Tony Posted April 1, 2010 Report Share Posted April 1, 2010 I figured I'd mention most likely tomorrow and if not tomorrow on the weekend we'll be switching from vbulletin to invision power board. We've just had our fill of the bots overrunning our forums and just vbulletin in general being a major annoyance. So expect a new look soon and probably a whole lot less annoying bots showing up on our forums. Which I guess means more people are going to need to post to make up for the bots asdfgt28k, hentaiporn, ibssale and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Limey Packet Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Does this mean that all posts, user accounts, etc. will be destroyed in the process? Or will you use a conversion method to retain everything? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fowler Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 There are converters that make it easy to go from one software to another so everything will be kept. It might just be possible that users will have to reset their passwords to login for the first time. That happens sometimes in conversions depending on how the password is stored and what software you are moving from/to. It is a good choice to upgrade to IPB. vb is going down hill and vb 4 is absolutely terrible with their price hikes and the way they treat customers is terrible. Can't wait to see the forum using IPB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Can't wait to see the forum using IPB. You and me both Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cody R. Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 There are converters that make it easy to go from one software to another so everything will be kept. It might just be possible that users will have to reset their passwords to login for the first time. That happens sometimes in conversions depending on how the password is stored and what software you are moving from/to. It is a good choice to upgrade to IPB. vb is going down hill and vb 4 is absolutely terrible with their price hikes and the way they treat customers is terrible. Can't wait to see the forum using IPB. Ever since Jelsoft was acquired it's been a mess.. don't even get us started on v4 licensing.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedturtle Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Ever since Jelsoft was acquired it's been a mess.. don't even get us started on v4 licensing.. You're right about that. The company that acquired Jelsoft is Internet Brands, a company with experience in automobiles, home loans, and vacation rental properties but no experience whatsoever in software development or in community building software. Most of the vbulletin original developers, including the lead developer and co-founder left Jelsoft. There's a lot of anger from its users over the new license fees for vbulletin 4 upgrade and it's a great shame how Internet Brands treated their customers. Apparently the new vbulletin 4 has a lot of problems, including some serious security issues like XSS vulnerabilities. It's sad to see such a promising forum software fail due to the inexperience of the company that acquired it. This is a really interesting case study on how to lose customers and destroy a good brand. Glad that Hawk Host has decided to go with IPB instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Cody Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 This seems like an appropriate thread to attempt a test reply.. so test! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Cody_2 Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 This seems like an appropriate thread to attempt a test reply.. so test! Ahem whoops. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Limey Packet Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Nice conversion. The forum looks good. However, you may want to change the IP Board header to the HawkHost logo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Limey Packet Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Also, you may want to change the board name from "Invision Power Board" to "HawkHost Community Forums" or something like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cody R. Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Nice conversion. The forum looks good. However, you may want to change the IP Board header to the HawkHost logo. Also, you may want to change the board name from "Invision Power Board" to "HawkHost Community Forums" or something like that. We'll be cleaning up the details throughout tonight as well as finding a theme more fitting however we figured we should still enable the forums as it's not mission critical. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fowler Posted April 2, 2010 Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 Apparently the new vbulletin 4 has a lot of problems, including some serious security issues like XSS vulnerabilities. It's sad to see such a promising forum software fail due to the inexperience of the company that acquired it. This is a really interesting case study on how to lose customers and destroy a good brand. The latest vb releases kind of shows how much of a mess it is. Latest release is 4.0.2 PL4 (yes Patch level 4) and 3 of those were within the space of 5 days. Two were because of a Potential XSS vulnerability and the other one was because of Potential XSS vulnerabilities (notice the "S" on that one) and the PL 2 release looks like it was a bit messed up and had a file omitted which was corrected later. I know all software has issues but vb 4 seem to be alot worse the others at the moment and alot of people are not happy especially with the changes with the fees and licenses. IPB is the way to go and it looks a lot more professional in my opinion. vb has had it's day i think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted April 2, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2010 We're fully switched over now and along with that have the spam monitoring service running. Only issue we ran into were attachments for whatever reason they would not link back to the posts. Since we only have a few posts with them I just reposted my mascot ones and the rest are lost. So I guess over the next week we'll see how many bots we get signed up posting links compared to when we were running vbulletin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Limey Packet Posted April 3, 2010 Report Share Posted April 3, 2010 You may want to consider installing a MOD to hide the search engine bots from the active users list. