announcement

[dchakrab]

Incidentally, stay away from phpBB for now. It's been exploited on a daily basis, pretty much, since December, and hackers find new loopholes in the code sometimes within hours of a new release. They're coming out with releases really fast, but it's a *lot* of work for the board admin, keeping it current, and it's STILL apt to be compromised. If it's cracked, the entire server's at risk, so some hosting companies (mine included) are banning phpBB installs.

Similarly, stay away from awstats...tremendously useful package, but also recently compromised in a major way.

HostPC offers fairly reliable, $30 per year hosting, which should more than take care of the boards, site, etc. Might be worth taking a look if cost is an issue. They also have great support and response, and I generally get a helpdesk response within a few hours when I need something.

I'm looking into alternate forums packages myself, to convert a phpBB board for a client, but my main issue is the feasability of a Google hack to make the boards crawlable. My phpBB board had 1800+ posts, meaning it showed up as 1800+ pages of spiderable, relevant content to a bot, which is heaven from a search engine optimization point of view.

  -Dave.

[Superfly]

Ron, the site looks great!!  When are we switching over... The chatbot was freakin' me out man....

[Sable]

I agree... the site looks AWESOME  ;D

[admin]

Thanks for the comments guys, dependng on my schedule, I'd like to get moved over this weekend.  however in order to do that I will have to shut this site down for as long as a day.
Backing up this site has become a major chore with errors and time outs etc.  but it needs to be done to import all of the messages to the new system. so you can plan on the site being down during part of the weekend.

so officially, the cutover date will be the 21st of may.

I do expect a few glitches here and there so as we get going with the new site, if you see something that could use changing or fixing, just let me know.


 

[Lucky]

Hey man! c'mon man...I know you got the site up somewhere man!! just one thread, that's all i need, you know i'm good for it!...

lol, i'll just have to do a lot of riding this weekend...

[Extent]

I guess I'll have to get the ball rolling...

I'm gonna have to learn me to do that one of these days, and I'll be sure to post a picture when I do, right now I'm just too worried about dumping the bike over everytime I lighten the front end.  Maybe I'll try to go out this weekend with some friends and get some lean angle shots  ;D


The new site looks great, and the domain will be nice as well.  I might say you should darken the text a tad bit on the main page, the blue is just a little on the lighter side.

The chat app is pretty cool.  Is there a way to link up to it with an IRC client or is it all self contained?  If you can't I'ld say replace it with an embedded java IRC client and hook it up with a real IRC channel,  just MHO.

Btw the new search speed ROCKS.... that alone is worth the move 8)

[VisionMeister]

how come I can't see your pipe in the wheelie pic?
Are you cheating?

[admin]

Cheating ?  thats a 500 lb motorcycle with only about 50-60
horse at the rear wheel, I was probably lucky to get it that high  lol
actually my wife took that picture as I was showing off in front of the
house before heading out for a quick ride last october I think.
she did say that she couldn't get the camera to snap the picture fast enough
to capture it. 


ok, to answer some questions that you guy's have posted, I did eveluate phpBB back in April and found that it didn't have all the features I was looking for without applying a bunch of modifications and asking for some support headaches. I did see that they had some security issues as well so I moved on.
as far as IRC goes, I'm not in a position to host an irc server nor am I interested in dealing with all the problems irc brings with it. generally I wouldn't expect to have more than 10-15 people chatting at the same time plus I was impressed with whats been done with flash technology. If the flashchat doesn't work out then I may examine other alternatives. for the hardcore chatters there's always aim/msn and yahoo.  I believe lucky used to run a yahoo chat from time to time, but it's never been a priority for me as much as having a reliable board up and running.

thanks for all the comments guys, we should now be officially open for business.


-Ron

[Lucky]

ok, it's PROBABLY just me because i'm on dial-up, but the pages take incredibly long to load.  (I know, 'cmon Lucky, get into the 21'st century!!')

anyone else on dial up notice this or do i need to go thru my pc & change the stator?

