Forum server upgraded

[stell]

Thank you for all your hard work!

I’ve been wanting to donate for years. I can’t help on the technical side…but please take my money!

[sirgregory]

I didn't know what was going on. Glad we didn't get hacked or anything like that.

Thank you to those who maintain this clean and ad-free website out of your own pockets. It's much nicer to use than the old HTLAL.

[Chmury]

Thank you so much for all the hard word emk and rdearman! So happy to see the forum up and running again.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I know absolutely nothing about programming and computers, but would be more than happy to donate some cash to help with maintenance and all the over-heads and to keep this place alive and thriving.

[Querneus]

If only 15 people gave $5/month, for example, then we'd be set. We just need to pay for the hosting costs.

Sounds like an easy bar to meet to me, I'd be happy to contribute monthly with something.

Also, I can easily do full maintenance on the system again. This had been difficult for a while, because I'd replaced my laptop, and I'd needed to update some tools. At the moment, I can do a complete server rebuild with 60 seconds of work and 10 minutes of waiting for everything to automatically deploy.

There are some major improvements we could make if we have someone willing to spend a weekend preparing a PR on GitHub to fix the "Proxy" headers. This requires some PHP knowledge and elbow grease. But it would fix (1) the logouts, (2) the excessive prompting with security questions, (3) some of the spam, and (4) our historical problems with crawlers. If anyone here knows how to program and wants to get their sleeves dirty, I'd be happy to explain the problem in detail and to review and deploy your PR.

Yeah, I am willing to try. I'm familiar with PHP, but not at all with phpBB forum software, aside from one time when I helped rescue the content of a phpBB forum database for a forum that encountered trouble with its hosting (although that mostly just involved becoming familiar with the structure of the forum's database).

Feel free to post more details on what the objectives here are and what needs to be done, or send them to my PM inbox.

Also, I recall a few years ago I once sent a PR on GitHub to our forum's project, to have Iversen's language learning guide as a nice single entry on the Blog of the site (last entry dates to 2017), but the PR was never pulled. I think Rdearman said that updating the forum from the GitHub involved pressing "one button" that didn't work, or involved several steps that Rdearman didn't want to deal with and you didn't have the time for it. Would my PR go better this time?

[Iversen]

I have been travelling for the last 9 days and only had the opportunity to log in once (though with free access to several hotel Wifi's I could have entered more often, shame on me, but my traveling took all my forces). So seeing the forum working again was a pleasant surprise., even though I didn't write anything.

I would definitely like to support the forum financially, although a bigger donation now and then to some dedicated account through the banking systems would be more my style than something that draws a smaller sum automatically each month. As for the guide to language learning - well, it would be nice to see it as a one button choice, but I havent't revised it since 2017. And PHP ... ahem, I have programmed a lot in VBA (including extensions) and also in some other systems further back in time, but never in PHP.

[Querneus]

...

I'd appreciate it if I could get any reqs/details on this this week as I'm on vacation and could definitely dedicate some time to it during the day and just get it done.

[ShawnP]

Thanks for the hard work and home for language learners. I didn't realize how much I relied on this website for my own language journey until i couldn't update my language log.

I'm sure I can speak for everyone when I say this forum is an absolute goldmine.

[Iversen]

I may have become slightly paranoic, but it seems that the forum the last couple of days sometimes functions slowly - though not to the point that it provokes timeouts, but enough to make me notice. But just after it functions quickly again.

Actually it just saved slowly when I wrote the first two sentences above, but then it was OK again when I added this last sentence (else I'll amend this hopeful formulation).

Amended...

[tangleweeds]

504… 504… 504…

Are we actually under attack by malign bots?

[Le Baron]

504… 504… 504…

Are we actually under attack by malign bots?

Seems so.It was 503 for me and logged me out.