SMF Upgrade to 2.0

[gutmensch]

Fellow users,

we upgraded our forum software! Two mods were installed additionally, which should reduce spam (Bad Behavior in first place, and notCaptcha for registration). Please report any problems you might encounter like blocking of uploads, postings, links, etc. I think it is configured well now, but who knows...

As a drawback the wiki login does not work at the moment because the smf auth class has to be adapted. I'll do that in the next days, please be patient so long

Cheers
Robert

[maro]

Thanks to all that helped in this upgrade. It was a pleasant surprise this morning to see that the forum looked a bit "different" (with more rounded edges and a possibly more "eye candy").

I only had a brief look around so far, but as a user of a non-default theme in the previous version I wonder whether I've overlooked where I could change such a setting. Don't get me wrong I have no current urgent need that demands an alternative theme. I've already forgotten why I changed the theme to a non-default one, and I can't even remember which one it was. I just recall that I trialled the various themes and settled on one which seemed to provide me with some (minor ?) improvement to the default one.

Anyway, whilst on the subject of the forum software I wonder whether it would make sense to change the default of the 'Search order' (obviously on the 'Search' page) from 'Most relevant subject first' to 'Most recent topic first'. In my observation the ranking according to "relevance" has (at least for my taste) in most of my search attempts lead to rather "laughable" results (i.e. totally outdated topics are showing up with a high ranking, possible due to a fact that over a longer time frame they have accumulated more page views).

EDIT: And another positive difference seems to be that I can at least browse the forum now also with 'dillo2.tcz' (which means the "minimum" required to use the forum with a non text-based browser has been "lowered"). Mind you I seem to struggle with posting, but maybe that is just a local issue.

[gutmensch]

Many thanks for testing, maro! I didn't find an option to change the theme either... but as crazy as it may seem, for now I'm totally happy with this ;-) The problem is that the anti-spam mods for SMF change files in the themes as well and I already saw the mods broke in older SMF themes, so I'm not sure it's possible to keep "many" themes for everyone but also having a secured forum. But rest assured I'll investigate. The theme now isn't the end of the road, it's the beginning for SMF 2.0 and I'm open to every suggestion to turn the forum into a better one (e.g. better readability, etc.).

I'll check out the search as well, seems like there are many new options in this release... and it's hard to find these first

[bmarkus]

I upgraded my forum a month ago. Users like ithe new system and the new look & feel, including default theme.

My old favourite Babylon is broken in 2.0 as well as few others. I installed few 3rd party themes which are working correctly. Why they look nice, finally I returned to the default. But users can chose whatever they want (most are on default

I installed TinyPortal. It makes site more dynamic (eg. shoutbox) and gives more information, for example start page can show latest posts, etc. Also, you can put list of URL's, offer downloads and in general anything you can write in PHP, JAVA, ... I like TinyPortal and found it useful, gives a nice toolkit to customize site.

You may take a look at

http://forum.hasix.org

It is in Hungarian, but language can be set to English. Let me know in a PM if you want an account. I get daily 30-50 spam registrations, so unknown foreign member registrations are rejected by default.

At the bottom there is a Facebook like button also.

[gutmensch]

Bela, I'll check out tinyportal as I like the idea of it, thanks. First I want to see, how our various new anti-spam mods work for some time... I'd really love to be more stable than feature-rich in this case :-/

Update on wiki: dokuwiki upgraded to release "Rincewind", SMF authentication works again. Please report errors (I'm not sure about strange characters in user names).

[jur]

Is it possible to set prefs such that more info is displayed on the screen? The new SMF occupies far more screen real estate; I rather liked it that I could see so much on my netbook. With 2.0 there is lots of scrolling required. A default reply window would be nice as well, right now it requires a click and a reload to reply,whereas previously one could type immediately. Seems to me some of the previous nice easy functionality is now lost.

[gutmensch]

I don't think there are options to reduce the "screen usage" of the template, I had a check with 1024x768 and it was ok, although of course not perfect. You can however reduce the header with the arrow on the right corner, but I'm afraid there's no compromise that you won't have to scroll within 1024x600 or something similar... sorry to say that, but especially for those low resolutions it's IMHO almost impossible to arrange that much information from a forum and yet have a nice clean design without scrolling.

For the topic reply issue (I guess?) I can't reproduce your error - when I click "reply" I can immediately type in my answer, no reload or whatsoever involved. What browser are you using?

[bmarkus]

You can try mobile version. Click WAP2 at the bottom.

[jur]

Using Chromium; there is no reply window, you have to first click the Reply button which opens a new page with the reply window.

[curaga]

I think you can toggle the quick reply box in your profile options.

[hiro]

Did you guys get my email to forum@tinycore or so?
I couldn't navigate to the forum until now because of my "bad IP", this is firing backwards IMHO.
I'm on an open NAT over 3g.

[gutmensch]

@hiro: Well, I can see that this is problematic because of the 3G NAT stuff but the IP filtering is done by project honeypot/httpBL and when they've got your IP, someone spammed from it as well (I'm sure it wasn't you, but some bot on any network client in your providers net). It's not intended to block normal users and bad behaviour is not in strict mode, so I can't do anything about it right now. You will most probably be blocked on every site that uses project honeypot / httpBL. So because it is indeed firing against spam bots, better blame the spam bots in your network ;-) But there are of course logs from bad behaviour, next time please PM me your "bad IP" or send me a mail, I'll send you a PM with my address.

[jur]

I think you can toggle the quick reply box in your profile options.

Thanks! (Posting from that now )

[Rich]

Hi gutmensch
My ISP changes my IP address on a regular basis. So I guess if one of their customers
spammed a lot and I got assigned the address they spammed from, I would be blocked.

[gutmensch]

@Rich: Don't panic, mine is switching too at least every 24h, but httpBL is not blocking every IP for years ;-) there are special botnets (e.g. russia, greece, china, korea), which are constantly spamming and attacking - these are targetted this way and it seems to work well for now. It's not about one customer having an infected PC..... from June to August we had probably 6000-7000 spam bot registrations and maybe 10 times more accessing attempts, even a lot more are possible if I look at the bottom stats.