Announcements TGTAP Announcements http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/index.php Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:22:36 +0000 120 Announcements http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/object3/288/102/n225073910499_6264.jpg http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/index.php Forum Bosses http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/24150-forum-bosses/ discussed earlier, we're introducing a new position to the forum, which will replace section moderators.

A Forum Boss is responsible for the content of their subforum. They lead the other users, encourage good discussion, manage the pinned topics, and halt irrelevant or abusive discussions.

This is different to moderators - Forum Bosses are not technically staff. They don't discipline or ban members, but they are responsible for the content. They have a range of moderator abilites to help them manage their subforum, such as closing, editing and pinning.

Obviously different parts of the forums need different treatment (compare GTA IV with Fun & Games), which is why it's better to have different people looking after them. In most cases we will only give one subforum to a Boss, and only have one Boss per subforum.

Anyone active can be a Boss, you just need to be able to tell quality topics, be able to lead discussions (whilst letting other people speak), and be trustworthy enough to wield the tools we'll give you.

If you are interested in becoming a Forum Boss, please let us know in this topic. If you have any questions, ask away.

----

The first bosses have been selected:


GTA IV Gameplay Discussion & Ballad of Gay Tony - Noru
GTA VC Discussion - Thomas
General Gaming - Mpilk901
Graphics & Writers' Pad - TM
Vehicles - WRX22B1998]]> Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:22:36 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/24150-forum-bosses/ Forums Upgraded to IPB3! http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23930-forums-upgraded-to-ipb3/ new improved forum!

The Skin
As you can see we've already made modifications to the default skin. Apologies to those of you who liked the old one better, we weren't able to convert that. What I've done is integrate the forums into the main website layout, keeping the site 100% consistent throughout.

New Features
IPB3 brings with it a decent amount of new features, I'll give a brief overview here, and Gerard will also go into detail about a few important changes in the following post.

Private Messaging
PM's are now Private Conversations between you and up to 6 other members. It's pretty much the same as the old system really, with the added ability of sharing the conversation with multiple people.

Statuses
Those of you who are active Facebook users will know doubt enjoy using this. From the index page or your profile page you can now tell users what you're currently thinking/doing etc. This will be shown on your profile page.

The Sidebar
On the index page you will have noticed there is now a sidebar. This displays the latest user status updates, recently posted topics, and any forums/topics you are watching (subscribed to for updates).
If this annoys you, you can always hide it by clicking the little X to the top right of it ;)


Of course there are many more. A topic will be posted later with a more in depth explanation to some of the features you may not be aware of or understand fully.

Found a Bug?
Something not working/looking like you expected it to? If you find a bug, let us know here.

You may find that every single post on the forum shows up as "unread" for you. To fix this, you can click "Mark board as read" right at the bottom of the page.

Staff Changes
We've re-shuffled the staff a little.

Retired staff members including Slayer and Jared have now been removed. Forum veteran Mike, whom you know as Righty, has been reassigned to the more appropriate position of Super Mod.

Finally, joining me at the top is Gerard (once again!). Gerard will be playing a much more active role on the forums now, and you'll see him implementing a number of changes soon.


And on that note, Gerard will help explain some of the more important changes to how we're running this forum...]]> Sat, 22 Aug 2009 02:41:23 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23930-forums-upgraded-to-ipb3/ Forum upgrade soon! http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23869-forum-upgrade-soon/ Good news everyone!

I've started working on our IPB3 upgrade again. I'm currently in the process of skin bug fixes, and have some code to write for things such as our customised warning/ban system as well as the display of news on the homepage. Once all this is done we'll be ready to upgrade the forums. The upgraded and improved forums are being skinned to match our latest website layout that we've been using since the start of the year. Our IPB3 test forum is now closed while we finish these final things.

In addition to the upgrade, a few other changes will be made. Some at the same time, some later on. This includes a re-shuffling of staff members, some important rule changes, as well as some gang-related preparations.

Timeframe for upgrading the forums is sometime this week. Hopefully on or before Friday, so that we have the weekend to work out any kinks. Since status updates from here on in are going to be relative small, it is pointless me posting about it all here. A good idea would be to follow @thegtaplace on Twitter to keep up to date with development.