[Lucky]

also, now i'm not complaning, your probably still working the bugs out, so it's just an observation, the 'Topic order' (post order) is backwards, showing the odest posts on page 1, & the new posts on page 70 something... i figured out to click the topic heading on the top right of the colume, & i thought i fixed it in my settings.. but it still does it.  i'll -play with my setting some more to see if it's just me being technicly inept today..  :D

[admin]

actually for me, the pages are faster than the old site.
according to web analyst, this picture is the largest one on this page:
http://www.xz550.com/art_files/IM000065.jpeg
it's over 250 k and so should be resized for an avatar.

this is also a large picture that needs resizing:
http://home.comcast.net/~slapshot1342/TheBike2.jpg

this is whats reported:
Global Statistics
Total HTTP Requests:   46
Total Size:   516278 bytes

I've attached a resized version if you want to use it Lucky.

[Sable]

I re-sized the image of my bike... Didn't realize that it would slow it down because it's a link...anyways... just changed the picture.. should be a lot smaller ;D

~Sable

[Lucky]

i've uploaded your ver of my avitar to my site & linked to there (i didn't want to upload it to yours & use space) for whatever reason it looks a little 'muddy' but i'm going to take new pics of the bike this year since it's changed a lot sfrom when thos pics were taken, i'll play with it then.

it seems to have helped, i've also disabled some things like having 'quick reply' allways load, & i'll clear my cache too..  should load faster after the second visit then.

thanks, --Lucky

[Lucky]

BTW, member map not up yet, or is it me (again!)

[admin]

ok, I tweaked the picture and did some research.
uploaded avatars ( the picture next to your name )
are limited to 75 x 75 pixels.  if you picture isn't square,
it's going to squish it to fit, not only that your browser has
to process the size and do the compressing.

I resized your picture and made it a bit more even so that
it doesn't need to compress it as much.
I also uploaded it to the avatar selection page so you don't need to
link from your site.     8) 

the member map should be up, unfortunately there isn't a way
to convert from the old board so you'll need to put your pin back on the map.
I think the new maps are a bit nicer than the old and the global view
thing is kind of neat too.

Time permitting, I may be able to manually put the pins back on for everyone
but I can't promise anything on that.

[Extent]

Don't know why it would be running slower now but for a while some of the avatars have been linked to full sized pictures.  Some boards resample the image automatically when you submit it, others reject it alltogether if it's to large, it's hard to tell once the board accepts the image :).

I was confused by the page ordering at first too, took me a while to find that it wasn't in the preferences but on the topic heading there.  The sort changes worked fine for me, they haven't reverted, but you do have to do it manually for each forum it seems.  I'm using Firefox, YMMV

There's no server to run with IRC, in that respect it's much like YIM or AIM, we just have to create a channel and all decide to go there (anyone can create a channel, I'm sitting in #ROV on FEFnet right now)  I'ld be cool to have a line in the footer of the forum with how many people are logged into the chat at the time of page load.

I'm really impressed with the flash chat as well, I'm amazed at how much it can do, but I just expect too much from my apps.  It's not something I would use everyday.

I had some other thoughts but I can't remember them right now, I've got to run and help a friend with a new bike :D

-edit-
btw Blake your avatar is smaller now, but the filesize is still like 120k, you should recompress the image as well, shoot for a final filesize of less than 24k, you could probably get that particular image under 10k without loosing any noticeable quality.  Start with a jpeg quality setting of 30 and go from there.

[ProfessorRex]

Testing to see if my Avatar is working

[h2olawyer]

Ron -

Don't know if it's not operational at the moment or what, but I can't get to the map to load the info & push my pin in.  Just tells me I can't look at the map.  I'll try again later & see if it's working for me then.

H2O

[ProfessorRex]

I get the message:
"An Error Has Occurred!
You cannot view the member map. "

[ArrrGeee]

ok, the members map is functional, found a small glitch that is now all set.

-Ron