Chile Forum

Ghost in the machine. Let me see if I can dig around in the logs and find something going on. Next time it happens, can you send me the details through email contact form on the front of the site with the time, date, and error. It will help me isolate what is going on exactly. Server logs can be big.

As you are getting the message from the forum, that is a sign that the server is fine and the forum is having some issue. I think I might have server restrictions too tight to keep the forum from running away with the processor. I have been letting them up a little at a time to get the best mix of performance and stability.

Thanks that helps. Keep any reports on this problem coming, because it is a bugger of a bug. Until I get this fully tracked down, refresh your browser a few times and it may disappear. I am suspecting there is a database connection problem or a cache problem.

On the documentation thing, I am planning to write a whole new set of documentations for the forum, including new forum rules. Adding a legend for the icons I think is a great idea. A quick reference for new users with the icon next to it would be useful.

Yea, thought I smelled a cache. Found some old files that where not being deleted from the cache by the system. I think I got that taken care of now, but still let me know if you have any more of the board not available type warnings.

Please note in the top right hand corner under the search bar field there is a button to "SHOW NEW POSTS". It was driving me crazy not having that button on the new forum, so I added that. Just goes to show, sometimes things that are bugging me about the forum don't get fixed because I think they are not bugging anyone else so why fix it. Please let me know if you have any issues. Chances are you are not the only one.

Found just the coolest and simplest spam bot fix. Thought I might share it with you. I have spent I don't know how many countless hours installing and researching spam bot blockers. Well someone came up with just one nice little line of code that stops about 99% of all bots (for now). Bots are generally written to be as small and fast as possible (those bots work hard after all), and to that end when they fill out registration forms they are set to select the first item in any pull down list in registration forms. Well it turns out that in all time zone lists in the World, the first is a time zone located in the middle of the Pacific where no humans live and thus no human would ever select that time zone. So, with one line of code we get to block most automated spam bots from registering on the forum. Consequently, no more hard to read captcha (the funny letters you have to type when you register to prove you are human) are needed. I still left ours on the registration form, but tunned it so a human can read it. It still does not stop those hard working kids from Indonesia, but the automated bots are about half the battle.

It was just a such a very cool idea. I think the guy that came up with it should get a nobel prize in computer science or something.

So, little by little I am getting everything in order. Please keep in mind that it took me over a year to tweak the last forum to the state it was at, and it was far from perfect. Now I have a completely new system to learn, and I am also expecting a quick series of bug releases from the phpbb group as this the first phpbb3 release to go stable.

I am also waiting for some really really cool plugins for the forum to stabilize. Things like the RSS feed system are just about done, and will allow users to build their own custom RSS feed of forums among other things.

Next on the big project list, once I get everything working here is a complete overhaul of the home page. I just have never been able to figure out what to do with it. Totally open to suggestions. Right now it is just dead.

First, I think I sorted out the problems with the photo gallery uploads and I have increased the number of photos you can upload on per user basis. Everyone should have 9 mb mas or menos, and I will add more. Please test and report.

There was a problem with permissions requiring me to aprove everyones photo uploads before they would be published. Removed that.

Thanks for the offer. We have an ugly policy. Graphics just lead to attractive web sites.

No seriously, the forum is kind of actively designed to use super simple graphics. The front template is going to get replaced, but likely by something even simpler (perhaps a bit less ugly). The forum graphics are minimalistic to reduce waisting users time. They know its the Chile Forum after posting 100 times, so I don't really need to impress them with anything flashy. Saves on my bandwidth bill also.

I think our members have flash and graphics fatigue from the standard practices of most Chilean web designers. They take the attitude that a site is not good until it crashes the users browser, the server, and the entire internet backbone with flashy graphics and pop ups (soooooooooo, 1999). Never mind that a web site should actually perform the objective it was created for, say something like providing information. Not against high bandwidth objects on a site, just prefer that they do something say like serve a photo, or provide chat function.

It is UTC -12 which is suppose to fall between all the various inhabited islands.

Not that I have anything against Tahiti and Midway, just the probability of them registering on our forum is about 1 in 6 billion anyway. Which annoying one person to eliminate most spam bots I think I could live with. That said, Midway is UTC -11 and Tahiti is UTC -10. Both should be fine. Can anyone else find an Island that is in the UTC -12 time zone? Ships don't count.