forum after reading the posts, then your "new posts" icons & such will not update. If you get in the habit of navigating back to the forums / posts by clicking on the navigation bar, or a link at the bottom of the topic, then you shouldn't see many problems related to delayed updates / refresh.#5: Zen, check your PM's here at ZipsNation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachTheZip Posted February 8, 2007 Report Share Posted February 8, 2007 Thanks for the comments & suggestions.A few thoughts on the matters:#1: We have enabled validation emails and the confirmation security code things. That has reduced spambot activity pretty well.#2: I have also just implemented New Member topic & post moderation to further eliminate the problem. New posts by new members now need to be approved by one of the Moderators.#3: Full upgrade of IPB to v2+ is not really possible here, as V1.3 has been included in most server sets and v2 is not a free product as v1.x was.#4: As for the refresh problem, it is generally a browser cache issue. However, if you use the back button to go back to the forum after reading the posts, then your "new posts" icons & such will not update. If you get in the habit of navigating back to the forums / posts by clicking on the navigation bar, or a link at the bottom of the topic, then you shouldn't see many problems related to delayed updates / refresh.#5: Zen, check your PM's here at ZipsNation. Good idea with the New Member thing. I haven't seen any spam today, which is a good sign. I understand about the IPB upgrade thing. If it is not possible, that's fine. I was just throwing out suggestions. I didn't realise that this version came with the server set.Thanks a million for keeping Zipsnation running smoothly! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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