Quick Site News
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Quick Site Update: Saturday, July 2nd, 2011
This weekend we will have a bit of 'stats' shake up as we're tweaking our userbase, usergroups, and go through our archive (and clean it up). We have tracked some accounts and will merge users with duplicate accounts (unless used for the Promotion feature), prune old inactive users with 0 posts, and upgrade a range of old premium users to the premium usergroup. Resulting in the total stats being rebuild and showing a lower number than currently reported. I thought it was worth to mention. As no public data is being pruned.
Users with 0 posts who have been inactive for ages, that are deleted, are of course always free to register again and become active.
The premium account upgrade option has now been disabled, as well as the marketplace. Today I will be moving the permissions around for the marketplace forum and if you believe you should have access to it, please do feel free to contact me.
This weekend we will have a bit of 'stats' shake up as we're tweaking our userbase, usergroups, and go through our archive (and clean it up). We have tracked some accounts and will merge users with duplicate accounts (unless used for the Promotion feature), prune old inactive users with 0 posts, and upgrade a range of old premium users to the premium usergroup. Resulting in the total stats being rebuild and showing a lower number than currently reported. I thought it was worth to mention. As no public data is being pruned.
Users with 0 posts who have been inactive for ages, that are deleted, are of course always free to register again and become active.
The premium account upgrade option has now been disabled, as well as the marketplace. Today I will be moving the permissions around for the marketplace forum and if you believe you should have access to it, please do feel free to contact me.
Update:
Alongside other accounts, the following users their premium accounts have been extended until 31st, December, 2011; stormraven, Itworx4me, melbo, Ryan, beduino, Daracon, EQnoble, MicroHellas, Travis, Miko, M3xital, SteveL, John, Alexd, Arsenie Coseac, David Gardiner, Dynamic, and RobParker.
More premium accounts will be upgraded later today.
Alongside other accounts, the following users their premium accounts have been extended until 31st, December, 2011; stormraven, Itworx4me, melbo, Ryan, beduino, Daracon, EQnoble, MicroHellas, Travis, Miko, M3xital, SteveL, John, Alexd, Arsenie Coseac, David Gardiner, Dynamic, and RobParker.
More premium accounts will be upgraded later today.
Update:
The Marketplace/Job-Board forum is now part of the Exclusive club, and requires a Premium Account (which you can't purchase an update for anymore).
The expired/sold/completed/done and inactive threads have been moved to an archive (sub-forum).
The active and currently running subscriptions and thread-authors have all been upgraded to Premium Account (expiry date 31st December 2011).
Users can still post at no cost in an active thread and won't be upgraded to Premium, if you need to contact the author and have already posted in the thread but can't access it anymore, please start a PC with me, link to the thread in question, and I will review your request and try to fix it.
If you have an active thread and can't access it, please do contact me and link to your marketplace listing, and I will review the setup.
Users that were not already a Premium member, but had a Marketplace account update, that are upgraded at no cost to Premium .. are:
Walter, Pope Viper, Angel, Michael Dance, mike law, sonicrc, daveb47, kuyenmotdivad, spinball, XenCentral, TheComputerGuy, tbpp, Sniper, piku2008, hornsphinx, Guy Harwood, gldtn, Dave Legg, Andrea Marucci, and Dynamic
The Marketplace/Job-Board forum is now part of the Exclusive club, and requires a Premium Account (which you can't purchase an update for anymore).
The expired/sold/completed/done and inactive threads have been moved to an archive (sub-forum).
The active and currently running subscriptions and thread-authors have all been upgraded to Premium Account (expiry date 31st December 2011).
Users can still post at no cost in an active thread and won't be upgraded to Premium, if you need to contact the author and have already posted in the thread but can't access it anymore, please start a PC with me, link to the thread in question, and I will review your request and try to fix it.
If you have an active thread and can't access it, please do contact me and link to your marketplace listing, and I will review the setup.
