Gentlemen,
I would like to take a moment and get you up to speed on the message board issues and an overview of the proposed substitute.
After the loss of our site a while back I went scurrying to find a new host. The one I picked had a great deal, which they can do because they are so big and have been around for a long time. This makes them a prime target for hackers. Jack and Dumo can tell you about all of the hacker/spammer attempts at registering on board every day. I think we had a pretty good handle on it though. I knew that this would eventually lead to someone finding a way in sooner or later.
I have been looking into getting the newest version of the IPB board but it costs a bit more than I could talk the wife into. I did install an "illegal" copy of their software but the web host would eventually find it and shut it down themselves.
So when our board got hacked into I started looking into what was going on. It seemed that one of the files, way down deep in the folder structure had been replaced and that annoying ad plugged into it. So I overwrote it with a clean copy. Within just a few minutes it had been overwritten again.
I checked the log files and couldn't find any evidence of how it was being done. SO I shut the boards down and it stopped. A little while later I opened the boards back up and again, the file was overwritten. So as of now the boards are offline. Only those in the admin or pilots groups have access. Any visitors get a notice that the boards are down.
In looking around for some updates or patches I ran accross a reference to SMF board software, so I checked it out. I installed it and looked around a bit. It looked pretty decent. So I then found a converter that they have written for our version of the IPB board software. With the exception of one typo in an sql file it worked great. As you can see it grabbed all of the info from the IPB database and inserted it here along with most of the permissions and settings.
When I started looking into customizing the look for us I was blown away by the fact that I only had one file to edit. That is so much easier than IPB with it's 100 different locations of bits and pieces of code to search for just to make a minor change.
The admistrative side of things is also very different from IPB but I think it's actually easier to work with after just a little time with it. Jack and Dumo are both very intelligent men that can have a handle on this thing in short order.
So, now you know everything I know. I'm really hoping that I get a go ahead from everyone to close down the IPB boards and we can jump into this one head first.
I'll also, most likely, make the same move for the 453rd RAAF squad which i also host. I've told them to stop by here and visit to see if they like it. If they do stop by it will also give us a chance to check out some of the security concerns and maybe the registration proccess.