The forums will be taken completely offline when the upgrade takes place. We'll post an announcement regarding that the day before on the homepage.]]> Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:20:12 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23869-forum-upgrade-soon/ Server problems (non-TGTAP) http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23249-server-problems-non-tgtap/ Over 100,000 sites were taken offline in the attack, which if you are interested you can read about here.

Normally I would just restore backups, but as it happens I don't have any recent ones for the database of my sites, I have all the static files, and most images, but not the databases, which without, the sites are useless.

So how's the TGTAP network affected?

AlanWake.co.uk - No database - forums and news are gone. I have majority of files still. Possible relaunch in the next few months.
LANoire.net - No database - all news gone. Was just a wordpress blog, but with lack of news on the game we probably won't bother relaunching it unless it looks like it's gonna be big.
PayneKillers - Is ok - we put this on TGTAP's server so thankfully it is completely unaffected by all this
OFP2:DR -Is ok - my friend hosts this on his own server so that site is fine too

Of my other websites:
ImageLodge.net - Probably the biggest and most inconvenient loss due to it's growing popularity, this was getting quite a lot of images uploaded everyday but they are now all gone. A relaunch is possible but would mean starting from scratch. Not entirely sure if it's worth it right now as it was a useful site, but one that wasn't profitable.
ChrisJP.com - My personal splash page obviously isn't much of a problem, this, along with my web portfolio at chrisphillips.co.uk will be online as soon as I have a new server set up.

unannounced, unrelated project - Nothing to do with games, but our most recent backup was 8 days ago. We've done shitloads of work in those 8 days though.


So yeah, that's what's happened. Obviously I'm pretty pissed off at the moment for both the attack, and for myself not keeping up to date with off-site backups. Gonna be a very busy week for me trying to get all this shit sorted out now, just letting everyone know what happened to those sites in the network.



To ImageLodge users:
I mentioned ImageLodge because obviously I promoted it a fair bit here through it's very troubled beginnings (yes I'm aware of how shit it used to be), but because of this I know quite a few of you, including myself did actually make regular use of it. I realise it's very easy to simply switch to another image host, there's hundreds out there, but we did have some cool features, the .zip/.rar mass uploading of images was particularly popular.
Would any of you users like IL to return with a relaunch? Or will you simply move on to another host?]]> Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:37:11 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23249-server-problems-non-tgtap/ TGTAP.com now our network homepage http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23175-tgtap-com-now-our-network-homepage/ TGTAP.com is now being used as the homepage for our network/portal whatever you want to call it. Those of you who had previously bookmarked that may want to change it to thegtaplace.com.

Nothing is changing so don't worry. We just needed a homepage for it and that's the domain we're using. Just letting everyone know.]]> Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:31:34 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23175-tgtap-com-now-our-network-homepage/ Centralising modding discussion http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23108-centralising-modding-discussion/
Currently, each of the major GTA games has a subforum for mod related discussion. This is fine, but there's a problem whereby there is nowhere to discuss modding in general, tools, help, etc. Or topics that cover multiple games, like IMG Tool for instance which covers the entire III era - members get confused as to where they're supposed to ask for help for that.

Having a dedicated forum for modding will solve this problem, and will also mean modding discussion is centralised and all in one place.

The subforums we currently have would simply be moved into this new dedicated forum, and remain there for game-specific modding topics/questions etc as they are now.

Your thoughts?]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 17:23:38 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/23108-centralising-modding-discussion/ A little forum housekeeping http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/22021-a-little-forum-housekeeping/
First of all the modding forums. Currently, each of the major GTA games has a subforum for mod related discussion. This is fine, but has an inherit problem whereby there is nowhere to discuss modding in general, tools, help, etc. Or topics that cover multiple games, like IMG Tool for instance which covers the entire III era - members get confused as to where they're supposed to ask for help for that.
Having a dedicated forum for modding will solve this problem, and will also mean modding discussion is centralised and all in one place.
The subforums we currently have would simply be moved into this new dedicated forum, and remain there for game-specific modding topics/questions etc as they are now.


