The birthday topic is there now
One problem is that as I understand it we cannot upgrade the forum if we want to keep the existing database - and I know that I for one would be sorry to loose everything thats on the forum just now - there is some interesting and valuable stuff - and for me it would be a shame to have to start all over again. I think we hope that the next release will allow the existing database to be imported.....
Today has been without a doubt the worst spam day I can ever remember
I have been going through the member list deleting "bad links" etc - from the past year or so - and all that I can say is that there are definately patterns - I am looking for these in the present spambots - and have put various restrictions in place today - but I fear that without additional authentification we can't stop them completely - but I do hope we can slow them down :wink: .
On this forum authentification cannot be by moderator - only admin - and as of yet I don't know how that would work, but its a possibilty we could look at I guess - I would need to discuss with Sebastian, but it would not be easy to implement in practice. I don't think every message should be authenticated - because that would not work - but new users maybe - because the profiles of spambots follow a pattern....
.... after a very short time I can tell which member is a spambot from the profile, because I have looked at 1000s profiles in the past few weeks - and although not always, they do tend to follow patterns.
These spam posts are usually deleted in a short time - I have deleted about 100 today - and I know Britt has also deleted some - for now all I can say is please try to ignore them - we will delete as soon as possible - and we are looking for ways to block them. It is usualy easy to tell which posts are spam.
...but please don't be tempted by spam porn links - there may be nasty viruses behind the appealing subjects :wink: - if you want porn go buy a magazine - its less likely to trash your computer!