Users that were not already a Premium member, but had a Marketplace account update, that are upgraded at no cost to Premium .. are:
Walter, Pope Viper, Angel, Michael Dance, mike law, sonicrc, daveb47, kuyenmotdivad, spinball, XenCentral, TheComputerGuy, tbpp, Sniper, piku2008, hornsphinx, Guy Harwood, gldtn, Dave Legg, Andrea Marucci, and Dynamic
And the final update for today .. I promise 
On XenFans.com we collect the spam content and carefully analyze it. Properly report the abusive users/bots to the appropriate sites and review the content for patterns in usernames, email addresses and IP ranges, and ban accordingly.
We have some magic sauce running (that we won't disclose) that helps keep this board as clean as possible, and allows us to manage the spam users/bots easier, and archive their content for a period of time in case we have a false positive.
Today is one of those days where we haven't had a single false positive for 6 months, have a collection of content analysed and processed. It's time to delete it. We prefer to have real content, by real users, active users I might add, so our statistics are as realistic as possible.
With about 70 authentic spam messages, I say we're doing pretty good keeping spam out, and don't actually loose that much content.
Yes, we have quite a bit of content in our private archive, but they are expired/completed staff discussions, or archived user content (that isn't spam).
And I am just posting this here as help for other boards that also have to deal with spam, and as transparency to our community.
Final note:
Crontabs will be run, and caches will be rebuild, and the database optimized and repaired, before a daily backup is made offsite. Finalizing todays maintenance to our community.
On XenFans.com we collect the spam content and carefully analyze it. Properly report the abusive users/bots to the appropriate sites and review the content for patterns in usernames, email addresses and IP ranges, and ban accordingly.
We have some magic sauce running (that we won't disclose) that helps keep this board as clean as possible, and allows us to manage the spam users/bots easier, and archive their content for a period of time in case we have a false positive.
Today is one of those days where we haven't had a single false positive for 6 months, have a collection of content analysed and processed. It's time to delete it. We prefer to have real content, by real users, active users I might add, so our statistics are as realistic as possible.
With about 70 authentic spam messages, I say we're doing pretty good keeping spam out, and don't actually loose that much content.
Yes, we have quite a bit of content in our private archive, but they are expired/completed staff discussions, or archived user content (that isn't spam).
And I am just posting this here as help for other boards that also have to deal with spam, and as transparency to our community.
Final note:
Crontabs will be run, and caches will be rebuild, and the database optimized and repaired, before a daily backup is made offsite. Finalizing todays maintenance to our community.
Attachments
Quick Site News: Monday; July 04, 2011
Important notice: As our site grows we grow with it, this means that we had to make some slight changes to our privacy policy, terms of services, forum rules, and our mission statement. This information was scattered around the site a little bit, we've collected them into one spot. And re-wrote it slightly to be easier to read through and easier to understand.
By logging in and participating on our site you automatically agree to the updated ToS/PP/FR.
Of course, we give you the option to opt-out. As always, we do not prune accounts or data, but we can nullify your account by changing your username/email. Use the footer contact-us form may you desire to opt-out.
Users that register are linked to the below link. Our footer ToS/PP link to the below link, and at any time you can view it as a guest, and as a member by going to the Announcement forum where it will be one of our sticky threads.
Per Monday, July 04th, 2011, the xenfans.com terms of services, privacy policy, mission statement, end user license agreement, and forum rules are as follows; though always subject to change at any time:
http://xenfans.com/threads/xenfans-com-rules-policies.1167/
Important notice: As our site grows we grow with it, this means that we had to make some slight changes to our privacy policy, terms of services, forum rules, and our mission statement. This information was scattered around the site a little bit, we've collected them into one spot. And re-wrote it slightly to be easier to read through and easier to understand.
By logging in and participating on our site you automatically agree to the updated ToS/PP/FR.
Of course, we give you the option to opt-out. As always, we do not prune accounts or data, but we can nullify your account by changing your username/email. Use the footer contact-us form may you desire to opt-out.
Users that register are linked to the below link. Our footer ToS/PP link to the below link, and at any time you can view it as a guest, and as a member by going to the Announcement forum where it will be one of our sticky threads.
Per Monday, July 04th, 2011, the xenfans.com terms of services, privacy policy, mission statement, end user license agreement, and forum rules are as follows; though always subject to change at any time:
http://xenfans.com/threads/xenfans-com-rules-policies.1167/
Quick Site Update: Wednesday, July 06, 2011.
