Glest Board Changes

[ElimiNator]

Before some guy made an account and just PM me, he didn't post any thing.

[Zoythrus]

Before some guy made an account and just PM me, he didn't post any thing.

those bots are getting smarter......

[ElimiNator]

No, I wasn't a bot, he needed help with a Vbros pack.

So I am saying if someone registers and doesn't post, it doesn't mean its a bot.

[Omega]

No, I wasn't a bot, he needed help with a Vbros pack.

So I am saying if someone registers and doesn't post, it doesn't mean its a bot.

True, but that is very very rare. If they aren't going to post, odds are, they won't need an account that hasn't been on for more than 2 weeks. The majority of such accounts are failed spammers who couldn't complete their post.

My anchor!

Code: [Select]

[anchor=omega]My anchor[/anchor]

[Gabbe]

WHat is spiders?

[Omega]

WHat is spiders?

Search engine bots, like google. They browse the web and index pages, using special ways to identify themselves. They are not counted in view counts, and the count here serves only to show how many of these bots are indexing the board at any given moment.

[ElimiNator]

Another big pic,
https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?action=profile;u=5772

[ultifd]

https://forum.megaglest.org/index.php?action=profile;u=5678

[Omega]

Thanks both of you.

[Omega]

A new version of the theme has been uploaded (version 3.8) containing a fix for a major bug that's plagued me recently but hadn't been able to find the source. The issue was that both the quick reply and quick edit functions both have an access key of "s" to submit (meaning you can hold alt + s to submit the post easily). Since I used that function alot, the bug I noticed was that trying to submit a quick edit in Google's Chrome browser always chose the *LAST* instance of the accesskey, while Firefox chose the first. As a result, chrome users would be end up losing anything they typed in the quick edit box when they used alt + s to submit the edit. In firefox, the inverse occured, with quick edit being submitted, if it was open (rather unlikely to have opened quick edit if you're quick replying, though).

The fix was to remove the accesskey on the quick reply. It can optionally be changed to merely a different accesskey if anyone wishes. As well, a few CSS problems Tomreyn pointed out in a separate thread in General Discussion have been fixed.

[Omega]

I thought it was high-time that we show just how effective our anti-spam measures are. We still get small amounts of spam, of course, since nothing is perfect, but usually only a message or two every few days, a small portion of what we could get.

Behold exhibit A:

This is a screenshot from the members waiting for approval list. It shows members who have not activated their account (or are unable to). In ours, the white paper and magnifying glass icon shows that they are not in a spammer database (on a side note, ours does not check usernames, as it is easy for a legitimate user to share the same username as a spammer), and the red icons show known and proven spammers (there are also yellow icons showing possible spammers, though they do not appear in our example image).

In this example, all 19 of the accounts, representing roughly a 2 day period, were flagged as certified spammers and denied access. To prevent mistakes, they are given a special form to allow contact in case of their account being flagged as a known spammer incorrectly (it should be noted that because the "red flags" are given to proven spammers, the only potential for mistakes are those with compromised computers).

Of course, spam occasionally gets through, mostly generic spam; spammers who take a few keywords from a topic and then post a very generic message (ie, "Wow, this mod looks great, thanks", with the spam links usually placed in the signature (which also brings to question why a legitimate human would go through the hassle of creating an account, passing two captchas, and verifying their email for a single line message and already having a signature for just a single post)). These generic messages can often only be found by the links they post, and many may be missed by moderators anyway (which is why they are used in the first place: a spam post that looks like spam gets deleted and caught easily, while a post that doesn't can slip "under the radar").

What does this mean for regular users? Absolutely nothing, just an interior look at how some of our anti-spam works, and what kinds of spammers are slipping through.


And using this system, I was able to hack out over 1,000 known and tagged spammers that have registered more than 14 days ago and never posted. Of course, there are still many more spammers who are not in our database of known spammers, yet have zero posts (if I were to take a guess, I'd say they got stumped by a captcha: spambots can't know what types of captchas we have until after they make the account and try to post. Ours are pretty unique, and spammers can't waste time tailoring their spambots to work around every kind of site).


