Questions and things regarding rebooting the activity here.

[Temor]

Now that Jacek is back ( Hooray! ) and the spambots are gone ( Hooray! x2 ) we actually have a second chance at making this forum decent again!

I haven't really been here at all in like, a year. So I've got a lot of unread posts that I'm going through.
So I've got a bit of a dilemma.
Is it worth spending the time to answer questions posted a year or more ago, in case someone stumbles on the thread, or should I focus my attention on the newer posts?

Some of the questions here are about things that are legitimately good to know, and they haven't had any replies. So my thinking is that maybe it's worth answering them, but then again if no one reads it I've spent quite a bit of time on nothing.

Let me know what you guys think. Should I just " Mark all as read " and start answering questions as they come or should I start working through the backlog?







I'm excited!

[jacek]

I had the same dilemma and went for the "mark as read" option.

It is worth replying to them since people find the posts from searches.

There are far too many posts to go through though so I decided to focus on the recent/new ones for now and maybe go back a few pages and reply to some interesting posts if I get bored at some point.

[jacek]

I'd also say don't expect it to go crazy overnight, there is a lot to do to get us anywhere near busy again

[Temor]

I do realize that, but even a couple of posts per week is enough to satisfy my itch. And compared to the activity we used to have, it doesn't seem impossible.

[Dylan]

(Hoorayx3!)

It has been quite some time since I've been around here, but I am happy to also try and dig through some of the old posts and do what I can to help. If this forum can come alive again that would be wonderful. Here's to hoping.

[jacek]

I've added a repeating calendar event to remind me to check every day except Thursday (I go a pub quiz on Thursdays)

[KnightMaire]

I had the same dilemma and went for the "mark as read" option.

It is worth replying to them since people find the posts from searches.

There are far too many posts to go through though so I decided to focus on the recent/new ones for now and maybe go back a few pages and reply to some interesting posts if I get bored at some point.

I have an alternative solution: because information resource is such a powerful tool, you can do a DB query on all unanswered posts from that long ago and place a generic post on them, such as "This topic is old, if you would like a new response regarding the original post, please reply to bump the thread." - or something similar. It will solve the issue of "what if a user wanted to know these things?"

Just a thought.

[jacek]

Ahhh I like that idea! Makes it look a bit less abandoned too. I'll make a note

[killfrog47]

I think a good place to start would be redesigning the home page and forums. I know Jacek is looking into a new forums software so if we could find something that is easy to customize we could get the home page and forum looking and feeling the same. I wouldnt mind doing a lot of the front end work if need be. I do it day in and day out anyway for work! lol

[jacek]

Yeah I'm thinking of a bit of an overhaul of everything really. Maybe a slight re-branding is the best way to put it.

I'll do some proper research and see if I can come up with something.

I was thinking it might be fun to make the website open source so that people can contribute new pages and stuff if they feel like it'd be useful. Maybe a little bit gimmicky

[KnightMaire]

Might be hard, But have an initial design and each User can dynamically design their own vision of how betterPHP Should appear.

[jacek]

That's just the Stylish addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/

I just like the idea of open source in a fun way. Let people use what they learn by getting their code rejected... maybe not the best idea.

Maybe something a bit more private, people could make private pages available to their account or something. Okay terrible idea

[Temor]

I think it sounds like a lot of work. Maybe more than anyone is willing to put in for this, at least for now.

Just keep it simple for now. If we manage to get some activity back here we can consider putting in some hours in getting this to actually look good and optimize everything.

The most important thing for this forum is really tutorials. They're the only thing that brings new people here.

We could maybe all pitch in and do some text tutorials so that when people come here they have some more stuff to browse through.
I'll go through the suggestions forum and maybe I'll find something to make a tutorial on.



On another note: I just banned my first spambot since the cleanse. It felt weird.

[jacek]

Just keep it simple for now. If we manage to get some activity back here we can consider putting in some hours in getting this to actually look good and optimize everything.

That's probably a good point, no need to overreach just yet.

The most important thing for this forum is really tutorials. They're the only thing that brings new people here.

I think a few videos will bring a lot of the old users back too. It's one of my top priorities at the moment.

On another note: I just banned my first spambot since the cleanse. It felt weird.

Ha aww I guess some of them are just humans. Maybe we should enable admin review of the first posts? The issue with that is you get a lot of new users that post one thing then leave on a support forum.

[KnightMaire]

From my experience with the Town of Salem forums, the best security questions for prevent automatic bots are questions that ask to spell something backwards, ie

Spell 'backwards' backwards: sdrawkcab

[jacek]

The main issue is accounts that are actually created by people then passed on to bots to use for posting stuff. There are online things that pay people for each registration

The capture should defeat totally automatic registrations. One of the problems we had before was that there were loads of accounts posting junk that were never stopped.

[Temor]

I don't mind just being a bit more vigilant and check in a bit more often so that I can catch and delete the spam before it bothers anyone
One or two spam posts a day isn't much to fuzz about if I'm honest.

[jacek]

Yeah I think that is about normal tbh. It's just like email, you're always going to get a bit. I'd just rather people didn't see any.

Maybe admin review of any first post that has links in would work?

[Temor]

they usually avoid that by using clever tactics, like putting spaces in the domain name, or not including www. or http://
They will just find some way to get through the filter.

I think just admin review of all first posts. I don't think it matters much if a post doesn't show immediately. I can check in here every few hours and just clear everything that doesn't look like spam.

[jacek]

Even just switching software might help, phpbb is pretty much the most common thing on the internet.

Also totally unrelated but I'm making the site HTTPS at the moment

[Ecaz]

I'm still here!

Just can't access my old account for some reason. Can't use "Forgot Password" and if I type the wrong password I instantly exceed the maximum amount of login attempts.