Thoughts....

[macuserman]

I've noticed that lately there have been a lot more spam posts than usual despite any attempts I have mad to block them and add additional security. At this point I'm a bit frustrated with the way that has gone. I greatly appreciate how much everyone has helped with that mods for taking action and users for reporting them. Without you guys it would be much much worse.

The forum is hosted on phpBB which is a free platform that I pay for hosting for and then I've heavily invested in the theme, plugins, and features that are modifying the base phpBB codebase. however, the developer who I invested in so heavily for the themes and plugins has been extremely slow to update his software which has caused me to get stuck on an older version of phpBB than I would like for the time being.

I've been super busy with work and family live so haven't had much time to devote to the site either which has compounded the problem I'm sure. In any case I have spent some time on it but to no effect it seems.

I'm considering possibly switching the forum to a more commercially supported product such as xenforo or vbulletin, which I feel would likely solve a lot of the issues I have with slow security updates being available etc. But would require reinvesting in the software, etc as well as migrating to a new platform and all the headaches that entails. So that's not painless by any means, but still maybe worth it, I don't know. The site itself has been pretty stable as of late other than the spammers although there are certainly some features I've been waiting on like gallery etc that just never seem to quite be fully fleshed out for phpBB and so as of yet I have not been able to provide all of the features I want to simply because there isn't any real option for it on this platform.

I do want to do something though because I intend for the site to stick around for the longterm and I want everyone to have an enjoyable experience instead of constantly fighting the spam bots.

Anyhow, not sure what I'll do just yet, I don't really have time to take on a total forum overhaul or the funds at the moment either if I did that, but just wanted mainly to let everyone know that I am still dedicated to supporting the site and even though it may not look like it I am working on things and trying to provide the best experience I can from a one man band with 6 other shows happening at the same time.

 

[Walt]

Just ceep up the good work Ivan :-D
We will be banning where its possibly ;-)

 

[DrelvisGTi]

G'day Ivan,

Thanks for reaching out and also thank you for everything you do behind the scenes! I'm also juggling work, kids, cars, home... ;-)

Although the Spammers have been fierce lately, to be honest ban hammering them is now so a part of my daily routine it doesn't bother me at all... (the one that ends in 'jab' is now my personal nemesis so kicking that guy's arse down the road every day is starting to become rather enjoyable... :laugh: )

I'm happy to continue helping out from this end and grateful that we even have a Suzuki forum available still!


Cheers,

Drew

 

[macuserman]

Thanks for all the support guys, I really appreciate it. I've given this quite a bit more thought, I really think the way forward to get away from being stuck in these old versions of phpBB without support is to switch platforms to xenforo which will be a big undertaking, but if we can do it I think it will be very big positive for the forum. Possibly even driving some growth here, there are numerous upsides to switching, which I won't get into super deep here, but in any case I'm going to start working on this if possible so that when I have the funds and a bit of time I can try to make this happen.

BTW this is not a cry for funds I greatly appreciate all of you who financially have supported the site. It means a lot that some of you felt strongly enough about the site to support it in that way.

This will likely take me a bit of time to implement both funds and my time are limited at the moment, but I'm excited about it because I felt backed into a corner with the site and didn't see a good way forward. So anyhow I'm super excited about this, and I can't wait for you guys to see some of the stuff I'm hoping to bring to fruition.

 

[Murf]

Thank you Ivan.