Moderators are often hard at work improving the board, cleaning messages, moving threads, and deleting spam. For example, Tomreyn has a total of 555 logged moderation edits (defined as any type of edit a regular user cannot perform, such as editing another post or moving a thread), I have 285 (though most types of admin jobs such as changing the theme are not logged), Titi has a mere 28, and John has 72.

[John.d.h]

Thank you for the wise advice. 
oklahoma city chiropractors

[Omega]

Oh, god, I just had to post this here, since it concerns my last post.

These were the last two posts on the "favorite movie of all time" thread (naturally gone now). The second to last one was dated 8 August (more than three months ago). Notice how amazingly on topic they are? Of course, they're likely created to target "favorite movie" threads in general...

[John.d.h]

That's the thing that baffles me about that bruce guy. All his posts are on topic but he clearly has a spammer's signature. I almost don't want to delete any of his posts since they don't really break any rules. 

[Omega]

That's the thing that baffles me about that bruce guy. All his posts are on topic but he clearly has a spammer's signature. I almost don't want to delete any of his posts since they don't really break any rules. 

Carylo81 looks kinda on topic there too. Or as close as can be on the off topic board.

[will]

How about sanatising their signatures but leaving the posts?

I presume we have a robots.txt that stops search engines ever applying any weight to links in the forum posts, right?

I ask because I can't find that.  In general, nofollow should be in the forum template at least, and its shocking me that it isn't.

[Ishmaru]

"Prees it up!" (look under avatar) Or "Press it up!" like I assume its supposed to say, Is he actually telling us to click his sig?  LOL

[Psychedelic_hands]

Hahaha, when we have bots this smart.... Why do we even need us? 

[Omega]

Hahaha, when we have bots this smart.... Why do we even need us? 

Robots don't eat. The world's pizza supplies would fade away without us.

[Omega]

Ah, good news, the ability to add floating content (that is, content that is on either the left or right, with other content wrapping around it, like the images on most Wikipedia pages) has been implemented, using this mod (with some slight modifications so it would work on SMF 2.0.1). I've been bothered by the lack of this ability for quite some time, using very rudimentary tables to try and simulate the effects of float (though that doesn't resize well with the window, float does).

To float text, simply use the BBCode [float=left] and [float=right]. See below for examples. And for those of you who don't like actually typing the BBCode by hand, there's buttons next to the font option box.

[big]Simple left float[/big]

Code: [Select]

[float=left][img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Times_Square_1-2.JPG/320px-Times_Square_1-2.JPG[/img][/float]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed consequat mauris vitae dolor ultrices aliquet. Mauris sed augue eget purus consectetur convallis eu nec est. Nullam a nulla ligula, eget suscipit massa. Etiam facilisis rutrum tellus vel tristique. Donec rhoncus dui in mauris aliquam eget luctus ipsum feugiat. Donec justo felis, suscipit in mollis nec, aliquet vel augue. Mauris consectetur hendrerit augue a ullamcorper. Vivamus a ligula velit. Vivamus eget libero et tellus fermentum ultrices.

In et mi massa, non tincidunt elit. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Praesent luctus purus eu justo laoreet eu dapibus justo faucibus. Integer faucibus enim at quam tempus quis convallis velit molestie. Fusce volutpat, leo id mattis porta, lectus erat vestibulum ante, in dignissim quam ipsum eu justo. Vestibulum lobortis, nibh vel gravida dictum, eros velit viverra diam, eu pharetra augue nibh sed ante. Mauris nec quam quis ante consequat lobortis.

