PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

so with this recent outage i realized that the forums have become like a crack habit to me. i was going through serious withdrawal since checking new posts has become as natural and routine as checking my email during the day (and often happens and often happens on the same occasions)

glad to see everything back up. thanks go to all who keep plugging along (even through episodes like that) in order to make the forums more kickass each and every day for all of us.

p.s. - anyone who works with hardware that they don't always have direct access to (and for which they don't always have a set of remote hands) might want to consider investing in an iBoot. while $250 is a bit of a pricetag, it can make life a lot nicer if you have a router or something that constantly misbehaves at a remote client site.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Bad cotman, no donut.

Any possibility of a note on the main site if issues are expected to take a bit?

I don't have access to add content to the main site, or permission to do so.

[theprez98]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

so with this recent outage i realized that the forums have become like a crack habit to me. i was going through serious withdrawal since checking new posts has become as natural and routine as checking my email during the day (and often happens and often happens on the same occasions)

You too eh?

Here, NS and more recently CoWF are my "crack" habits.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

User-selected usergroup memberships for each DCG SubForum is now live and ready for feedback.

2 things I am considering:
1) Make all DCG listed by default for "guest" users, users with "unconfirmed e-mail"
2) Make 2 new usergroups "All U.S. DCG" and "All non-U.S. DCG" because there are limits to how many usergroups users may join, and it take a while to join that many usergroups.
3) Adding a "rules" link similar to that of the Social Group. ( I was thinking DCG can choose to go with the very open rules of the Social Forum in their DCG or the default forum rules that we have published, but I'm open to other ideas.)

Other ideas? Feedback?

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

I've said it before, but I will say it again, Leaders/Organizers are not moderators, and just because someone is a Leader/Organizer for a contest or event subforum, does not mean they are the primary leader/organizer for the event, and just because someone is NOT listed as a forum leader/organizer, doesn't make them NOT a leader or organizer for a contest or event.

The "Forum Leader/Organizer" is not a vanity title, or given without thought. People that have these titles invest large amounts of time on the forums, and time work in a significant capacity in the planning or organization and support of an event or contest. Generally speaking, they are people who have been around long enough for the mods to trust them, or they are vouched for by a core goon, and then, reviewed by the moderators.

The following case illustrates the above:

DJ Jackalope is not the primary organizer of the B&W Ball, but she is a supporter, has put in *MANY* sleepless hours, year after year, working as a DJ, promoting the B&W Ball, and helping with related questions on the forums. She was nominated by the Leader/Organizer of the B&W Ball (Bink) to play this role on the forums, since he is not on the forums very much.

With a big, "thumbs up" from Bink, and a long review process by the mods, with many positive words of praise, we welcome DJ Jackalope as the Leader/Organizer for the "B&W Ball / Top of the Riv" event subforum.

Welcome DJ Jackalope. :-)

[The Dark Tangent]

Reboot downtime

Doing some reboots to get ready for testing the picture system, sorry for any interruptions!

[converge]

Re: Reboot downtime

Likewise, my apologies to anyone actually relying on the lostboxen.net box .. hardware replacement and ... actually.. entire box replacement commenced around 4:45 and downtime was limited to under 30 minutes with a relatively smooth transition.

Just an idea:
Previous box - 200mhz, give or take wind resistance, 64MB of beefed up memory, 1 mostly 10GB storage with 2 8GB assistance drives
New box - 2.4ghz P4, 512MB mem, same drives with an additional 80gb for measure and an upgrade path to clear the failing 10GB

You may now return to your regularly scheduled defcon torrents, isos, or .. pool2girl.net jerkathon; admit it, I have your IP cached multiple times in my logs.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

1) Make all DCG listed by default for "guest" users, users with "unconfirmed e-mail"
2) Make 2 new usergroups "All U.S. DCG" and "All non-U.S. DCG" because there are limits to how many usergroups users may join, and it take a while to join that many usergroups.

Done. [forum=242]Defcon Groups Collection of Forums[/forum] housed on this site.

Guest users, and users awaiting email confirmation can see these DCG subforums.
All new users are subscribed to both of these usergroups.
All DCG subforums that are really links to other remote forums are always visible.
All users on the system are now part of the "All US Defcon Groups" and "All non-US Defcon Groups" but can change this if they wish to ignore all DCG subforums and/or disable all DCG subforums and enable only specific DCG Subforums.

https://forum.defcon.org/profile.php?do=editusergroups
(The list of usergroups to join is long, but gives you more control.)

