2381

Announcements / Re: Intention to set up CMS homepage

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:35:51 PM »

I can probably do the first three myself after a bit of sleep, but I'll happily take contributions from others.

Anyone? I've spent the past two hours debugging PHP code written by people with no clue how the Internet works; I think that earns me exemption from writing this shit up.

2382

Announcements / Admin account approval no longer required

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:25:26 PM »

Good news -- I've (after much pain and suffering) got us set up with an SMF plugin that will check the IP address, username and e-mail address of new members against the Stop Forum Spam database of spammers. If it finds a match, then admin approval is required; for everyone else, they can get in with only e-mail confirmation from them. I've also turned down the difficulty of the captcha on signup, as it was hard to read sometimes.

I'll keep Lord Dave as admin for the time being, as I don't know how effective this is going to be. We may have to roll back to admin approval for all accounts if this plugin doesn't catch everything we need it to, but I have high hopes.

Oh, and because SMF is horribly broken, this verification won't work for IPv6 clients. If you're on IPv6, your account will still need admin approval regardless.

2383

Technology & Information / Re: The Flat Earth Society official IRC chat

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:22:40 PM »

I have an ominous feeling that if I try this, the exact same message will stop me, and I'll be completely fucked.

Install Linux.

2384

Announcements / Re: Help wanted to make this place better

« on: December 04, 2013, 11:56:32 AM »

Why don't we have a favicon yet??

Because it isn't important.

2385

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Use CloudFront for serving static content

« on: December 04, 2013, 10:57:12 AM »

We are now using Amazon for DNS, having switched to tfes.org for our primary domain. This will make it easier to transition to CloudFront in the future.

2386

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Unresolved DNS server name

« on: December 04, 2013, 10:56:05 AM »

Is this fixed now that we have switched domains?

2387

Announcements / Re: Comments wanted: Switching domain to tfes.org

« on: December 04, 2013, 10:47:02 AM »

The domain name has been switched over. By now, you'll have had to log in again. This can't be helped when dealing with software as brain-dead as SMF.

Let me know if you see any residual problems. I'll be keeping an eye on how much traffic is hitting the old domain, in case there's something I've missed.

2388

Technology & Information / Re: Steam on Linux

« on: December 04, 2013, 02:31:49 AM »

Which is odd because I have the non-free driver.

Just install the non-free driver from the Debian repository. Then everything should work.

I installed it because the open source drivers are great but only for the 5000 series and up.  I have the 4890 and it sucks.  Or at least it did in Ubuntu.  Does Debian use a different driver?

It's probably the same driver, although according to the man page, the 4890 is supported. I have a 6850, though, so I can't comment on how well it runs on the 4890.

2389

Announcements / Re: Comments wanted: Switching domain to tfes.org

« on: December 04, 2013, 02:29:45 AM »

Would it be bothersome to have the CMS on flatearthsociety and the forum on tfes?  This would also achieve the goal of the CMS ranking on Google easily right?

That would be doable, but I'd really prefer to keep everything under one domain for simplicity.

If you can get flatearthsociety.org, then just redirect tfes.org to it.  That way everyone can still type in tfes in their browser to get here but the flatearthsociety.org link is what will show up on google and newcomers will see that site name and know what it is.

I would hope the big "The Flat Earth Society" logo at the top would communicate that.

So, basically, will either make any difference from the other in terms of Google rankings and the like? 'Cause if redirecting one to the other will have the exact same effect, then I'm all for tfes.org.

It shouldn't make a difference, especially if we're using meta keywords correctly (I'll have to check if SMF does, but BlazeBlogger definitely does).

2390

Technology & Information / Re: Steam on Linux

« on: December 04, 2013, 02:07:09 AM »

libatiuki.so.1 is provided by the non-free AMD video driver. I would recommend using the open-source driver unless you know you need the proprietary one; AMD cards actually have very good open-source driver support. I use it myself with Steam.

Also, upgrading to jessie shouldn't pose a problem for your use case.

2391

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Use CloudFront for serving static content

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:56:51 AM »

I was under the impression CloudFlare's main benefit was denial of service protection, is that not their primary product or is that just a result of what they offer?

The thing with CloudFlare is that they have several "main benefits" that are roughly equal, rolled into the one service. You can use it as a CDN with no DDoS protection at all, or you can use it to keep attackers and spammers away without caching anything. You could even just use it as a DNS provider and nothing else (although that would probably be silly).

Anyway, I've gone with Amazon in the end. So far, I've set up tfes.org in Route 53 for DNS; later, I'll switch that to being our primary domain name. At some point, I'll then be setting up CloudFront backing onto this server for the CMS, the wiki and the forum's static content; as well as CloudFront backed onto S3 for the Flat Earth Library.

2392

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Set up New Relic server monitoring

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:46:49 AM »

That looks like something you have to pay money for.

You don't have to, although you get more features if you do.

2393

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: Set up New Relic server monitoring

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:37:52 AM »

Whats new relic?

https://newrelic.com/

2394

Announcements / Re: Comments wanted: Switching domain to tfes.org

« on: December 04, 2013, 01:23:53 AM »

The only thing is that it's handier, I think, to have a domain name that's quite obviously related to the FES. People are more likely to chance upon "flatearthsociety.org" than "tfes.org", and, like Thork said, it affects the Google rankings, which is important as well.

Sure, but we can redirect any number of domains (including flatearthsociety.org) to whichever one we choose as the primary domain. What I'm trying to work out at the moment is which domain should be the primary one, and I like tfes.org because it's short.

2395

Announcements / Re: Temporary admin appointment for Lord Dave

« on: December 04, 2013, 12:30:36 AM »

Until then, please calm down.

Get a sense of humor, super high and mighty super administrator.

I was referring to Thork.

2396

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: The Lounge

« on: December 04, 2013, 12:28:31 AM »

PizzaPlanet will be de-admin'd as soon as I have no use for him anymore. He is a complete disgrace.

2397

Announcements / Re: Temporary admin appointment for Lord Dave

« on: December 04, 2013, 12:19:02 AM »

The only reason Lord Dave specifically was selected for this role was that he's online a lot, and in an appropriate time zone to cover all bases. This is by no means a permanent arrangement.

I'm hoping to discuss a permanent forum staff structure with PizzaPlanet this weekend. Until then, please calm down.

2398

Suggestions & Concerns / Re: The Lounge

« on: December 04, 2013, 12:13:16 AM »

This was intentional. While there is good reason to hide CN/AR from guests, I think opening The Lounge to guests gives better visibility into the fact that it's not all srs bsns here on FES. It's not like those guests can't just register an account and read those threads anyway.

I'd like to gather more opinions on this before we make a final decision, so unlocking.

2399

Announcements / Temporary admin appointment for Lord Dave

« on: December 04, 2013, 12:06:52 AM »

Just a heads up, Lord Dave has been temporarily admin'd to help us approve new users until we get proper spam filtering sorted out. This means we have one admin in each of America, Europe and Australia, which should cover most timezones and minimise wait times for approval.

Thanks for offering to help out, Dave.

2400

Announcements / Re: Comments wanted: Switching domain to tfes.org

« on: December 03, 2013, 11:23:53 PM »

I'm going to go ahead with the switch to tfes.org in the meantime. There's no sense waiting three weeks for a new domain we might not get.

In the event that we do get it, we can always switch again.