Donec vel dictum justo. Aliquam erat volutpat. Quisque ipsum nisi, luctus consequat volutpat quis, elementum sed lacus. Quisque cursus fringilla condimentum. Ut consectetur semper lectus, eu lacinia mauris tempor at. Proin sed nibh nec odio dignissim sodales. Integer consequat mi ac purus lacinia a posuere odio mattis. Vivamus lacinia eleifend libero, id hendrerit dui elementum nec. Donec eget nibh quam. Maecenas massa massa, blandit at ultricies ut, vestibulum scelerisque lacus. Quisque malesuada tellus ut tortor consequat pellentesque ac vitae erat. Maecenas at augue purus. Vivamus tincidunt, sapien a blandit egestas, arcu nunc euismod lacus, et vehicula felis ante vel nisl.

Etiam justo lorem, adipiscing non lobortis nec, luctus semper nisl. Suspendisse convallis metus non leo tincidunt eu molestie lectus gravida. Quisque rhoncus, augue a scelerisque sodales, leo nisl mattis dolor, eu facilisis velit nisl porta lorem. Suspendisse aliquam, magna eu venenatis porta, massa est congue massa, in facilisis nunc mi sit amet nisi. Nunc iaculis bibendum mauris, dignissim euismod justo pretium at. Suspendisse tempor quam eget tellus volutpat tristique. Vivamus velit nibh, pellentesque id rutrum eu, luctus at libero. Donec tortor quam, tincidunt eu sodales ut, interdum consectetur felis.

Sed sodales, nisl sit amet tristique condimentum, felis turpis lobortis lorem, eget hendrerit felis sem vel dolor. Morbi metus massa, elementum at tempor at, elementum vel nibh. Quisque hendrerit mattis ligula a dignissim. Nulla malesuada tristique arcu ac aliquet. Ut in eros nibh, in vestibulum nunc. Cras massa magna, venenatis sed mattis eu, ultrices vel neque. Vivamus tempus hendrerit vehicula. Pellentesque scelerisque fermentum tempus.

[big]Right float with caption[/big]

Code: [Select]

[float=right][img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Times_Square_1-2.JPG/320px-Times_Square_1-2.JPG[/img]
[b]Figure 1[/b][/float]

Figure 1

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed consequat mauris vitae dolor ultrices aliquet. Mauris sed augue eget purus consectetur convallis eu nec est. Nullam a nulla ligula, eget suscipit massa. Etiam facilisis rutrum tellus vel tristique. Donec rhoncus dui in mauris aliquam eget luctus ipsum feugiat. Donec justo felis, suscipit in mollis nec, aliquet vel augue. Mauris consectetur hendrerit augue a ullamcorper. Vivamus a ligula velit. Vivamus eget libero et tellus fermentum ultrices.

In et mi massa, non tincidunt elit. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Praesent luctus purus eu justo laoreet eu dapibus justo faucibus. Integer faucibus enim at quam tempus quis convallis velit molestie. Fusce volutpat, leo id mattis porta, lectus erat vestibulum ante, in dignissim quam ipsum eu justo. Vestibulum lobortis, nibh vel gravida dictum, eros velit viverra diam, eu pharetra augue nibh sed ante. Mauris nec quam quis ante consequat lobortis.

Donec vel dictum justo. Aliquam erat volutpat. Quisque ipsum nisi, luctus consequat volutpat quis, elementum sed lacus. Quisque cursus fringilla condimentum. Ut consectetur semper lectus, eu lacinia mauris tempor at. Proin sed nibh nec odio dignissim sodales. Integer consequat mi ac purus lacinia a posuere odio mattis. Vivamus lacinia eleifend libero, id hendrerit dui elementum nec. Donec eget nibh quam. Maecenas massa massa, blandit at ultricies ut, vestibulum scelerisque lacus. Quisque malesuada tellus ut tortor consequat pellentesque ac vitae erat. Maecenas at augue purus. Vivamus tincidunt, sapien a blandit egestas, arcu nunc euismod lacus, et vehicula felis ante vel nisl.