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedturtle Posted April 3, 2010 Report Share Posted April 3, 2010 We're fully switched over now... Good job! That was fast. Forum looks great. Nice features, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted April 3, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2010 Good job! That was fast. Forum looks great. Nice features, too. Spam service also doing an excellent job: http://forums.hawkhost.com/user/1065-joshuaanave/ This user was auto banned because they're a known spammer No more us blocking large IP ranges can rely on the service to pick them up and the odd one that does not is not a huge deal it's a quick mark as spam anyways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fowler Posted April 4, 2010 Report Share Posted April 4, 2010 It didn't take the spammers long to start spamming IP range bans are dangerous to do. IPB's spam monitoring thing is alot better. With IP ranges you can end up blocking most of the world and alot of real users if you are not careful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted April 4, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 4, 2010 It didn't take the spammers long to start spamming IP range bans are dangerous to do. IPB's spam monitoring thing is alot better. With IP ranges you can end up blocking most of the world and alot of real users if you are not careful. We were blocking certain countries ranges where most of the spam was coming from. Malaysia was a big one if my memory serves me right. So it start something like this: 1.2.3.* Then we start seeing anything 1.2.* being spam so we block 1.2.* It helped reduce the spam users quite a bit as we blocked a few hundred bots who had signed up (not a single legitimate user on the IP ranges we banned) So there are some ranges that make sense to ban. Also obviously server IP ranges are smart to ban as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodp Posted April 5, 2010 Report Share Posted April 5, 2010 Ever since Jelsoft was acquired it's been a mess.. don't even get us started on v4 licensing.. Agreed, I was running three vB3 sites, none of which used the full capability of vB3. So when vB4, with even more features, and a healthy licensing fee increase, came along, all three asked for alternatives. In my case, phpbb was the solution. The upgrade was painless (*except* for the custom user fields), and like IPB, all accounts were maintained. But yes, it is sad to see what's happening to vB ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedturtle Posted April 5, 2010 Report Share Posted April 5, 2010 ...and a healthy licensing fee increase... Healthy from Internet Brands' perspective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgdot Posted April 6, 2010 Report Share Posted April 6, 2010 I understand all the other reasons but as far as spam bots go how is IPB better? (last I ever looked at IPB was years ago) I am still using 3.x.x of vBulletin and having 'question and answer' instead of captcha (or anything else) has stopped spam almost completely ibssale 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Posted April 6, 2010 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2010 I understand all the other reasons but as far as spam bots go how is IPB better? (last I ever looked at IPB was years ago) I am still using 3.x.x of vBulletin and having 'question and answer' instead of captcha (or anything else) has stopped spam almost completely It's spam monitoring service has been a nice addition with it banning the majority of them just after they register. It wasn't just about the bots though our license with vbulletin expires in a few months no interest in paying their price increase or using vbulletin 4. So IPB is a nice change of pace and has come a long way from when I last used it that's for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
speedturtle Posted April 7, 2010 Report Share Posted April 7, 2010 I am still using 3.x.x of vBulletin and having 'question and answer' instead of captcha (or anything else) has stopped spam almost completely The 'question and answer' approach works for automatic registrations but it still won't stop manual registrations by spammers. It's spam monitoring service has been a nice addition with it banning the majority of them just after they register. IPB's Spam Monitoring Service is a brilliant idea - it continually learns from the collective data sent from all IPB forums with this service installed. This is probably IPB's greatest selling point. How it works: 1) During registration, the new user's IP address and email address are sent to IPB Spam Monitoring Service. 2) The spam service checks these data against a central database of known spammers. 3) The service assigns a score (1-4) to the new account. Based on the score, you can configure the system to automatically ban the account, accept it, or require manual approval. 4) Anytime an account is manually marked as a spammer, the account's information is fed back to the service to update the central database. The service will then check this spammer account on all the other IPB forums and ban it. (If you're concerned about privacy issues, this service only keeps information of spammer accounts. Any valid account's information are temporary and eventually get deleted.) Only power in numbers can combat spam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fowler Posted April 7, 2010 Report Share Posted April 7, 2010 Some simple question and answer questions can be cracked by bots though. Questions like 2+2= ? can be worked out (using google for example). Making unique questions relating to your forum will help stop bots and some human spammers. If you have a forum about a football club and the question is what is the main colour that is assosiated with this team? Members interested in your forum would know and could sign up and some human spammers from Malaysia, India or wherever might struggle as most don't speak good English anyway and would prefer to move on or take a couple of guesses or try and find the answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe. Posted April 8, 2010 Report Share Posted April 8, 2010 I dont have a problem with bots on my forum. Anyways the forum looks nice. Great work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.