Next is our General GTA forum, which houses all discussion of all non-specific GTA stuff. At the moment, it's also being used as a place to discuss the next GTA. This is fine, however when we eventually learn about the next GTA it's going to be a pain in the ass having lots of topics in that forum, and to be honest, I think it's kind of cluttering up. I would make new forum for the next GTA. Moving all topics discussing it into it.


Once the final version of IPB3 is released, the layout of the forums will be cleaned up and revamped to fit in with the theme of the main site. It'll look even less cluttered then. I'll update everyone when that time comes.]]> Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:05:55 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/22021-a-little-forum-housekeeping/ 2008 Award Winners http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21948-2008-award-winners/
GTA

Most Knowledgeable (GTA3)
1st: Earthbound
2nd: TNF
3rd: Harwood Butcher, Husky

Most Knowledgeable (GTAVC)
1st: TNF
2nd: Urbanoutlaw
3rd: WRX22B1998, SpiderVice

Most Knowledgeable (GTASA)
1st: Urbanoutlaw
2nd: SpiderVice, JAB Hacksoul

Most Knowledgeable (GTALCS)
1st: Rashon
2nd: TNF
3rd: SpiderVice

Most Knowledgeable (GTAVCS)
1st: TNF
2nd: Flesh-n-bone
3rd: Rashon, SpiderVice

Most Knowledgeable (GTAIV)
1st: Urbanoutlaw
2nd: Chris, chris82

Member

Most Respected Member
1st: Urbanoutlaw
2nd: TM
3rd: draftermatt

Most Respected Moderator
1st: Gerard
2nd: MrLlamaLlama
3rd: Spaz

Most Helpful Member
1st: Urbanoutlaw
2nd: Earthbound
3rd: Sherman, Gerard

Most Improved Member
1st: Spider-Vice
2nd: Nate10
3rd: Mpilk901

Most Intelligent Member
1st: Gerard
2nd: YellowJacket
3rd: Urbanoutlaw

Best New Member
1st: Earthbound
2nd: guilty.by.association, TNF, Butters! (3 way tie)

Funniest Member
1st: L-RiC
2nd: rockstarrem, Unnamed Noodle, osiris

Most Original Username
1st: MrLlamaLlama
2nd: Unnamed Noodle
3rd: Dirty ol' bastard, Rainbow Bear

Biggest Geek
1st: chris82
2nd: Chris
3rd: Little_Chestnut

Most Random Member
1st: Connor
2nd: Angry Gorilla
3rd: Huckleberry Pie

Best Personality
1st: Sherman
2nd: Nate10
3rd: Chris, Dirty Harry, L-RiC, Huckleberry Pie

Graphics, Creativity, Skills etc.

Best Avatar
1st: Nate10
2nd: EvoLuTioN, Chris

Best Signature
1st: MrLlamaLlama
2nd: Nate10, TM (2 way tie)

Best Graphics Maker
1st: MrLlamaLlama
2nd: EvoLuTioN
3rd: TM

Best Animator
1st: MK47
2nd: EvoLuTioN
3rd: Connor

Best Writing/Story
1st: L-RiC
2nd: Samil
3rd: Dazza, Vercetti Thug

Best Quality Posts
1st: Gerard
2nd: Thomas
3rd: TM, Urbanoutlaw (2 way tie)

Best Written English
1st: Gerard
2nd: Everyone other nominee

Best "About Me" Page
1st: L-RiC
2nd: Angry Gorilla
3rd: EvoLuTioN

Best Debater
1st: Gerard
2nd: Spaz
3rd: Harwood Butcher

Prestige

Topic of the Year
1st: Man has sex with Picnic Table
2nd: Hot Babe Thread
3rd: George Bush has shoes thrown at him

Member of the Year
1st: Urbanoutlaw
2nd: Thomas
3rd: SpiderVice, TM, Nate10

Hottest Male
1st: Sherman (49 pts)
2nd: Earthbound (27 pts)
3rd: Gerard (23 pts)

Hottest Female
1st: guilty.by.association (58 pts)
2nd: YellowJacket (56 pts)
3rd: Bear (34 pts)