Etiam justo lorem, adipiscing non lobortis nec, luctus semper nisl. Suspendisse convallis metus non leo tincidunt eu molestie lectus gravida. Quisque rhoncus, augue a scelerisque sodales, leo nisl mattis dolor, eu facilisis velit nisl porta lorem. Suspendisse aliquam, magna eu venenatis porta, massa est congue massa, in facilisis nunc mi sit amet nisi. Nunc iaculis bibendum mauris, dignissim euismod justo pretium at. Suspendisse tempor quam eget tellus volutpat tristique. Vivamus velit nibh, pellentesque id rutrum eu, luctus at libero. Donec tortor quam, tincidunt eu sodales ut, interdum consectetur felis.

Sed sodales, nisl sit amet tristique condimentum, felis turpis lobortis lorem, eget hendrerit felis sem vel dolor. Morbi metus massa, elementum at tempor at, elementum vel nibh. Quisque hendrerit mattis ligula a dignissim. Nulla malesuada tristique arcu ac aliquet. Ut in eros nibh, in vestibulum nunc. Cras massa magna, venenatis sed mattis eu, ultrices vel neque. Vivamus tempus hendrerit vehicula. Pellentesque scelerisque fermentum tempus.

[big]Limitations[/big]
Actually, they seem to be very limited at the moment. For example, the center tag broke my initial attempt at the above example (which was to center the caption). Likewise, I was unable to float a table (which is weird, since the float tag simply create a div HTML element with the float:left|right property). I'll be working on trying to fix that. In the meantime, I hope to (manually) add some more advanced tags as well, such as an anchor (which you could use to give a link to a certain location on a page, eg, [anchor=faq]blah blah blah[/anchor] would allow you to go to that part of the page by appending #faq to the link (which could be useful for long posts), as well as header tags and expanding the table tags to allow an optional style attribute (or possibly a separate tag). As it stands, [table] just creates a table without borders, which is really not very good for readability. It should look something more like Wikipedia's tables. Of course, such BBCode tags would be largely for "advanced users".

This is what float with a table should have looked like:

Name	Health
Evil Chicken of DOOM	9001
Furret	Random number... uh, 4

However, this example is only possible with the [html] tag, which is, of course, disabled for regular posters (it's quite a massive security risk -- disabling tags doesn't seem to affect admins). This is most likely a problem with the way BBCode tags are read in general, and may require some deeper digging. There was another BBCode error with code tags in spoiler tags being compressed, but I'm unable to replicate it at the moment.

PS: There's no justify tag either.

[Omega]

Maybe you've all noticed the extra buttons on the edit window by now. Whether you have or not, there's now several new BBCodes available. [justify], [h1], [h2], [h3], [h4], and [ftable] (with the corresponding [ftr], [ftd], and [fth]). Please note that you most likely will have to clear your browsers cache for some of the changes to work correctly (generally ctrl + F5).

As well, I fixed the float tags described in the previous post so they work with tables (and most other things). Let's take a look at examples of usage for each of these new tags:

Headers

Headers are, well, headers. They are used for titles, such as at the top of a page or the top of a section. For example, Wikipedia uses headers very heavily. Each new section of the page starts with a header, and the table of contents is generated from headers, using their levels. Website readers for disabilities, as well as ones which are capable of splitting pages easily often use headers, such as to automatically generate a table of contents (which is why there is multiple levels of headers).

But the coolest thing about my implementation of headers is that you can define the style of them, for those familiar with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). That's how I did the header for this section here. The code was:

Code: [Select]

[h1=background-color: #555; border: solid 1px black; border-radius: 5px; padding: 6px;]Headers[/h1]
As another example, if I wanted a level 2 header that was in a light red box, I could use:

Code: [Select]

[h2=background-color: #C47777; color: crimson; border: solid 1px red; padding: 6px; display: inline;]This is my header[/h2]I'd get:

This is my header

Formatted tables

As mentioned in the last post, tables are pretty restricted. Adding a style property to tables is impractical, since to create a table like Wikipedia has, you'd have to have lengthy style tags on every cell, as well as a style tag on the actual table cell to tell the borders to collapse. Instead, I opted for a single, easily readable formatted table design using a new tag (or four new tags, actually): [ftable], [ftr], [ftd], and [fth]. The only real new tag is [fth], which is a table header (a cell which is shaded and bolded, generally on the top row or first column). The rest are the exact same tags with an "f" prefix, and used the exact same way as the existing table BBCode.

