Forum Changes

Message

#1 Post by **navynuke04** » Fri May 14, 2004 2:54 am

Okay, I've recently changed somethings on the forums. This will not really affect many of you out there, because you are already registered. However, I'm going to address the changes here.

You are now required to register an account prior to posting on all forums except the Technical and Bugs Forum. This was done to make things a bit easier to track and to moderate. We will get a better idea of the number of individual visitors to the forums as well. I've left the Technical and Bugs forum open to unregistered visitors so that anyone can post potential problems with the games.

You are now required to supply a valid email address when registering a new account. You will then be sent a confirmation email, in which you must follow a link to activate your account. Only then will you be able to use your new account. This will prevent people from registering multiple accounts and/or supplying us with bogus contact information.

All email is now handled through the board. If you mouseover any member's email button, you'll notice that you are not redirected to a mailto: tag anymore. Instead you will be directed to a form which you will fill out. The board will send the email for you. This allows us to provide you with a better degree of privacy. Now no one can go down the list and steal all the user's email address's. Of course, once an email is sent through the board, the address's are revealed. This will allow you to continue emailing each other normally if so desired. There is a flood protection placed on emailing, however. This will prevent spammer's from abusing the Memberlist.

I would like to point out the "Always show my e-mail address:" option in each registered member's profile. If this is unchecked, your email address will be hidden from all but the forum administrators. You do not have to worry about us sending you spam or selling your address to anyone. We hate SPAM and are not out to make a profit.

Seriously though, please update your email addresses so that they are current. We have an option to do a mass mailing to every registered forum member. We may decide to use this to send important information in the future. You wouldn't want to miss out on anything, would you?

Again, these changes have not been well tested. If you spot a bug, post here and I'll do my best to eliminate it.

#2 Post by **navynuke04** » Fri May 14, 2004 11:46 pm

I've just enabled another new feature. We now have two (2) new avatar galleries! Thank you very much to Broomie, who prepared all of these. You can view the new avatars by going to your profile and looking under the avatar section. Make sure you notice the menu box to select between Kq1vga and Kq2vga.

Thanks again, Broomie!

#3 Post by **navynuke04** » Sun May 16, 2004 4:39 am

If you weren't observant enough to notice the new button at the bottom of your page, allow me to direct your attention there now.

AGDI now has a world map. Feel free to place a pin and let us know where you're from!

#4 Post by **navynuke04** » Sun May 16, 2004 5:45 am

In the interest of keeping this thread free from clutter, I'm going to lock it and only use it to announce any updates or changes I make to the forums.

#5 Post by **navynuke04** » Sun May 16, 2004 1:03 pm

Thank you to Broomie for another good suggestion. I've moved the link to the World map. The large button at the bottom was not very professional looking. While obvious, and sure to get attention, it didn't quite look right. Instead, as Broomie suggested, I've moved the link into the menu at the top of the page. It can now be found next the the FAQ, Search, Memberlist, etc. buttons.

Oh, and thanks also goes out to Spikey for pointing towards this world map program. Thanks Spokey! I mean Spikey!

#6 Post by **navynuke04** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 10:57 pm

Several members have requested a birthday calendar. I've taken the time to implement one. Take a look at the menu at the top of the screen. You should see "AGDI Calendar". Have fun!

#7 Post by **navynuke04** » Mon Jul 12, 2004 11:18 pm

Rules for the calendar, only post birthdays for actual posting members. As nice as it is, we really don't care if it's your grandma's birthday.

No spamming the calendar. I am notified of each entry, and will delete anything that I feel should not be there.

Please don't abuse the calendar. I'm paying good money to bring it to you.

#8 Post by **navynuke04** » Wed Sep 08, 2004 1:41 am

The forum's server will be undergoing upgrades from September 8th to 11th. I have been informed that there may be possible interuptions in service. We appologize in advance for any trouble this upgrade may cause.

#9 Post by **navynuke04** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:35 pm

We have decided to integrate the AGDI Chatroom into the forums. You will now see a link to it at the top of the forum right along side the World Map and Calendar.

We'd like to extend a thank you to Broomie for creating and Takari-Freak for hosting the old chatroom. Broomie is a long time fan, and we owe him a lot. We've decided to express our thanks by giving him moderatorship in the new chatroom.

Join the chat!!!

#10 Post by **navynuke04** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 5:13 pm

I'm going to be doing some maintenance on the forums. They may go down for a bit. I appologize in advance for any inconvenience.

#11 Post by **navynuke04** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 6:55 pm

All maintenance is complete. Let me know if you guys experience anything wierd.

