Cadillac & LaSalle Club Discussion Forum

Cadillac & LaSalle Club Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Jeff Hansen on May 15, 2010, 06:57:38 PM

Title: Forum back up and running
Post by: Jeff Hansen on May 15, 2010, 06:57:38 PM
All,

As you can see, the forum is back up and running.  During the outage, I upgraded the forum software and its underpinnings.  Hopefully the automated bots (which seemed to be causing all of the connection issues previously) will leave us alone for awhile.

One change to the software of note:  I have modified the 'reply with quote' feature: you can use that button, but no quote will appear in your reply.

Further, guests cannot search the forum and statistics have been disabled for all users.  These are very process intensive functions that the bots were taking advantage of.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues with the software by posting in the Forum Tips and Help section.

Thanks for your patience!!

Jeff
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Brett Cottel on May 15, 2010, 07:07:50 PM
thanks for the hard work!
Brett
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Misfit on May 15, 2010, 07:24:59 PM
Thanks Jeff. Your ROTY was well deserved.

It's hard to keep those spammers away, while still allowing unregistered guests.

I guess that means more active financial participation, or you just turn off all but 1 or 2 boards to guests. Sometimes, you do what you gotta do.

Fins
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Bill Hedge CLC 14424 on May 15, 2010, 07:37:14 PM
We all owe Jeff a big thank you.  Jeff does all of this for free while working full time and balancing life's usual hassels.  Thanks Jeff.
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Bob Kielar on May 15, 2010, 08:31:23 PM
Thanks Jeff:

                 Your hard work is really appreciated.

                                                          Cadillac Kielar
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: 35-709 on May 15, 2010, 09:32:46 PM
Thanks, Jeff!
Geoff N.
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: markl on May 15, 2010, 10:11:41 PM
Jeff,
Thanks for getting the board up and running again, and thank for re-setting my Email.  This has become an important part of my life, and I realized that once it was out of reach! 

Thanks Again, MarkL, CLC #25216
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Dave Ventresca on May 15, 2010, 10:49:28 PM
John what does ROTY mean? Dave
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Jim Stamper on May 15, 2010, 11:13:55 PM

     Thanks from here too.   Jim Stamper, Grantham, NH
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Misfit on May 16, 2010, 03:31:39 AM
Dave. It's an in-house thing. It means Redneck of the Year. He qas presented this at the Grand National in Cherry Hill in 2008 by theat Tassie Guy, Bruce.

It started as a piece of painted plywood in the shape of the Cadillac crest, with some Cadillac jewelry on it. From there it just took off. If you did redneck style modifying to your Cadillac and did it well, you were awarded one of these.

Here is an example.   :o

Fins
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Misfit on May 16, 2010, 03:37:20 AM
I knew I had this picture somewhere. Do you remember this Jeff??   :D

A true master and 'puter wizard.

Fins 
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: The Tassie Devil(le) on May 16, 2010, 05:25:21 AM
And here is Jeff and the award, just after receiving it from yours truly.

Bruce. >:D
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Joe Manna on May 16, 2010, 08:59:48 AM
Jeff,thanks so much for doing this.I know it was a lot of hard work.Hope you can make it to our show.
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Jeff Hansen on May 16, 2010, 11:48:37 AM
Bruce and John,

Yes, I remember those photos and I still have the award on my garage wall right where I put it after getting home from the '08 GN.  I was (and still am!) honored to receive that award.

Thanks to all for the kind words.

Jeff
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Misfit on May 16, 2010, 02:44:43 PM
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have failed to mention the originator of the ROTY-A. My email box overflowith.   :P

So let's give a big round of applause to "Porter". He was the originator and craftsman of the award presented to only the highest of us in the Cadillac world.   :D

Jeff
Stampie
Bruce (Tassie)
John Washburn
Me
The Doc
Guidematic

And a host of others that have proved our worth to the Cadillac world. Yea!!!!!!   ::)

Fins
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Chris Bryant #19358 on May 17, 2010, 12:56:05 PM
Great work Jeff. Glad to see the Forum back! All the best and I'll see you at the Tent in Hershey this autumn.

Chris Bryant
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: EAM 17806 on May 17, 2010, 01:01:04 PM
Once again Jeff has come through for the club's forum to make it workable as it is. THANKS JEFF!   EAM
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Guidematic on May 18, 2010, 08:40:18 AM

Excellent work, Jeff. I really hope that I don't have this problem on my board, but so far it's small and quite quiet. That part I hope to change. We all appreciate your hard work in getting it all up and running. It's the only real contact many of us have with eh CLC.

As for the ROTY, it indeed is Porter that has done all the work in making them and distributing them. Hats off to him and his efforts to make them. And you are indeed a lucky soul to receive one. I also am one of the lucky ones.

Each one is tailored to it's respective recipient. Mine is green with Fleetwood lettering.

I think it all started when I went to Porter's to pick up my '85 Eldo back in November 1994. I took a plaque that I had made for him, but it was a mahogany board with some Cadillac jewelery. I titled it the Redneck Cadillac Garage of the Year Award. It gave him the idea for the subsequent awards.