Lolz

Best Breasts
1st: guilty.by.association
2nd: kokane
3rd: Little_Chestnut

Person Least Like to Get Laid
1st: IŠe (Kel-F)
2nd: Chris
3rd: Husky


Congratulations everyone!]]> Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:32:26 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21948-2008-award-winners/ 2008 Awards voting now closed http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21740-2008-awards-voting-now-closed/
Hopefully have the badges made sometime this week and perhaps dish them out next weekend. Well done to everyone, some were very close.]]> Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:39:43 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21740-2008-awards-voting-now-closed/ 3rd Annual TGTAP Awards VOTING OPEN http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21515-3rd-annual-tgtap-awards-voting-open/ 2008 Award Forum and get voting. Please don't vote for yourself if you happened to get nominated, not very good sportsmanship is it...
Due to the number of polls they actually go over 2 pages (sorry) so make sure you check out all the polls to get your votes in. They're all pinned in there.

Good luck to everyone!


P.S. In case you guys didn't see it yesterday, we have started the new incarnation of the gang scene so read up on that if it's something you might be interested in.]]> Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:07:02 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21515-3rd-annual-tgtap-awards-voting-open/ New Gangs Launched! http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21474-new-gangs-launched/
You will have noticed pretty quickly that none of you have access to post in your private forums anymore and also that your gang chat topics have been dragged over to the new chat forum. You will now be able to discuss whatever it is that you discuss within those topics. Anything private will need to be discussed via PM or over an instant messaging program such as MSN, AIM, YIM, ICQ (etc) rather than in your private forums.

Please note! When your gang becomes official (more information will be released soon about the next official gang) it's members will be given permission to post within the private forum again. Not to mention each gang will also get a cool new icon that will be placed above their user group, which will no longer read "Members" as it used to. It will now show the gang that you belong to. For example: Group: Earthbound Family (someone should really create a gang with that name, how cool would that be!?).

Enjoy this new system and try to impress! The best gang will go official first and reclaim it's private forum! Or if you are a new gang, you will be given a NEW private forum specifically for your gang and its members, no one else. :)

Notable Links - If all members could read the new rules and requirements, that would be fantastic, and to all new members, if you're interested in getting involved in the gang system, please read the other links as well.
Rules and Requirements
How Do I Join A Gang?
How Do I Create a Gang?
How Does My Gang Become Official?
What Is An Official Gang?
What Is A Gang?
The Origin and History of the Gang System]]> Sun, 18 Jan 2009 06:39:15 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21474-new-gangs-launched/ Award nominations end tomorrow (Saturday 3rd) http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21243-award-nominations-end-tomorrow-saturday-3rd/
If I've nothing more important to do tomorrow night I'll probably create the polls so everyone can start voting. If not then Sunday night. Look out for another announcement sometime over the weekend regarding those.]]> Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:33:32 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21243-award-nominations-end-tomorrow-saturday-3rd/ Congratulations Earthbound! New gang supervisor http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21099-congratulations-earthbound-new-gang-supervisor/ EARTHBOUND will be our new gang supervisor, since our old one went off and jumped off a rock or something. We'll both be working together to better satisfy the needs of the once-thriving scene.

Also, if you haven't checked the new gang system sub-forum, read the topic about MTA multiplayer coming back. We'd like to see some suggestions and see how many people are interested in this deal. It's going to happen soon.


Happy holidays!

Sherman]]> Sat, 27 Dec 2008 04:16:53 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21099-congratulations-earthbound-new-gang-supervisor/ Our IPB3 beta forum http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21048-our-ipb3-beta-forum/
Anyway, IPB3 offers a lot of new features, and especially tons more on the admin side, which I know won't concern you but it's cool anyway. For those of you who want to familiarise yourself with what's new and how stuff works, head on over to http://www.chrisjp.net/ipb3beta and register.

Feel free to make test posts and do random things, there's not actually any rules there and it won't be moderated (except when we want to test out stuff).

Oh also, for those of you who are retarded, the whole 'fansite' thing is a joke :P
Obviously. We're just testing you know :P

Try the new IPB]]> Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:43:10 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/21048-our-ipb3-beta-forum/ 2008 Forum Awards nominations now open http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20941-2008-forum-awards-nominations-now-open/ For the lazy:
award nominations
and
hottest member picture submissions.

