Pulled back — living with a bare head

Announcements => Announcements, Information, README.TXT => Topic started by: Kylar on 2014-10-21 20:49:37

Title: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2014-10-21 20:49:37
Yeah, so my mail settings were totally wrong.  You're slowly getting all 147 emails that were stuck in good ol' SMF's backlog.  Sorry about that.

I hate email.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2014-11-13 22:49:54
Turns out even my fix wasn't good enough, here's hoping that now it functions well and isn't genuinely broken otherwise.

I still hate email.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2014-11-15 20:34:39
I managed to forget that today was the anniversary of the domain name, so for a few hours we had a placeholder for the site.  Sorry and fixed.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2014-11-22 19:34:41
Added a short site intro into the News section.  For those of you who have already discovered the Collapse arrow in the upper right corner: please go read, thank you :)

(And for those new to this site and who haven't been to the old yahoo group — this is pretty much just reiterating the old rules, not something I just made up.  I just forgot to put it in an easy to notice place until now).
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2015-03-20 17:24:35
My server had a scheduled reboot a good couple of days back and unfortunately the mail system didn't start up on its own. Now it works, sorry about any delayed or lost notifications from the forum.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: jdm on 2015-11-03 21:15:13
I hope this is the right place to ask this question. I wasn't sure where to post it. Is it possible to upload PDF documents to the gallery, or does it only accept pictures?
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2015-11-07 00:10:19
I hope this is the right place to ask this question. I wasn't sure where to post it. Is it possible to upload PDF documents to the gallery, or does it only accept pictures?

I think it only accepts pictures (and it isn't too good at even that...)
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: soundsgreat87 on 2015-11-07 04:44:35
If you expanded the post attachment size, he could attach it! 128KB is awfully small..
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2015-11-08 02:35:11
If you expanded the post attachment size, he could attach it! 128KB is awfully small..

done
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: jdm on 2015-11-08 05:13:15
I am confused. I randomly downloaded a couple of the pictures in the gallery to check their size, and found that all my samples were way larger than 128KB. So, what are we talking about here?
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: soundsgreat87 on 2015-11-08 20:35:48
The post attachments. When you post, see the "Attachments and other options" below the text box? Click it, and then you can attach files (like your PDF) directly to the post.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: jdm on 2015-11-08 21:59:15
The post attachments. When you post, see the "Attachments and other options" below the text box? Click it, and then you can attach files (like your PDF) directly to the post.

Thank you for that info. I have not tried to do that yet. I was primarily asking about posting directly to the gallery. Are there different size limits, or file type requirements for posting to the gallery vs. attaching files to forum posts? Maybe I'm missing something here.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: soundsgreat87 on 2015-11-08 22:09:55
Gallery's only for photos, you can attach any file type to posts.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2016-11-30 18:56:21
Due to server changes, the forum couldn't send emails (and of course didn't say a darn thing about it) for a while.  This has been fixed and now messages and subscriptions should function nominally again.

There will be a server change in the near future, I hope it'll go smoothly.  You'll notice if I put the forum into maintenance mode.  Hopefully it'll start working like it is supposed to, afterwards.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2016-12-11 00:48:17
Move complete, please yell at me if anything appears to be broken.  There will be forum software upgrades somewhere in the future as well if things run fine.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Teasle on 2017-03-08 09:51:05
Hi guys,

love your site but i wanted to ask if its possible to add a feature to the site.

Could it be possible that you would be alerted when your post or messages gets a reply, maybe by sound or a sign on the chrome tab?

Thanks :D!
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2017-03-11 22:37:18
the forum engine doesn't support desktop notifications, but you can subscribe to the thread you want to get alerts on and then you get email notifications
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2017-09-19 18:49:58
Someone asked me in a PM whether it is possible to use https on the forum, so I finally looked into Let's Encrypt and it worked like a charm.  Like, seriously, pretty much no configuration needed.

Please tell me if something appears broken, I'll attempt to fix it.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Teasle on 2017-09-19 18:51:53
I have no idea about website stuff and maybe this is to much to write but what are the benefits of https?
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2017-09-19 19:24:52
I have no idea about website stuff and maybe this is to much to write but what are the benefits of https?

HTTPS is secure, and more and more the default on the web.  The data flow between your machine that displays the web site, and the server that hosts it, is encrypted.  It was high time I did this but I forgot about it, though one of the reasons behind moving to a less outdated machine last december was that I'd be able to use Let's Encrypt (which is much easier than previous secure certificate solutions) — unfortunately I had forgotten about it and for the most part neglected the forum...

If you have set Yahoo IM address in your profile, the link to the image there (the little Y! logo icon) is via unencrypted HTTP, which of course makes the browsers unhappy whenever they encounter this.  Not sure about the other IM services.

I'll see if I can patch the forum software up to something more recent.  Stay tuned for breakage.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2017-09-19 19:46:34
This is bordering scary, it worked :D  Updated from 2.0.6 (2013) all the way up to 2.0.14
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Teasle on 2017-09-19 19:58:28
Well awesome to hear that the site is more secure now :) Did this change the "Hidden" person too on the main site that states who is online, because i have never seen this before :D ?
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2017-09-19 23:24:12
Well awesome to hear that the site is more secure now :) Did this change the "Hidden" person too on the main site that states who is online, because i have never seen this before :D ?

