If you can read this, it means the forum has succesfully been upgraded to version 2.0.20. (If you decide to look down the list of topics in this forum, you'll find the last similar topic I posted was on upgrading to v2.0.11. Yes, I've been lazy enough to miss updates .12 through .19. Shush.)

Also, I turned email verification back on -- I thought it had been on all this time and that the spambots had actually found a way to verify themselves, but apparently it had gotten turned off. In addition to that, I installed a mod that claims it keeps most spambots away. As far as I can tell, it doesn't do much except hide the "website" field on the registration page, and only allow you to enter your site from the edit profile page once you're already logged in. But since most of these spambots don't actually post any messages, but simply register dozens of accounts with their spammy link in the website field, maybe they'll be turned off and go away if the registration page doesn't have one. It makes sense, kinda.

On a more personal note, I've been busy moving house for the past month, which put me without internet for about two weeks and too busy to use it much the other two, so that explains why I've been rather absent for the past month or so. But more on that in the general chat topics.

--Laura // Tancaliel, your friendly neighborhood admin

Tanc, there seems to be a problem with the quote tags. Any idea what's wrong? Or am I being dense

I like your new av, by the way ^_^

I've noticed. It seems you can only use the [quote]some text here[/quote] tags to make a generic quote, not the [quote="some username here"]text[/quote] tags that put "$username wrote:" before the quote. Odd.

OK, after looking around on the phpbb support forums, it seems this is a common issue for people who have HTML enabled and have upgraded to version 2.0.20. I've added in some code that's supposed to make them work again.



Well, that seems to work again. Thanks for the icon love btw, I just changed it today to reflect my new hair, because it's quite a bit longer than when I did the previous pic. It isn't purple though. Yet. The thingy for making the faces is here.

Oooooooo! *plays with the face-making thingy* ^_^

*Tanc love*
Thank you for all the forum maintainance ^_^ *huggle*

~Kristian

Well, the spam bot thing worked... for a little while. Spam bots have started to sign up again, and this time not with a few of them a day, but actually more like 30-50. Even though email verification is on now, it doesn't really matter; the accounts are still created, they just can't post until they get themselves verified, but that's not really an issue for them since they never post anyway. And they still sit there and clutter up the memberlist like before.

So, I've installed a new form of anti-spambot protection; a nifty function that checks the email address you enter when signing up, and only lets the sign-up through if it's a valid one. And I don't mean valid in the sense of "it has text and then @ and then text and then . and then more text", cause phpBB itself already does that. It actually sort of sends a test message to the address, and only considered the address valid if it can be received. That should help with the sign-ups, as the spam bots keep using [random string of letters]@[random string of letters].com addresses.

Oh, you're awesome.

what would we do without you?

.

o_o'''

Okay, maybe that is a little amusing...