Feedback is welcome.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

Things have changed on the server. Please report any problems or broken stuff you notice after this post's date/time.

Thanks!

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

With new DCG subforums, I've decided to try out the "Leader/Organizer" idea used in the Contests/Events forum. We've just added [Syntax] as a Leader/Organizer for the DCG 210 subforum.

All of this is not fully worked out, but DCG Leader/Organizers are like Contest/Event Leader(s)/Organizer(s), as they are not mods, and have the same kinds of controls.

The published POC for DC210 (email) verified that [Syntax] should be a leader/Organizer for that DCG subforum, and the forum mods had no disagreement with this either.

Welcome our first DCG Forum Leader/Organizer, [Syntax] :-)

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

I'm mucking about with the cookie information. This can lead to unpredctable behavior-- especially where it comes to use of "show new posts" authentication, and remaining logged in.
I'll post once more when I am done mucking about. If you have logged in with "remember me" and performed this login after the time/date of my post saying I'm done editing cookies, I'd suggest you verify you know your username/password and have a proper e-mail address, then log out of the forums, and log back in again. (For better security, logging in with https is suggested.)

Sorry for problems, but this will hopefully save users from having to authenticate for the new service as well as the forums, after they have logged into the the forums over https. (It may also allow us to permit https logins in the forums and let users shift to http if they wish.)

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

I'm mucking about with the cookie information. This can lead to unpredctable behavior...

I am done for now. I suggest you log out, clear cookies for forums.defcon.org (and any other defcon.org you have) from your web browser, and then logf back in again, if you are last authenticated to gain access to the forums before the time and date of this post.

This should save you from weird and unpredictable problems with "new posts" and unexpected "denied access."

Thanks!

[DaKahuna]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

I am done for now. I suggest you log out, clear cookies for forums.defcon.org (and any other defcon.org you have) from your web browser, and then logf back in again, if you are last authenticated to gain access to the forums before the time and date of this post.

This should save you from weird and unpredictable problems with "new posts" and unexpected "denied access."

Thanks!

I am not having any difficulty navigating throught the site http or https as had occured in the past.

The only issue I have is although I have Sage set to check the Forum using the https site, when I click on any of the links it defaults to the http site. I currently have to manually navigate to the https://forum.defcon.org site in order to log in securely.

A minor inconvenice but one worth it.

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

This is a note. We have som maintenance coming up where the forums may be down for about 30 minutes Wednessday evening. This may happen at 9, or 10pm pacific time-- it depends on when I get back and the results of other people's work.

I am not having any difficulty navigating throught the site http or https as had occured in the past.

The only issue I have is although I have Sage set to check the Forum using the https site, when I click on any of the links it defaults to the http site. I currently have to manually navigate to the https://forum.defcon.org site in order to log in securely.

A minor inconvenice but one worth it.

I think I know how to fix this, but it requires a mod to the code-- something which complicates each upgrade to the forums. I'll check it out later.

Sleep now. Zzzzz.

Added:
Ok. I lied. I couldn't sleep right away.
Change your RSS fee URL from https://forum.defcon.org/external.php?type=rss or https://forum.defcon.org/external.php?type=rss2 to https://forum.defcon.org/external2.php?type=rss or https://forum.defcon.org/external.php2?type=rss2 respectively. Then reload those feeds.

(the only thing that changed in those URL is external.php changed to external2.php for testing.

Please review external2.php and if it works (http -> http and https -> https) I'll submit it to the vendor as a requested change for the next release so I don't have to keep patching our version.

Now I sleep for 2 hours. :-)
Zzzz (for real this time)

[TheCotMan]

Re: PUBLIC-NOTICES: Forum Changes/Fixes. Any Questions?

The following users have invalid email addresses, and their accounts on the fourms have been converted to "users awaiting email confirmation."

If they still have their password, they can login to the forums, visit their UserCP, choose "email and password" and then change their email address, and click the link that is emailed to them. After this, there is probably about 1 hour hour period before they are automatically promoted back up the chain to be able to post again.

Users:
3rr0r , Leech , and meck