ZacFields
01-19-2007, 12:29 PM
A lot of you have been asking me this question. I'll go ahead and answer this to the best of my knowlege, because while not much changed in a "major" way, there are a lot of small changes/fixes that are going to make life a lot easier for me and you.
1. CRACKER-TRACKER :
Make jokes if you will about the name, this is an amazing piece of software. On these open source forums, little hacker kiddies tend to like to hack into them using some of the known exploits that pop up from time to time.
In addition to that, have you moderators (and users) noticed a lack of spam-bots since I upgraded a couple days ago? By my count, ZERO spam-bots have been able to register for our forums since I upgraded. I expect 99% of all spam-bot activity to perish. It is claimed that it is impossible for a real spam-bot to make it through Cracker-Tracker's security upgrades, but I'll reserve judgement on that claim until later.
2. New Theme, Posting Icons :
This theme we're using was only available with the newest version of our forum software. It is somewhat similar to our old theme, but I think overall it is WAY nicer. Look at the post icons, everything makes a lot more sense. Make sure to click on a forum and then scroll to the bottom of the forum page to read what all the post icons stand for because there are a few new ones.
3. Board Messaging :
This is going to come in handy for me. If I want to display a message in the header of the board with some quick information, I can now do so using the global board message function provided by cracker-tracker. This way I can keep everyone informed (without being annoying with a thousand stickies and announcement topics that most people won't read anyways).
4. YOUR Account is now Secure :
Have you ever wondered if someone has your password and is logging into your CR:U account without your authorization? Well from now on, if someone logs into your CR:U account using a different IP range than what you have on your computer, the forum will notify you on your next login and tell you specifically what IP address that someone else has logged into your account from.
ALSO, if you click on "Login Security" at the top of the page, you can see the last 10 times your account was logged into and what the IP address of the login was.
If this happens, you'll get a message on the top of the page (just like the global board messages) that will inform you of what is going on. If you get this message, and you know you haven't logged into your account from a different computer recently, it might be time to change your password :)
5. Forum is now PHP5 Compatible :
This doesn't do us a lot of good now since I moved us to a PHP4 server, but if I ever needed to upgrade to a server with PHP5 I can finally do so now.
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These are the main upgrades that have been made. Cracker Tracker is a huge upgrade and has a lot of features I haven't even explored yet, but as for all the upgrades that I can think of at the moment, these would have to be the top 5.
Zac
1. CRACKER-TRACKER :
Make jokes if you will about the name, this is an amazing piece of software. On these open source forums, little hacker kiddies tend to like to hack into them using some of the known exploits that pop up from time to time.
In addition to that, have you moderators (and users) noticed a lack of spam-bots since I upgraded a couple days ago? By my count, ZERO spam-bots have been able to register for our forums since I upgraded. I expect 99% of all spam-bot activity to perish. It is claimed that it is impossible for a real spam-bot to make it through Cracker-Tracker's security upgrades, but I'll reserve judgement on that claim until later.
2. New Theme, Posting Icons :
This theme we're using was only available with the newest version of our forum software. It is somewhat similar to our old theme, but I think overall it is WAY nicer. Look at the post icons, everything makes a lot more sense. Make sure to click on a forum and then scroll to the bottom of the forum page to read what all the post icons stand for because there are a few new ones.
3. Board Messaging :
This is going to come in handy for me. If I want to display a message in the header of the board with some quick information, I can now do so using the global board message function provided by cracker-tracker. This way I can keep everyone informed (without being annoying with a thousand stickies and announcement topics that most people won't read anyways).
4. YOUR Account is now Secure :
Have you ever wondered if someone has your password and is logging into your CR:U account without your authorization? Well from now on, if someone logs into your CR:U account using a different IP range than what you have on your computer, the forum will notify you on your next login and tell you specifically what IP address that someone else has logged into your account from.
ALSO, if you click on "Login Security" at the top of the page, you can see the last 10 times your account was logged into and what the IP address of the login was.
If this happens, you'll get a message on the top of the page (just like the global board messages) that will inform you of what is going on. If you get this message, and you know you haven't logged into your account from a different computer recently, it might be time to change your password :)
5. Forum is now PHP5 Compatible :
This doesn't do us a lot of good now since I moved us to a PHP4 server, but if I ever needed to upgrade to a server with PHP5 I can finally do so now.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are the main upgrades that have been made. Cracker Tracker is a huge upgrade and has a lot of features I haven't even explored yet, but as for all the upgrades that I can think of at the moment, these would have to be the top 5.
Zac