Forum Software Update

Imaginos · « **on:** February 25, 2002, 11:55:00 AM »

We are going to be upgrading the software of the forum to a newer version of UBB.

Hopefully there will be no problems in the upgrade. We are going to back the current forum up so that if there is an error we should be able to recover from it.

Imaginos
Webmaster

Imaginos · « **Reply #1 on:** February 25, 2002, 07:59:00 PM »

Ooook so maybe not today but as soon as we can get the time to do this. Its a big project.

Imaginos

Imaginos · « **Reply #2 on:** March 12, 2002, 11:42:00 PM »

Looks like this will happen in the next day or so, I will try to get a message as to why the fourms will be down when we take them down for the conversion.

Hopefully the conversion will only take a few hours max.

Imaginos

Kanodin · « **Reply #3 on:** March 13, 2002, 01:01:00 AM »

What's UBB? Ultimate Bulletin Board?

[ March 13, 2002: Message edited by: Kanodin ]

Imaginos · « **Reply #4 on:** March 13, 2002, 01:12:00 AM »

yep we are moving to ubbthreads. Has more features, better moderation and less security problems.

Imaginos

ThisIsNotMyName · « **Reply #5 on:** March 15, 2002, 01:35:00 AM »

_{By Proclamation of Imaginos, New Lord of the Land:}
ubbthreads has less security problems.

And with the plugging of those nasty security holes cited (almost two years ago) as the reason for disabling HTML in Gallery posts, you can once again allow inclusion of French Vanilla in the names and comments, and those of us who declared a BabeCott back then can finally start clearing the backlogs off our hard drives.

Oh, happy day.

Right?

Didn't think so.

So how about something Ownan could never see fit to give: an actual explanation of what was really the reason for turning off HTML? That might be enough to get the BabeCott lifted. It would at least justify such a discussion.

Or I could just continue to store things under "Not a Chance in Hell of Ever Being Seen". Not a big deal to me, but someone claimed to want new content...
---------------
Not that I really have anything to post, but...

b3 · « **Reply #6 on:** March 15, 2002, 04:43:00 AM »

The problem with enabling HTML is what you can do with it. First, you can do bad things with closing tables and really screwing up someone's design, or set the font size to 256 points, but getting all tags opened to be closed is a SMOP.
The less Simple Matter Of Programming is one of **10**. with Evil Code , (UBB doesn't let the code go though, even if it's not in HTML tags. This is slightly paranoid, but safer) But the HTML stripping functions of PHP (Which is what the gallery is written in) arn't good enough to stop someone writing a piece of **10** that redirects the viewer automatically to goat.cx , for example.

The easiest way around it is to work like the UBB does, and provide a function that automatically will change www.coolshit.com to "<a href="http://www.coolshit.com">[/url] but strips out actual HTML tags. This allows people to provide links without letting them do BadStuff™

Just my 2p.

Imaginos · « **Reply #7 on:** March 16, 2002, 06:06:00 PM »

Thanks b3 you pretty much hit it on the head there.

The new forum software is totally seperate from the gallery scripting.

The new user/members gallery will be very different when it goes live, so you will need to wait and see how it is and what it can do.

html should be working in the forums and has for some time iirc.

Things can alwasy be abused, if they are they are either removed from abuse or modified so that abuse can;t happen if thats an option.

Why people have to abuse things is beyond me.

Imaginos

dj-ohki · « **Reply #8 on:** March 16, 2002, 09:22:00 PM »

quote:
Originally posted by Imaginos:

Why people have to abuse things is beyond me.

cause they think they have something to prove.

Pacman · « **Reply #9 on:** March 16, 2002, 10:16:00 PM »

I was going to say attention....

Kanodin · « **Reply #10 on:** March 16, 2002, 10:17:00 PM »

Can you give html to contributors only?

Imaginos · « **Reply #11 on:** March 17, 2002, 12:38:00 AM »

Kanodin I belive the new software will require a person to register. Not sure if i can configure it past that. Once its ready to go live i can then test run it and make suggested changes to it.

It would be nice if i could tag certain regristered people that way.

Imaginos

Kanodin · « **Reply #12 on:** March 18, 2002, 03:35:00 AM »

What was the problem with abusing html? I don't recall any brouhaha concerning it. Maybe my memory is getting suppressed by subliminal html...

b3 · « **Reply #13 on:** March 19, 2002, 08:21:00 AM »

fnord.

Basically, (AFAIK) the design of the users gallery (and the forum at the same time, I think) was made using tables, and the php code didn't strip out Bad Codes. The offshoot of this was that someone typed in a close table, open new table tag and screwed up a couple of threads beyond readibility in the forum (so HTML was closed off there until the New Blue UBB install happened) and someone else mucked around with the gallery (by putting HTML into his comments) to the extent that pictures below that person's were not viewable. The automagic reaction to that was to strip all HTML from the gallery, where it remains.

Given the above, I'd be interested (as a web-developer, but also for referance for here) what type of HTML Circlesquared wants, given above notation about BadShit with tables?

But it's all up to Imaginos of the Golden Sig.

(FWIW, anyone who cares, UBB threads (the new system) uses PHP/MySQL rather than Perl/flat-files. This means a serverside screwup is less damaging, like overrunning log files).

Imaginos · « **Reply #14 on:** March 20, 2002, 01:46:00 AM »

yeah B3, and also some html messed up the moderators ability to delete some posts which can't happen.

Fortunatly all of this stuff is moving to much better software with less issues and nice features for everyone

Imaginos