Spam

[RickB]

It was bound to happen. That we have gone this long without being infected is pretty incredible.
The root of the issue is that your moderators (me and ALX) have not really stayed on top of things. ALX is in charge of the backend stuff and I'm in charge of everything else. This site is hosted on an AWS server that ALX set up. I really was not all that involved with it. Initially, it was running on a private server somewhere in Cali, I think. ALX has been generous enough to provide free hosting for us. The only thing we pay for is the domain name and that's set up on automatic renewal for something like $15/year. So there's no real expense involved.

That said, we do have a duty to keep things well-oiled.

Currently, the BBS system we are sitting on is long overdue for an update from the publisher. This could be why we are vulnerable. But to do the update, I need FTP access. It has been a long time and I have lost my FTP login. I have a request in to ALX to see if he can get that reset.

In the meantime, I've deleted/blocked all the spam accounts, deleted their posts, and reset the account creation criteria. I've also disabled new member registrations for now. Maybe these guys are just practicing for the Olympics (2020 elections)

Now that I'm aware this is an issue, I'll do my best to stay on top of it until we are back to being somewhat 'anonymous'

The alternatives include:
- Moving the site to FB (many people do not have FB accounts)
- Getting additional admins. I realize this has been offered in the past and I'm certainly willing to tap a few others who would like to be admins. Probably something we should have done long ago.
- Shut the board down - not something I want to do - and start from scratch. Considering Scantlings has gone on a decade (or more???) longer than I ever imagined, perhaps this would be a good solution. If anyone would like to try such a thing, I can give you some direction on how to do it.

[Soñadora]

...gone on a decade (or more???) ...

Not quite, December 2012. Almost 7 years.

I have no sense of time

[Slick470]

Almost seems like you are having a back and forth with yourself there Rick

I'd hate to see this place disappear and completely understand if you don't always have time to stay on top of things. I'm happy to help out where I can. I don't know much about this BB software specifically, but manage the IT for my company on top of my day to day work responsibilities. So, if you were to let me know what can be helpful and point me in the right direction for the workflow, I'd be happy to help out. Please let me know.

[Soñadora]

Ha! I tend to forget that I've got a split personality here.

I'm going to put together an admin team with access to the administration control panel. It's pretty straightforward if you're the type who can manage without RTFM. That said, there is extensive documentation for phpbb so getting things figured out is not hard.

We are at an old (yet still supported) version of phpbb. I have tried the new version, but it would mean losing this lovely UI theme as there's little support for customization. At least, that's how it was a couple years ago when I looked at it.
I should have some time coming up to revisit this. But first I need to hear from Alex in order to reset FTP access.

[Slick470]

Like I said, happy to help out and I can look into the phpbb documentation a bit over the weekend.

Might be fun to learn some of this anyway as the old mailing list site for my boat finally went away and nothing has replaced it yet. Nobody could agree on what the new platform was going to be and so few of the owners have FB so it just finally withered and died.