Mike
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Coupe on May 19, 2010, 08:45:26 AM
Thank-you Jeff for all the effort you have invested in this forum. It is not only the best tool a Cadillac owner ever had it is a fun stop every day to see what's happening in our hobby.
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: STDog on May 22, 2010, 12:23:36 PM
Quote
One change to the software of note:  I have modified the 'reply with quote' feature: you can use that button, but no quote will appear in your reply.

Why would you do that? It makes no sense.

Quote
Further, guests cannot search the forum and statistics have been disabled for all users.  These are very process intensive functions that the bots were taking advantage of.

Can you not just set it to disallow the bots?

Turning of the search, especially for guests means even less people using it and asking questions that have been answered multiple times.

Not sure how the statistics was an issue either. And what stats did you turn off?
I still see my posts per day, and total time logged in, and the stats page comes up.



Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Misfit on May 22, 2010, 12:47:16 PM
I think Jeff is referring to the other stats that you can usually pull up. Top 10 posters, Top 10 on line the most time, Top 10 topic starters, etc... You know, the stuff the average guy never looks at.

Fins
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Jeff Hansen on May 22, 2010, 02:47:40 PM
ST,

Good questions.  I'll try to answer them.

QuoteWhy would you do that? It makes no sense.

Some folks don't quite know how to work with the quoted reply feature - to the point where responses were being made inside of quotes which made the thread difficult to read at times.  When there are photos embedded in the quotes, that makes the quotes even longer.  We as moderators decided a while back that eliminating the reply with quote feature would make things easier to follow.  I don't expect everyone would prefer that, but that's what we did.

QuoteCan you not just set it to disallow the bots?

Turning of the search, especially for guests means even less people using it and asking questions that have been answered multiple times.

Not sure how the statistics was an issue either. And what stats did you turn off?
I still see my posts per day, and total time logged in, and the stats page comes up.

There is no setting to just turn off the search to bots - when a request is made, there is little to be able to discern a post from a human to a post from a bot.  That is why we did the visual verification thing when guests post.  I am working on code to enable the search for guests so they have to do visual verification when they make the search request.  When I have that perfected, I'll enable it.

With regard to statistics, John is correct in that I am referring to the 'View other stats' link on the home page to view the "Top 10 Posters", etc.  That is very CPU intensive and it has been disabled to ensure resources are used elsewhere.  Posts per user, time logged in, etc. are not affected by this and you will continue to see those statistics.

HTH,
Jeff
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: STDog on May 22, 2010, 03:45:34 PM
Quote from: Jeff Hansen on May 22, 2010, 02:47:40 PM
Some folks don't quite know how to work with the quoted reply feature - to the point where responses were being made inside of quotes which made the thread difficult to read at times.  When there are photos embedded in the quotes, that makes the quotes even longer

I see. Guess my decades on the net make these things seem like second nature.

Back in the days of USENET and mailing lists, incorrect quoting and top posting would get you reamed by the admins and the other users.

I see that in the post window the "Insert quote" link does work.

Quote
There is no setting to just turn off the search to bots

So they aren't adhering to the robots.txt directives?
http://www.searchtools.com/robots/robots-txt.html


FWIW, I check the top level file, http://www.cadillaclasalleclub.org/robots.txt
and the current forum is not disallowed. Looks like an old one was but the file was not updated for SMF.
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Misfit on May 22, 2010, 06:32:04 PM
Just when I think I'm starting to get some of the stuff, you guys throw out a new one at me.  :D

Fins
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: STDog on May 22, 2010, 07:50:17 PM
Quote from: John Serio #22631 on May 22, 2010, 06:32:04 PM
Just when I think I'm starting to get some of the stuff, you guys throw out a new one at me.

We have to go slow. Don't want to overwhelm you.
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: The Tassie Devil(le) on May 22, 2010, 08:06:12 PM
G'day Thomas,

If it was possible to be able to only stop the "Bots" and "Spammers" then the world would be a better place.

Bruce. >:D
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: Jeff Hansen on May 22, 2010, 08:09:44 PM
ST,

Thanks for showing me that my robots file was out of date.   :)  It has been updated.  Glad someone is looking out for me!

However, even with that, I doubt a bot that is going around dropping spam and porn on boards is going to adhere to a robots file!   ;)

Yes, the insert quote button works, but I don't believe many people use it.  I believe more people use the 'reply with quote' button simply because its there.

Thanks!
Jeff
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: STDog on May 22, 2010, 08:16:10 PM
Quote from: Jeff Hansen on May 22, 2010, 08:09:44 PM
However, even with that, I doubt a bot that is going around dropping spam and porn on boards is going to adhere to a robots file!   ;)

Haven't see bots that drop spam. Of course I missed all the fun recently.

Anyway it might help on the server load.


As for spammers, Bruce,
nothing will stop them. Just try to keep them at bay and block any IP addresses you can.
Some good lists out there to start with. Then it's just keeping up with them. Usually you can block a large range based on one spammer.
Some day they will run out of IP addresses to use (then we move to ipV6 and start all over).
Title: Re: Forum back up and running
Post by: tony m on May 24, 2010, 10:21:01 PM
Jeff,

Thanks for the Forum!

Tony M.