Some internal changes have been made to our system, such as the upgrade to XenForo 1.0.3, as well as some private plugin rewrites. Additionally our team forums have been reshuffled, and we've got a new addition to our team. Steven Moore, as a Community Content Writer.
We're looking forward focussing on new threads, interesting discussions, and fun articles. And we hope you participate.
Quick Site Update: Sunday, July 10, 2011.
Today I've worked on the draft of the upcoming XenFans.com July Newsletter which is scheduled for next week.
I have also updated the policies by adding a 'translation of content' policy for xenfans.com content. There were no changes to the other posts in that policies thread.
I've also updated the discussion 'looking for writers', with some new months, new topics, and a bump in how much we pay out. Looking forward to your contributions.
And finally, I have made more slots available for the frontpage's Promoted sidebar. If you desire to get listed for 3 months, we currently ask $18 for 3 months. Flipping your account as a featured one on the frontpage, linking to either your xenfans profile, or your web site address.
Oh, and some other behind closed doors maintenance, such as running a check, and optimize on the mysql database, backing up offsite, etc.
Today I've worked on the draft of the upcoming XenFans.com July Newsletter which is scheduled for next week.
I have also updated the policies by adding a 'translation of content' policy for xenfans.com content. There were no changes to the other posts in that policies thread.
I've also updated the discussion 'looking for writers', with some new months, new topics, and a bump in how much we pay out. Looking forward to your contributions.
And finally, I have made more slots available for the frontpage's Promoted sidebar. If you desire to get listed for 3 months, we currently ask $18 for 3 months. Flipping your account as a featured one on the frontpage, linking to either your xenfans profile, or your web site address.
Oh, and some other behind closed doors maintenance, such as running a check, and optimize on the mysql database, backing up offsite, etc.
Quick Site News: Tuesday, July 26th, 2011.
I am impressed with the great content on this site, our first 1,000 discussions and 7,500 messages have been created.
This does include 150 private forum threads, and 200 archived staff+user threads, and 1 spam thread.
That's 750 discussions on the board, created by our team and you! Thank you all so much.
I am impressed with the great content on this site, our first 1,000 discussions and 7,500 messages have been created.
This does include 150 private forum threads, and 200 archived staff+user threads, and 1 spam thread.
That's 750 discussions on the board, created by our team and you! Thank you all so much.
Quick Site News: Wednesday, July 27th, 2011.
We're hosted at Leaseweb.com, renting a dedicated server solution. In the past we had additional IP addresses but a while ago we've discontinued those. However, due to a misconfiguration or misunderstanding of it the IP was still assigned or binded, conflicting with a (new) customers.
I received an email from them regarding the matter and they didn't receive a response from me within 30 minutes and disabled the interface (bit dramatic, since this made the whole server which is on ip .10 unreachable (so I also can't resolve the matter myself by checking the configuration), while the conflicting ip ends with .119.
Anyway, great communication with their support, because it shows if there's a reason to take action that as a customer you can get your own site back online. That I am on the other end of it and it results in my site being down temporary, sorta unfortunate, but understandable. I called them, got an explanation, and the guy handling the support ticket followed up shortly after. Great service. So, apologies for the bit of downtime today.
And I am glad I am not with a poor quality host that opens a ticket, goes on vacation and your box is offline for the weekend, or whatever could have gone wrong. Leaseweb.com <-- affordable dedicated hosting solutions. Quite happy with them. (Well, in a perfect situation they could have already had access to the server, remove the assigned .119 and the .10 would have stayed online, but .. hey ho).
Just a short explanation for those who couldn't reach the site earlier (or any of the other 64 sites ..)
But what is 30 minutes downtime after almost 400 days, right?
noc@xenfans.com:~# w
11:29:51 up 392 days, 10:56, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.03, 0.00
p.s.
(he could have waited 40 minutes, I was about to do an offsite backup ahaha)
We're hosted at Leaseweb.com, renting a dedicated server solution. In the past we had additional IP addresses but a while ago we've discontinued those. However, due to a misconfiguration or misunderstanding of it the IP was still assigned or binded, conflicting with a (new) customers.