So for example:

Code: [Select]

[ftable]
[ftr]
[fth]Name[/fth]
[fth]Province[/fth]
[fth]Population[/fth]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Toronto[/ftd]
[ftd]Ontario[/ftd]
[ftd]5,113,149[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Montreal[/ftd]
[ftd]Quebec[/ftd]
[ftd]3,635,571[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Vancouver[/ftd]
[ftd]British Columbia[/ftd]
[ftd]2,316,581[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Ottawa–Gatineau[/ftd]
[ftd]Ontario–Quebec[/ftd]
[ftd]1,130,761[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Calgary[/ftd]
[ftd]Alberta[/ftd]
[ftd]1,079,310[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Edmonton[/ftd]
[ftd]Alberta[/ftd]
[ftd]1,034,945[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[ftr]
[ftd]Quebec[/ftd]
[ftd]Quebec[/ftd]
[ftd]715,515[/ftd]
[/ftr]
[/ftable]Would output:

Name	Province	Population
Toronto	Ontario	5,113,149
Montreal	Quebec	3,635,571
Vancouver	British Columbia	2,316,581
Ottawa–Gatineau	Ontario–Quebec	1,130,761
Calgary	Alberta	1,079,310
Edmonton	Alberta	1,034,945
Quebec	Quebec	715,515

Whitespace and linebreaks outside of the [fth] and [ftd] tags will be ignored, and is optional, purely for editing ease. If you haven't used table tags before, the example sums it up fairly well. We have one [ftable] tag which surrounds the entire table, and each row in the table is defined by the contents of [ftr] tags (which stands for formatted table row). The [ftd] and [fth] tags stand for formatted table data and formatted table header tags respectively. They really do the same thing, making up a single cell in the table, but the difference is that [fth] tags have a shaded background and bold text.

Justify

Actually, I think this one should be pretty easy. In case you don't know, justified text modifies the width of spaces so that lines of text are always the same length. You'd see this often in newspapers. Simply surround the text with [justify].

Example:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam porttitor leo nec ante molestie facilisis. Donec scelerisque scelerisque arcu, vel viverra erat scelerisque ac. Suspendisse potenti. Integer urna dolor, iaculis et laoreet eu, malesuada eu dui. Aenean a urna vel dui ultrices consectetur. Nunc lobortis feugiat lobortis. Proin eu laoreet augue. Sed id dignissim nunc. Ut fringilla massa vel quam ullamcorper non fringilla felis ultrices. Praesent eget mauris sem, eget egestas nibh. Aliquam erat volutpat. Maecenas tincidunt tempus erat imperdiet mollis. Aliquam mi urna, imperdiet vel molestie non, vestibulum eget est. Maecenas et sapien ut nulla placerat malesuada. Praesent molestie, dui nec vestibulum congue, urna dui viverra erat, nec dapibus nisl mauris nec dui. Donec a lectus ac metus mollis feugiat. Donec volutpat feugiat tellus nec viverra. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nullam pulvinar condimentum nunc sit amet tincidunt. Integer gravida pharetra sodales. Aenean nisi lectus, cursus id laoreet et, lacinia eu mi. Proin enim lectus, facilisis posuere mattis eget, tincidunt nec metus. Morbi vel sapien vel dolor suscipit gravida ac et dui. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Looking back at float

Name	Province	Population
Toronto	Ontario	5,113,149
Montreal	Quebec	3,635,571
Vancouver	British Columbia	2,316,581
Ottawa–Gatineau	Ontario–Quebec	1,130,761
Calgary	Alberta	1,079,310
Edmonton	Alberta	1,034,945
Quebec	Quebec	715,515

