Holy Spam Batman! Time for board maintenance.

[Lunkhead]

The spam being posted here is starting to get annoying. Sometimes it's been planted by bots roaming the web, and other times by human hands. Probably impossible to get rid of it 100%, but I'm going to get back to upgrading the board software soon. That will help reduce spam and improve security overall. I don't have a time table on when I'll be doing the upgrades, but if you happen to stop by and see the following message on the main page,
"Sorry, but this board is currently unavailable. Please try again later.",
you'll know I'm working on it. I'll try not to keep the board offline too long, but the upgrades can take a couple hours in some cases. Thanks for your patience everyone. I want to keep making this a better place for all of us!

[Xenorama]

let 'em have it!

David

[DangerkittyToTheRescue]

Thanks for all of your hard work, we'll be patient while the upgrades are being made.
You aren't kidding about the spam, on the VCE forum, (the atomic bomb movie forum) there was so much spam that it had to get cleaned out every other day. The owner of VCE, Peter Kuran, is not adept at mesage boards like he is at making movies so we've been "locked" out of the forum due to password issues.
Best wishes with the upgrades.

[Wilytank]

I'll obliterate them!

[Lunkhead]

Thanks guys. I hope to do some work on it this week.

[Wilytank]

Thanks guys. I hope to do some work on it this week.

Destroy them all!

[Lunkhead]

Just to let everyone know, I've done updates and added things to make it more difficult for spammers to advertise here. However, it's nearly impossible to stop all of it. You will still see an occasional spam post or new member/spammer hawking their sites. I'll try to remove spam threads and bot-heads as soon as I see them. The only other way to go would be to lock the board up super tight, but that would make it very hard for potential, legitimate new members to find and register. We need to remain accessible to grow, so we'll just have to keep on top of what spam does get through. I'm pleased with the changes that reduce some of it. It makes spam easier to control. Thanks for your patience and help guys!

[DangerkittyToTheRescue]

Thanks Lunkhead!
If those spammers come back, we'll have them "pick two"!

[Lunkhead]

No problem DK!

[Wilytank]

That mental midget known as thebestof tried to spam up the Strictly stooges area. Glad that retard is gone.

[Lunkhead]

To the would-be spammers planning to drop links to viagra, cialis, prescription drug and naughty sites:

Don't offendy the Ofendié else ye shall receive le boot!

[DangerkittyToTheRescue]

Wow, I like the grey background. It's nice for a change. I change the "skins" on my photopage all the time.

[Lunkhead]

Thanks DK. You know me. I'm always tweaking things a little. I think the grey background also works better because so many of the films and shows we discuss here are in black and white.

[Lunkhead]

Well, after doing all the updates and adding anti-spam measures, some of the spam pests are still getting through. I'm seriously thinking about changing the registration process so I will be in charge of activating new user accounts. It's a shame to have to do that, but it seems to be the only way to put an end to this nonsense. The registration process would change so that I would receive an email when someone registers a new account, and then I would decide whether to activate it or not. The spam accounts are fairly easy to recognize because of the generated names and email accounts they use. As for legitimate new members, they would have to wait for me to activate their accounts, but I usually check my email every day so it's not like they'd be waiting long. If I decide to make this change, I'll mention it in the welcome section so new members would be aware of it.

[DangerkittyToTheRescue]

Thats cool, there were some websites that asked you to wait 24 hours before you would get the regristration email and begin your posting.

The amount of spam really isn't bad by normal standards, one message board got 3 dozen a day, they switched to a phpBB Group board, its real low now.