I received an email from them regarding the matter and they didn't receive a response from me within 30 minutes and disabled the interface (bit dramatic, since this made the whole server which is on ip .10 unreachable (so I also can't resolve the matter myself by checking the configuration), while the conflicting ip ends with .119.
Anyway, great communication with their support, because it shows if there's a reason to take action that as a customer you can get your own site back online. That I am on the other end of it and it results in my site being down temporary, sorta unfortunate, but understandable. I called them, got an explanation, and the guy handling the support ticket followed up shortly after. Great service. So, apologies for the bit of downtime today.
And I am glad I am not with a poor quality host that opens a ticket, goes on vacation and your box is offline for the weekend, or whatever could have gone wrong. Leaseweb.com <-- affordable dedicated hosting solutions. Quite happy with them. (Well, in a perfect situation they could have already had access to the server, remove the assigned .119 and the .10 would have stayed online, but .. hey ho).
Just a short explanation for those who couldn't reach the site earlier
(or any of the other 64 sites ..)But what is 30 minutes downtime after almost 400 days, right?
noc@xenfans.com:~# w
11:29:51 up 392 days, 10:56, 3 users, load average: 0.04, 0.03, 0.00
p.s.
(he could have waited 40 minutes, I was about to do an offsite backup ahaha)
Quick Site Update: Thursday, August 11, 2011.
Besides Steve Moore, a new XenFans Writer has been added to the team: Stormraven. Welcome!
We're working on in-depth articles about XenForo, community management and everything surrounding running a board; Alongside our regular quality discussions and monthly newsletters.
And, we've installed a Shoutbox in the sidebar of our frontpage. Enjoy.
Besides Steve Moore, a new XenFans Writer has been added to the team: Stormraven. Welcome!
We're working on in-depth articles about XenForo, community management and everything surrounding running a board; Alongside our regular quality discussions and monthly newsletters.
And, we've installed a Shoutbox in the sidebar of our frontpage. Enjoy.
Quick Site News: Tuesday, August 16, 2011.
The August newsletter is published and if you subscribed to it, in your inbox.
The August newsletter is published and if you subscribed to it, in your inbox.
Quick Site News: Friday, September 9, 2011.
We might appear a bit quiet on the front-end, but we're not. We've actually been quite busy preparing for the (what appears to be) an upcoming xenforo 1.0.5 release, and xenforo 1.1 first look.
We've been drafting and preparing internal documentation, article, and guides. We're preparing a schedule for content for 2012 ahead of time. And we're going through our history to find out if we've missed anything that we wanted to work on, share with the community and what not.
We're also extending on our recent scheduled maintenance by doing the nitpicking work to get things the way I want it on the site. This has come with an internal tool for the admins which we will extend to our moderator team and later our community (assuming it still works on 1.1).
We have been publishing more of our articles and open discussions. And we're extending them with poll every now and then to get a more direct opinion about certain questions.
And finally I've been working hard to get a handful of releases out to our members who had various questions the last year like 'how do I add a dropdown menu to my board?', 'how do I add an extra page to my site?', and 'I am trying to learn xenforo, which debug info is available to me so I can ..'. We've now answered these questions in the form of a plugin that is easy to install and use. And hopefully helps people extend their 1.0 board.
Oh, one more thing. We've been reviewing our style discussions and releases, and we're not happy. So we will be working on that as well.
Keep those xenforo discussions coming everybody! And don't be shy.. There are no silly questions. Just questions that haven't been posted / asked yet.
Current and Future XenFans releases can be found here: http://xenfans.com/forums/services/
Current and Future XenFans articles can be found here: http://xenfans.com/forums/learn/
We might appear a bit quiet on the front-end, but we're not. We've actually been quite busy preparing for the (what appears to be) an upcoming xenforo 1.0.5 release, and xenforo 1.1 first look.
We've been drafting and preparing internal documentation, article, and guides. We're preparing a schedule for content for 2012 ahead of time. And we're going through our history to find out if we've missed anything that we wanted to work on, share with the community and what not.
We're also extending on our recent scheduled maintenance by doing the nitpicking work to get things the way I want it on the site. This has come with an internal tool for the admins which we will extend to our moderator team and later our community (assuming it still works on 1.1).
