Four Island

Okay--remember The Grand Upgrade back in January? When I was updating all of those outdated pieces of software on my server? Well, I did forget to mention one fairly obvious outdated piece of software that is used perhaps more often that any of the others listed. Well, maybe I didn't forget to mention per se seeing as I didn't update it that day. Well, yesterday I finally did.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm talking about The Fourm. Yes, The Fourm is a freakishly old piece of software, as it used to run on an original copy of phpBB 3.0. That's nearly three years old. whistles Yes, I know, it's commonly believed that The Fourm ran on phpBB 3.0.2, but I vaguely remember, two years ago, trying to upgrade The Fourm to 3.0.2 and encountering some difficulty that required me to revert the changes (even though The Fourm still ended up saying 3.0.2), which is probably the reason that I have been too afraid to upgrade The Fourm since as it left me the impression that I had hacked The Fourm too badly to upgrade it. That, and the fact that 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 were released after the launch of The Fourm, is what leads me to believe that our friend The Fourm was actually previously running on an original copy of phpBB 3.0.

Anyway, yesterday, I set myself up at my computer and worked at upgrading The Fourm to the newest version available. I ran it through once on the testing copy on my laptop, learned from my mistakes and wrote down a checklist and eventually did the real thing. And good golly gosh, it worked. The Fourm is sparkly clean and brand new. :D 355 bugs fixed, 54 new features, 88 general changes made and 4 security holes patched. Once again, whistles

One of the things that I am especially excited about for The Fourm is the new ability to use reCAPTCHAs on registration forms rather than the home-brand one included with phpBB. I have had a real problem with spam registrations in the past on The Fourm and it has led me to disable user registration several times. I last opened it up again some time in late July and by the time that I upgraded phpBB yesterday, I had to delete 375 freaking spam registrations. Whut. I know.

Anyway, while the spam registrations weren't too much of a problem since most of them couldn't be activated due to The Hotmail Bug, which has spread to a lot of other email providers, it's a good thing I've plugged that hole with a reCAPTCHA because I have finally fixed The Hotmail Bug! Incidentally, I suggested the solution that I used nearly two years ago and I once again ignored myself. :P Yes, I know I claimed to have fixed it, but I really don't know why I would have said that because when I looked at my server yesterday, the fix was clearly not there. Perhaps The Grand Upgrade, which happened a day after that post was posted, messed with it somehow. I dunno. :P Anyway, it's great that Four Island can now actually email people and though this opens the spam activation problem up, that problem is neatly solved with phpBB3's new reCAPTCHA module. :)

The third awesome thing which ties into the first: my server has been broken out of it's jail! I mentioned the restrictions placed on my server before and never really explained what they were, but it's not necessary anymore because they're gone! And you know what that means: reCAPTCHAs (AND PINGBACKS :D) actually work now! I had previously removed reCAPTCHAs from Four Island anonymous commenting due to the fact that they never worked and prevented people from commenting, but I have now added them back! Also, if my server hadn't been freed, reCAPTCHAs wouldn't have worked on The Fourm either, so I'm glad that this had happened just in time. :P

Anyway, so The Fourm now has no spam registrations, Four Island has less spam and I can finally receive email notifications from The Fourm again. Hoo-ray. However, there's one last thing I want to mention: WE NEED TO REVIVE THE FOURM!

Click the link. Read. Learn. Act. Because I've typed too much in this post already and it's nearly half past 11. Goodnight. :P