Neverside

What if the captcha was extended to the login form as well?

If it gets desperate we may try that (at least until the spammers lose interest), though so far it seems to be working - not one bot has signed up since earlier today when I got the captcha working. I made some test accounts of my own and confirmed that they went through successfully to the database when the signup passed the captcha validation.

Also, I've been doing some manual searching in the database to determine likely spammers and banning their accounts (unfortunately I can't delete them yet - NS does not have the ability to delete users and I don't want to risk messing things up by manually deleting them in the database - I'll delete all banned users after switching to Drupal). Using some other profile fields to help confirm they were not real users, I banned 614 users with .ru (russian) email accounts. I also have a list now of 2,792 accounts (since 2003... could go back even further I suppose) that are either "suspect" spam accounts or are users with 2 or less posts and no profile/preference fields filled out. Haven't finished refining it down, but when I'm done I'll have banned most possible spammer accounts. What I may end up doing is banning most all of that 2,792 that are older than a certain point (which if they are real users, means their account was abandoned anyhow). I haven't done it yet, but I may also IP ban the Russian accounts from the server completely (as they are the biggest culprits).

Also a HUGE thanks to Jon (sparky) who has been a terrific help to me today with the SQL. He wrote a script for me today that translates the value in the flag field into data I can work with.

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Yet another huge thank you to Jon (sparky) for helping me again with another way cool SQL query (this one pulls together all the fields I need from the post and thread table to reconstruct Neverside's threads in Drupal. Getting the posts/replies after the primary post is a task for tomorrow haha, though I feel more confident about that since it's all in the same table

Again, thanks for your help Jon.

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

looks like you're making progress. faithfully awaiting for the launch date.

btw, did the design change since that last news posting long ago?

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Yep slowly yet surely. Not sure how much longer, but progress is being made indeed
Yes, there is an updated design (if I recall, this is substantially different than the last one I posted). I haven't focused on completing the design for a long time, instead putting my attention on functionality as well as the concept/vision of the new site. No guarantee this is what it will look like when I actually finish it (when I refocus my attention to the design I'm sure new ideas will start flowin), but here is the a design concept sample:

http://www.absolutecross.com/i/ns/ns_home_concept.jpg

The site name will also be changing as I mentioned a while back. I've already reserved the domain (as well as a number of other candidates in case the name doesn't get rave reviews - I think it's great though, and communicates well about the new site's purpose).

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Last edited by AbsoluteCross, May 19th, 2008 09:25 AM (Edited 1 times)

Come on now, Neverside will never die. There will always be return members such as myself who come and go, but always come back. And for those who do a lot of complaining, I haven't seen a whole lot of anything from anyone except Dave.

Myself included. Life comes along, you get a girl pregnant, get engaged, lose a job, whatever, etc. Who can blame Dave for living his life? Certainly not I.

Oh and I will lurk about these parts from time to time seeing as how I no longer work 80 hours a week managing a store. And once again have internet access, sort of.

Psst, that design does indeed like pretty slick. Hasn't changed too much from the last concept, but like I said, it does look slick. Can't wait to see some functions, even if it takes another year or so who can complain? Well, I'm sure someone can... But lets not, eh?

[ edit ]
You said you're still planning on going to Drupal, Dave? Sounds good, as imo any move away from NeverAPI, where only the few, the elite, dare touch any of the code for fear that it will all come tumbling down around your ears, is a good idea.

And yes, that was an entirely too large sentence with far too many comas. But this is the internet so I can get away with it.

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Bored? Join us at #Central on irc.Neverside.com

Last edited by Samurai_Zero, May 20th, 2008 07:58 AM (Edited 1 times)

Thanks Micah If it's any consolation, it was very difficult for me to put NS on hold when I did, as I was going full steam ahead making lots of progress and suddenly had to make a hard choice. After momentum was lost and more of that "life" thing barged in, it was difficult to get things back in motion. However I did ensure that I pushed for use of Drupal on every web project I was hired for this past year, and have become very experienced with it - all of which will lend itself nicely to NS (e.g. I look back at some of my technical plans - a 70 page document by the way, though that includes the vision and business plans as well - I ask myself how in the world I thought that would have worked out haha - experience is rather helpful ).

I think you may have seen more recent versions of the design than the regular members... I looked back at those I posted in the screenshot news thread and the first made me feel ill, the second not so bad but still ekk compared to the latest). :P

Yep still planning on going with Drupal. There were already some big sites back then that proved to me it was a viable system (e.g. MTV.co.uk)... though in the last year a ton more large sites have sprung up with it. Even Sony is using it. The Drupal developer who wrote several of Drupal's most powerful modules (Views, as well as Panels module) actually works for Sony, and they are funding/pushing further development and giving back to the open source community.

Jon (sparky) looked over the NS code the other day and had very good things to say about it - I'm sure it's very well written (though for sure its strict dependence on PHP4, Apache2, and more subdomains than I can count is a pain for me). For me though, I'll never ever be a good enough programmer to make it do the laundry list of other functionality I need. Drupal has just about everything I need and more on the way, and my iffy programming skills shall suffice haha :P

Talk to ya soon - back to digging through phpMyAdmin

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Last edited by AbsoluteCross, May 20th, 2008 08:22 AM (Edited 1 times)

You know what, that design concept, to me, looks like something you would get if current Neverside married Last.fm and they had a baby.

Me likey.

___________________

There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

/Dave lights the candles and turns on some romantic music....

I made a good contact last night in the Drupal IRC chat - one of the guys who's co-maintaining one of Drupal's most popular modules, Panels, mentioned he'd like to exchange his programming services for my design services at some point - very cool Also met a previous TF member in there haha - small world.

Also, pleased to announce that the CAPTCHA appears to have been completely effective (well, unless the spammers get substantially more determined to waste their time spamming here haha). Since installation, there have been 0 spammer signups (a few fake accounts but no spammers), and little to no spam posts from the pre-existing spammer accounts (many of which I banned).

Oh and yet another thank you to Jon (sparky) who saves me on a daily basis from my MySQL noob-ness :P

___________________

-- Dave
Neverside Admin

absolutecross.com

Last edited by AbsoluteCross, May 22nd, 2008 09:27 PM (Edited 1 times)

I'm really liking the design concept this time around, much better then your last one. Here's a few of my suggestions.

1) Too much padding. You'll break the browser with that much padding. Mr. CSS will not like you after you get that coded.

2) Improve the contrast of the text in the "current tab" navigation buttons, as the dark grey just doesn't work.

3) Ease off just a little on the rounded corners. I'm not saying square, just a few pixels less on the corners. (What's it at now? 12px?)

4) Trash the tabs for the Latest news, News Articles, Member Blogs, Popular Discussions, & Newest Posts. Instead make the tabs similar to your input forms for the login. Just a few pixels in the corners to make things look a little smoother.