General site updates, TODO list and discussion

[Unicorn]

Mayb like you are put into a group of people, the game coders and the ed coders?

[Snektron]

But if those groups would contest each other, what would they make? I mean if they make a game, the game programmers are in a massive advantage. Also i love that pixel art earlier . And i went on their website for fun, turns out they hadn't even installed it yet 

[CKH4]

Good job DJ. Where does the spam usually hide? Is it in topics or subforums or just all over? Another thing that we could do is have people with 0 posts have to get their posts approved by the mods/admins and like 5 members. I would definitely have time for that if that's the path that you decide to take.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

CKH4 it gets posted in random subforums, often in already existing topics. We move them in this topic http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=285.0


As for post approval we would prefer not having to take that route, due to the inconveniences it would cause to members who broke their calcs or need urgent help that they couldn't find on Google. Same for using CloudFLare antispam. CloudFlare antispam has a long history of false positives, often on existing members, and we could lose legit members as a result. One idea I had in mind was to force members that got less than 2 posts to post twice in a specific sub-forum before they can post anywhere else.

[CKH4]

That seems like a good idea, my question would be why 2? Do some spam bots post constructive stuff for their first post?

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Because while flood control settings often kills spambots, it doesn't work on every one of them, and since they rarely try to post twice in the same thread, this rendered this trick pretty effective in the past (although the problem is that many members don't read the instructions properly).

This is how it was done on Omnimaga way back then: http://z9.invisionfree.com/omnimaga/index.php?showtopic=1806

[CKH4]

That seems like the best idea. That thread was filled with hellos.

[alexgt]

6 Pages of hello's .That is a good idea but it is a little ironic to stop spamming you must spam!

[CKH4]

You could possibly make it so that it automatically delete new posts.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

That could work. In any case we will avoid Cloudflare antispam until the very end.

Updates:

-Rules now link to transparency/banning policy.
-I'm part-time maintenance until May 31st. Technically I am supposed to be since late April, but I didn't bother changing my status until now. Site updates from me might be more spiradic until June. (And maybe afterward due to the contest deadline being around then)

[Dream of Omnimaga]

TODO:

-Find a way to install the Clone Topic mod. SMF mod install sucks because each mod install themselves on top of each others, so if you install 30 mods, then decide to uninstall the 2nd one you installed, then you need to uninstall everything in reverse order except the first. In some cases, it won't even let you do so. As a result we might have to modify the SMF code ourselves and keep a backup of the file before the modification.

We are not going to uninstall mods one by one until we can uninstall the ones we need to get Clone TOpic installed. I tried earlier and this resulted into issues we now need to fix (maybe from a backup?)

-Fix issue causing Karma received per post to appear twice (requires FTP access since you have to edit display.template.php)
-Fix issue causing fonts to be very large in main admin panel and profile summary pages.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Site code and theme restored from a May 17 backup in the package manager. This was to fix issues mentioned above, which were caused by installing/uninstalling the Karma Description mod.

If you run into any weird error, please let us know. Otherwise, everything should look normal and site content unaffected.

EDIT: For unknown reasons, the topic tags mode is currently not working.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Minor site updates:

-Added a notice on every page for members that have 0 posts, explaining how to circumvent the anti-URL spam. We don't really mind if people do it on CodeWalrus as long as it's not actual link spam, especially not automated. People who use common sense but are new to the site might have interesting programs to share, so it's kinda unfair to leave them out.
-Fixed voting permissions
-Attempted to fix poll editing permissions, but that didn't change anything, so I'm gonna have to look into this later.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Other site updates:

-Added Gaming and Walkthroughs sub-forum. Moved all gaming-related topics that used to be located in the off-topic section into the new board.
-Updated affiliates section, as BroniesQC now uses http://mlp.quebec/ URL.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

UPDATE:

-Links to both Android and Computer post notification softwares have been added to the Latest Active Topics page, inside a green alert box: http://codewalr.us/index.php?page=recent2 . Those links are subject to changing, as the notifiers are still not 100% finished and hosted on third-party sites.
-About section and team blocks updated to reflect the new Elite Coder additions.