We have been publishing more of our articles and open discussions. And we're extending them with poll every now and then to get a more direct opinion about certain questions.
And finally I've been working hard to get a handful of releases out to our members who had various questions the last year like 'how do I add a dropdown menu to my board?', 'how do I add an extra page to my site?', and 'I am trying to learn xenforo, which debug info is available to me so I can ..'. We've now answered these questions in the form of a plugin that is easy to install and use. And hopefully helps people extend their 1.0 board.
Oh, one more thing. We've been reviewing our style discussions and releases, and we're not happy. So we will be working on that as well.
Keep those xenforo discussions coming everybody! And don't be shy.. There are no silly questions. Just questions that haven't been posted / asked yet.
Current and Future XenFans releases can be found here: http://xenfans.com/forums/services/
Current and Future XenFans articles can be found here: http://xenfans.com/forums/learn/
Quick Site News: Tuesday, September 13, 2011
We've made a few changes to our xenfans promoted account feature and subscription.
Originally we had planned to charge $29/month for premium advertising listing, but decided to stay in the spirit of giving back to the community that helps us grow; Cutting the price down to the value of a Premium Account. We have also decided to not charge $19 for the plugins but instead offer it at no cost to our Premium Account holders.
With the Premium Account currently not being an available subscription we have decided to cut the price down to $9 for the .zip file and the subscription. In return we've matched this price to the Promoted Account subscription from 6 to 9 per month. (But you can now buy it on a per month basis)
Previous situation: $18 for 3 months.
New situation for remaining part of 2011: $9 / month, and when you ask (regular member or premium member) you get the .zip file mailed to you.
This is a temporary setup for the last quarter of this year. Pricing and subscription model might change in 2012.
If you want to have your account or your company account displayed on our premium advertising slow for $9 per month, with a link to your profile or directly to your web site you can pay for a premium subscription.
http://xenfans.com/account/upgrades
We've made a few changes to our xenfans promoted account feature and subscription.
Originally we had planned to charge $29/month for premium advertising listing, but decided to stay in the spirit of giving back to the community that helps us grow; Cutting the price down to the value of a Premium Account. We have also decided to not charge $19 for the plugins but instead offer it at no cost to our Premium Account holders.
With the Premium Account currently not being an available subscription we have decided to cut the price down to $9 for the .zip file and the subscription. In return we've matched this price to the Promoted Account subscription from 6 to 9 per month. (But you can now buy it on a per month basis)
Previous situation: $18 for 3 months.
New situation for remaining part of 2011: $9 / month, and when you ask (regular member or premium member) you get the .zip file mailed to you.
This is a temporary setup for the last quarter of this year. Pricing and subscription model might change in 2012.
If you want to have your account or your company account displayed on our premium advertising slow for $9 per month, with a link to your profile or directly to your web site you can pay for a premium subscription.
http://xenfans.com/account/upgrades
Promoted Accounts is an add-on I wrote.
Free download for Premium Members, $9 for users upgrading to a promoted account.
http://xenfans.com/threads/xenfans-com-promoted-accounts-9.854/
Free download for Premium Members, $9 for users upgrading to a promoted account.
http://xenfans.com/threads/xenfans-com-promoted-accounts-9.854/
Quick Site News: Saturday, October 1, 2011.
With September behind us now, and the autumn weather kicking in we had the time to update quite a few of our plugins. Please check our releases forum. (both the public and the premium one)
We've also released a few articles in September, and have a few pending for October. And with 1.1 of XenForo a step closer we will be prepping our web site for the upgrade.
And we're always looking for more XenForo (and Community) conversations. So please keep posting them.
More about product updates by XenForo and by XenFans in our upcoming October newsletter.
With September behind us now, and the autumn weather kicking in we had the time to update quite a few of our plugins. Please check our releases forum. (both the public and the premium one)
We've also released a few articles in September, and have a few pending for October. And with 1.1 of XenForo a step closer we will be prepping our web site for the upgrade.
And we're always looking for more XenForo (and Community) conversations. So please keep posting them.
More about product updates by XenForo and by XenFans in our upcoming October newsletter.
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