I removed the addon that allowed float which I installed yesterday, replacing it with my custom changes. In order to get tables to work properly with float, they were recoded with the block attribute. The syntax is still the same ([float=left] and [float=right]), and should work with all tags, though I only tested images and tables. So the above table surrounded by [float=right] tags should look as on the right.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam porttitor leo nec ante molestie facilisis. Donec scelerisque scelerisque arcu, vel viverra erat scelerisque ac. Suspendisse potenti. Integer urna dolor, iaculis et laoreet eu, malesuada eu dui. Aenean a urna vel dui ultrices consectetur. Nunc lobortis feugiat lobortis. Proin eu laoreet augue. Sed id dignissim nunc. Ut fringilla massa vel quam ullamcorper non fringilla felis ultrices. Praesent eget mauris sem, eget egestas nibh. Aliquam erat volutpat. Maecenas tincidunt tempus erat imperdiet mollis. Aliquam mi urna, imperdiet vel molestie non, vestibulum eget est. Maecenas et sapien ut nulla placerat malesuada. Praesent molestie, dui nec vestibulum congue, urna dui viverra erat, nec dapibus nisl mauris nec dui. Donec a lectus ac metus mollis feugiat. Maecenas et sapien ut nulla placerat malesuada. Praesent molestie, dui nec vestibulum congue, urna dui viverra erat, nec dapibus nisl mauris nec dui. Donec a lectus ac metus mollis feugiat. Donec volutpat feugiat tellus nec viverra. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nullam pulvinar condimentum nunc sit amet tincidunt. Integer gravida pharetra sodales. Aenean nisi lectus, cursus id laoreet et, lacinia eu mi. Proin enim lectus, facilisis posuere mattis eget, tincidunt nec metus. Morbi vel sapien vel dolor suscipit gravida ac et dui. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Anchors

I mentioned I was planning anchors as well, yesterday, but it appears they already are built into SMF, just without a button. To use an anchor, surround your content with [anchor=name]. The way the default implementation works is that you can append "#$" (where "$" is whatever attribute you gave the anchor) to a link to take the reader straight to that anchor. So with [anchor=name], you could append "#name" to scroll to that location. Note you can't have more than one anchor, so remove any existing ones. For an example of how it works, I edited the fourth post on this page (mine) to include an anchor. Clicking this link here will take you to it: #omega

Ah, screw it, anchors aren't working. That's next, I suppose.
Oh cool, fixed 'em. On a side note, technically, anchors are supposed to use the [iurl] tag (which is the same as [url], but for anchors), though if you use the URL tag with just an anchor (eg, [url=#omega]text[/url]), they will be automatically converted to [iurl] tags (that is, [iurl=#omega]text[/iurl]).

[Psychedelic_hands]

Whats with the ironic stop cencorship, cencor on the glest logo? Is there another bill that is threating the mighty internets? gosh, they just keep coming. Silly Americian Politicians.

[Omega]

Whats with the ironic stop cencorship, cencor on the glest logo? Is there another bill that is threating the mighty internets? gosh, they just keep coming. Silly Americian Politicians.

Apparently they are. And any site that seems to so much as hint of piracy could be blocked if their bill passes. With that being said, admittedly, nobody would care much about a small site like this, but I'm sure most of our members support the concept behind the freedom of speech, etc (take a look at the infographic on the site the censor links to). Not to mention all of us probably use Wikipedia and Youtube, some of the most vulnerable sites from SOPA (let's be honest here, it's no secret there's loads of music and movies on Youtube of...questionable legal stance, not to mention full-front video guides showing how to pirate, it'd be the first target).

[tomreyn]

By the way, there's a "critical" security patch out for SMF for some days now. Unfortunately they don't exactly tell you what is wrong, and there is no public source code repository, both quite lame.

[Omega]

By the way, there's a "critical" security patch out for SMF for some days now. Unfortunately they don't exactly tell you what is wrong, and there is no public source code repository, both quite lame.

Oh, thanks for reminding me about that. I actually did notice it before, but was (and still is) giving me 406 errors when trying to use the direct install (406 means unacceptable headers, and not sure why its occurring either). At any rate, I manually installed it. As for what the fixes were, they were just a few potential security risks that a skilled hacker could exploit.