We'll update you when the nomination period ends. After that a poll will be made for each individual award which you'll then vote on. Until then, think about the nominations and try and get someone down for each one. We don't wanna see people only nominate others for a few awards, we want all the awards have a good selection of members ;)

Have fun!]]> Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:29:33 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20941-2008-forum-awards-nominations-now-open/ A few notices http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20729-a-few-notices/
Hard Drive upgrade
I've been informed that TGTAP's server will be undergoing a hard drive upgrade sometime next week. There will be very minimal downtime, basically as long as it takes to turn off the server, plug in the new drive, and turn it back on again. If all goes well it shouldn't be down for any longer than 15 minutes. If it's down for longer then some poor server techie is working his bollocks off trying to resuscitate TGTAP :)
Once back online we'll have an extra 250GB solely for backups. So should hard drive 1 fail, we can simply restore a backup from hard drive 2 with minimal data loss.

IE7 ad issues
Apparently, some IE7 users (not necessarily ones on this site) were complaining of the UGO ads causing errors to appear on some pages. A fix has been applied, so if any of you guys were affected then it should be sorted now. But seeing as how no one here posted here about it I can assume very few of you were affected.

Forum Awards 2008
It's that time of year again! The annual Forum Awards will be taking place soon. Look out for a topic discussing which awards to add/keep. Once finalised we'll be holding nominations mid December, and late December we'll begin the voting. Winners will be announced as usual during the first 2 weeks of January. Great way to start off the new year at TGTAP!

GTA IV modding / downloads
I've added categories ready for GTA IV mods to be uploaded. It shouldn't be too long before we start seeing them. Progress is being made on tools such as http://www.openiv.com, and once complete and out in the public modding will be in full swing.
GTA IV is protected against modding, R* probably got cold feet due to the Hot Coffee fiasco, but legal patching can be applied to allow us to mod the game. Details of which will be posted up once we're ready.

Website changes
Since I'm busy this entire week, I'll be starting on the planned website changes the week after. They will hopefully be done by new year. I mentioned these in the TGTAP birthday announcement last week, read that if you forgot what we're doing. Basically a new layout and such.]]> Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:11:20 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20729-a-few-notices/ TGTAP turns six years old today! http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20610-tgtap-turns-six-years-old-today/
I called this website of mine "The GTA Place".

So yes, we've grown a fair bit since then. Every day over 20,000 people land on this website and in an average day, these people rack up over 230,000 page views between them - yes we consume a shit-ton of bandwidth.
I only have accurate data going back to mid-2006, however we estimate that in 6 full years of operation, The GTA Place has been visited over 15 million times, viewing over 210 million pages.

But enough of the stats. What do we have to look forward to when TGTAP enters into it's 7th year today?

Well, first and foremost, the most noticeable change will be a new design for the website. We'll also be upgrading forum software which will give us a nice shiny new set of features, once done that will also receive a new design to match the new website. Backend changes to the website should ensure it runs more smoothly, allowing staff to manage and update our content a lot more easily.
The forum's gang scene is likely to receive a kick up the arse to get it going strongly again, with the help of a few members here. That's about all the major things we have planned. We're looking at New Year's Day as a tentative release date for the new design, but the forum upgrades will come after that.

I'd like to thank all of you who still visit us today and find us a useful part of the amazing community that is the Grand Theft Auto fans. Especially veterans of TGTAP among you, some of you are left I know... if you have a member ID < 100 then you can pretty much say you're a vet ;)

Have a good Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) and enjoy playing GTA IV on your PC's (or consoles perhaps!), and keep on visiting TGTAP for happy fun time!]]> Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:32:50 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20610-tgtap-turns-six-years-old-today/ IPB3 public preview now open http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20516-ipb3-public-preview-now-open/
IPB 3 is nearing the final stages of its development, currently in alpha stage. No downloads are available yet to license holders (I'll be able to get beta copies but not alphas), however they have opened up their Alpha preview board. You'll need an account on the official IPS website to login, but the register link is there and if you're interested now would be a nice early time to familiarise yourself with the new layout and features available.

