Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Killed My Board

When I started my Photoshopping board I tried very hard to install phpbb3. I downloaded the program and did everything said to do but nothing would work. Finally I found that a program on my brand new server would install phpbb2. It worked and we were up and running. Many old friends from Janee's joined and some new ones too. The only down side was the spam bots that swarmed like the plague. They can actually join a board. Then later come back and post their muck. Most were pill pushers but one was a hard core porn pusher. I did write about all this. Adding a mod to the board was said to help stop the spam bots from joinning a board. Which I was afraid to do in case I messed everything up. One mod changes the place that the generated letters show for visual conformation. It is said bots are now being programmed to over come this.

So I would check the board several times a day and if I saw a strange new member with jumbled letters for a name and strange hobbies for a graphic board...like camping and skiing instead of working with graphic programs and one other sure sign that I don't want to tell...I knew to delete them. Which I did often. That cut way back on unwanted posts. I read up on these spam bots and they will join a board and then come back later and post. That gives the bots time to check their e-mail and log on. It really seems to me that there might be human hands involved in this process.

My phpbb2 board has a warning in red print that says it needs updating. Dumb me! I tried and killed the board. So had to install a new one in a new directory. I did try to recover the old data but my backup was flawed and the board wouldn't install over itself on my web site. These things are tricky. Anyway many of the members have found their way to my new board and so we are again happy campers to have a place to stay connected. The new board still has that red warning print but I'm going to ignore it for now.

The only good thing is a reprieve from the spam bots. They haven't found us yet. I did make an index page for my site with directions to the new board and after the first day I got a brain storm. I put the link in a graphic.

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