Some changes you may notice:

-Auto Subject On Reply: If you leave the subject blank when replying to a thread, it will now fill the subject in with "Re: subject"

-Descriptive Time Zone: In your profile, the timezones now include descriptions rather than just "GMT -3 hours"

-Remote Avatar Resize: If a user attempts to use a large avatar, it will automatically be resized. This will prevent people from being able to mess up the layout of the forums by using large avatars. The current limit is set to 90 pixels x 90 pixels. I think this should be large enough, but I'm open to feedback.

-Several other moderating tools were installed. These don't concern the normal user though.

#12 Post by **navynuke04** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 6:05 pm

I've updated the forum's chatroom once again. It is now fully integrated into the forum. This means that regardless of which forum theme you choose to use, the chat window will appear correctly within that them.

Keep in mind that the number by the chatroom link only updates when you load the page. This means that the number won't change once you enter the chatroom. Of course if you can't figure out how many people are in the chat once you're in, you probably shouldn't be using the chat in the first place.

#13 Post by **navynuke04** » Mon Dec 13, 2004 1:10 am

I appologize for the downtime the forums just received. Apparently the server was attacked by hacker(s). I did some research and found that only part of our database was corrupted, and so I restored just that part. Unfortunately, the last backup I had was from December 3rd. Any users that registered since then, or any changes you might have made to your profile have been lost. All posts should still be there though, so this should only be a minor inconvenience. If you spot anything wierd, please report it in the tech forum.

Oh, a side effect of restoring all the user data from the 3rd is that the forum thinks no one has logged in since then. All posts made after the 3rd will appear as new to you.

Tech Support wrote:Your host computer is currently experiencing a denial of service attack that has temporarily caused a disruption in web service.

Server technicians are at work on the issue and will have attacking IP
addresses filtered at the firewall level shortly. We appreciate your
patience in this matter.

Sincerely,
Technical Support

#14 Post by **navynuke04** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 11:14 pm

I've implemented a Who's Online list. It includes a list of current chatroom users as well. You can choose to remain hidden by making the appropriate selection in your profile.

Keep in mind, however, that your choice isn't applied to the chatroom. You will show up in that list no matter what your options are set to.

Thank you Broomie for pointing out how to retrieve chatroom user's names.

#15 Post by **navynuke04** » Wed Jan 26, 2005 5:26 am

With the release of QFG2VGA rapidly approaching, I thought I'd throw a teaser out there to all our loyal fans.

We've been working on a new forum theme for a few weeks now. It's ready, and waiting for you to use it.

Just go to your profile and change your theme/style to "QFG2VGA"

If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to share them.

#16 Post by **navynuke04** » Sat Jan 29, 2005 2:47 am

Pidgeot has supplied me with a new custom board modification.

His script gives a better chatroom who's online list. The chatroom regulars may have noticed that the number shown in the who's online list does not always match the actual number of people in the room. This code should fix that.

Also, his code removes the last comma from the list of names, therefore making the output look nicer.

Thanks Pidgeot!

#17 Post by **navynuke04** » Sat Jan 29, 2005 5:21 pm

Pidgeot has modified his code a bit. The Who's Online list now highlights chatroom moderators. He also formatted the list of names to fit proper English.

As a thank you, I've given Pidgeot moderator rights to the chatroom.

Thanks Pidgeot!

#18 Post by **navynuke04** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:46 am

We've just introduced Google Ads into the forums. We are hoping that having these ads will allow the forums to pay for themselves. Everytime someone clicks on one of the ads, we get reimbursed for sending them traffic.

The ads were set up to match the forum themes, and to be unintrusive. We are hoping that they won't be an annoyance.

In case you get any ideas, don't just sit there and click the ad over and over. Google checks on this behaviour.

#19 Post by **navynuke04** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:19 pm

Tech Support wrote:We have scheduled an emergency maintenance, involving a PDU (Power Distribution Unit), for tonight. Your site, located on an affected server, will go down tonight at June 13th 11:59 pm CDT. Your server should automatically boot up after power is restored if you halt your server prior to the maintenance. Power should be restored at 12:31 am on the 14th of June.

You can do the math to find out exactly when this will be for your time zone. It's only about a 30 minute downtime.

#20 Post by **navynuke04** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 2:51 am

Added back in the Chatroom. It is integrated with the forum, so you have to be a registered member (and logged in) to use it.

#21 Post by **navynuke04** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 3:10 am

Changed to a new chatroom. The other one wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

#22 Post by **navynuke04** » Wed Oct 19, 2005 12:36 am

For those of you that may have noticed the downtime today, I appologize. I'm still not sure what happened. I put in a trouble call to tech support, and the situation was fixed a little while later. I'm not sure if they did something, or if the situation just corrected itself, or what...

Gotta love computers. :x