BR Forum Improvements

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gordon
Posts: 358
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:02 pm

BR Forum Improvements

Post by gordon »

I have been frustrated by many search restrictions and things that seem not to work here, but upon investigation, I found settings that really opened things up. In particular, general search should not filter out any common search words, and Active Topics now works.

Acess Active Topics via the drop down menu at the upper left corner next to the Quick Links caption. It lets you find posts made in the last X days where X is the value of a nice selection range from 1 day to 1 year.
gordon
Posts: 358
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:02 pm

Re: BR Forum Improvements

Post by gordon »

At long last we have recovered the server that was seriously hacked last year. It now serves the wiki, the forum (bulletin board), the web site, and the FTP site. In order to recover we had to install an upgraded OS fresh and reload everything from backup. Then shortly after doing that viruses in the backup facilitated more hacks.

We contracted with a Linux security company called Sitelock to clean the system and continue monitoring it. Their software is impressive. over 3300 of our files were corrupted shortly after reloading from backup. They had everything clean in 24 hours from contract and told Google not to flag our emails anymore.

I will be approving system updates much more than I did in the past.

The FTP site has been pruned a little, but we have added nearly all of the conference materials from past years.

Our backups are continuing and carefully monitored. I will also be automating the transfer of backups to an offsite location.

The domain names to remember are:
  • brulescorp.com - web site
  • brforum.net - the forum BBS
  • brwiki.com - the wiki

There is no longer any place for people or bots to register on the wiki. Now anyone who needs to create an account can be added by any wiki editor (in special pages). And there are several wiki editors.. George, John, Laura, and Mikhail for starters. If anyone wants to add an account for posting to the wiki discussion groups or wants to become an editor let me know and I will assist.

We are now using a version of captcha on the forum to prevent bots from registering. In essence if no one clicks on the registration page it doesn't proceed. And if someone does register, it requires administrative approval to activate their account.
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