Basically I just made this post to make those of you who care aware of the new release, and just to say that TGTAP will upgrade as soon as possible when the final version is released. I WILL be hosting my own copy of the beta version when it's available, and I'll let you guys on there too so we can make sure there's no problems that will affect us, such as our modifications and things like that. Once we're all done testing we'll get these forums upgraded and hopefully have a new skin done for it. We may wait til we get a skin done before upgrading though, and basically revamp the entirety of TGTAP in time for new year, hopefully. That's my aim at least.


IPB3 will have an absolute shitload of really useful new features, some VERY useful stuff for the staff, and a lot of stuff you simply will not care about but is good anyway. I realise there's probably not many of you who actually give a damn about new features, so instead I'll just provide a few links to the IPS blog to some interesting posts with details on them...

built-in reputation system - myself and staff and some of you will test this and if we decide it works well we'll be using this
built-in report system - useful for myself and the staff at least, and better for you guys for reporting inappropriate content
conversations with multiple people through PM's
IPB3 search engine optimisation
IPB3 Misc. features


So yeah, literally everything is going to be improved. We'll even be able to set signature limits, so no more oversized images in sigs bothering you until a moderator enforces it's removal and stuff like that!


If you didn't read any of this, here's what's happening: Upgrading to IPB3 will make TGTAP forums an even more awesome place to be.]]> Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:09:39 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20516-ipb3-public-preview-now-open/ ATTN: EVERYONE http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20156-attn-everyone/
Short announcement, but it's all I have to say. I clicked it earlier (Dumb, I know) and just wanted to get it out to everyone.

Thanks,

Sky]]> Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:22:33 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20156-attn-everyone/ IPB 2.3.6 upgrade (spam bot prevention etc.) http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20091-ipb-236-upgrade-spam-bot-prevention-etc/
NOTE: There is no need to reply to an obvious spam bot. Simply report the post and all moderators will then be aware of it via the report system.

Basically, sad people trying to earn a bit of money by way of spamming, write scripts for bots that sign up to thousands of forums and post a single post with a shitload of links to porn or pharmaceutical (drug) websites. Websites and forum softwares combat this with CAPTCHA images - basically an image with a word written in an abnormal way, making it hard for computers to read through character recognition. Though as software becomes more powerful, they gradually find ways to read the images, and so we see waves of spam bots registering again.

That's what happened this week. We and thousands of other forums started seeing spam bots registering and posting again, and IPB rather quickly put out a patch a couple of days ago to improve their CAPTCHA images. Unfortunately they weren't good enough. So today, a proper update was released, version 2.3.6 implements reCAPTCHA which you may well have seen on other websites. It's incredibly hard for computers to read, and at the same time, their service helps to digitize books, read more on the wikipedia article I just linked to or on their official site if you're interested in how it works.
This should be effective immediately, and I imagine it will take an incredibly long time for someone to figure out a way for computers to pass this.


In case you're wondering, this isn't something new that we've had to deal with, and it's nothing personal either, it happens to all forums. We've had to deal with it in the past, before IPB2.2 came along with an improved CAPTCHA function, it got pretty bad and there was loads registering every week. Luckily IPB improved the CAPTCHA enough that these spammers bot scripts couldn't read the codes and thus couldn't pass the registration process. During this time we also banned loads of free webmail services that they used for the email link verification that you must click, again narrowing down the amount of bots that managed to register. That's what happened again this week. Banned a new chain of freemail sites etc.

Anyway, shouldn't see any spam bots for quite some time now. There may well be a few that slipped through and haven't posted yet, but we'll act on those ASAP.

Enjoy the spam-free forum!


P.S. The almighty ban list shows how many we dealt with this week. Not to mention about 20 I found that hadn't validated yet, I deleted their accounts. If this is war then I believe the current score
TGTAP 3 - 0 Spam bots

Win.]]> Fri, 03 Oct 2008 15:54:53 +0000 http://www.thegtaplace.com/forums/topic/20091-ipb-236-upgrade-spam-bot-prevention-etc/