Ah that's nothing special, I think one of the admin accounts is set to hidden like that.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2018-05-13 21:52:33
I'll attempt to upgrade the server to a newer version, hang on tight...
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2018-05-14 19:26:22
Mail wasn't going out due to... well, the world trying to be tougher on spam.
I think I fixed it, some of you probably got a few outdated PM emails and topic notifications and whatnot.
As such, password reset also works now, at least against gmail.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2018-05-25 15:41:01
I installed a GDPR mod and a privacy policy.

Long story short though:
– As all web sites in the world, this forum uses cookies to function, otherwise you wouldn't be able to be "logged in" as HTTP is a stateless protocol.
– The cookie is only used within this forum
– There are no ads, don't worry about them stealing your data.
– You are not forced to share Personally Identifying Data about yourself whatsoever, in fact, you can use an email address for registration that is dedicated to this site.  The forum software uses your email to send you password reset, and notification emails, all of which are either requested or useful, or opt-in.
– We don't ask you your name, birthday/age, sex, or location; if you share some of those with the community, it really is your own choice.
– You have the right to be forgotten, but if you didn't share anything personally identifying, there's pretty much no point.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2018-06-20 23:11:02
I went through and removed any spam-suspicious accounts and also ones that have never said a thing and haven't been logged into since 2017-01-01.

This made the forum size go down by about 500 people.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2019-01-18 09:46:28
I will need to do an OS upgrade, and by that I mean real soon.  You might see this message after I'm done.

Update: Aaaaand done.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2019-07-25 15:37:06
Fucking Russians are at it again. No other country ever spams. Anyway, deleted them, now to close the 27 moderation reports.

I changed the registration question and made the accounts depend on admin approval.  Fuck this.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: simon.snorkle on 2019-07-25 17:42:08
Seems to be working fine here in the UK.
Wonder why the Russians have 'attacked' here, I thought they would be turning all their attention towards "Ronald Dump"  :) :) :) :)
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-01-22 21:37:05
Upgraded the forum, borked it up, reverted, upgraded again, now it seems to work?
Might do some more mucking around on the server while I'm in the mood... expect some outages.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-01-22 22:17:48
Done with the upgrade too.  Back to slumber for another year :P
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-05-01 18:32:45
I'm cleaning up users who have never posted and also messing around with board permissions; don't worry about things going missing for a while, nothing is gone!
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-05-02 16:51:28
The line was drawn at "not logged in for ­at least one month" for those who have never posted.  I wasn't paying attention for how long the user's been around and if it's otherwise a regular visitor (the forum engine doesn't easily allow such filtering).

Similarly, those who have never logged in, they were deleted if the registration was roughly a month ago or more.

Either way, 2500 users went down to around 900, and nothing of value was lost without losing any content ;D  To be quite honest, I wouldn't really mind weeding out users not seen for years who had just a handful of otherwise unimportant posts either.  Nothing personal, but they obviously wouldn't care, it wouldn't matter for the forum, and it'd make it easier for me to juggle the userbase.

I started attaching some permissions to people after revoking default access to certain features (namely Gallery, viewing attachments, and the frenulum board), but I'm not done with it yet.  It'll get done eventually.

"Nothing is gone" was a bit of a lie, I removed the completely unused non-English part.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Lrtd5 on 2020-05-02 20:50:25
Hi,

I take it you’re not done yet as many sections and functions are not available. 🙃
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-05-03 01:36:07
I started attaching some permissions to people after revoking default access to certain features (namely Gallery, viewing attachments, and the frenulum board), but I'm not done with it yet.  It'll get done eventually.

Let me expand on this before I get more questions in PM or comments or wherever.

Access to NSFW stuff (photos) shouldn't have ever been public, automatic, or a combination thereof.

Reasons being:

Access to the Frenulum fixing board also shouldn't have ever been public, automatic, or a combination thereof.

The reasons are similar.  It's a niche that I don't feel comfortable advertising, people should absolutely only do it on their own volition and responsibility.  It started out as something that would help people fix their frenulums if it's hindering them at retraction, and I have a feeling it grew into something much more than that.  I never intended the site to be a jumping pad for any "next step" in body modification (and neither was the old Yahoo Group intended that way) and I don't think the site should be advertising it as such.  The site is first and foremost a place for people interested in keeping their foreskins retracted, to talk about their experiences and help each other.  Frenulum tying is not an integral part of this, though it admittedly does help some people achieve their goal of uncoveredness, and I see and understand that.

Incidentally, random underage netizens can literally not do it on their own responsibility.  Access should not be default and automatic.

What this means further down the road

If you had access, and now you don't (yet) have, it could mean that I'm not yet done assigning roles (you're 900 people, it takes time!).  It could mean that you're underage and you won't get access back until you're older.  It could mean we know nothing about you and there's no reason to believe you to be old enough.

Just don't treat the site as your daily dick fix and it'll be fine ;D
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: skinfores on 2020-05-04 09:15:54
Dear Admin,

Honestly as a newly registered member, who's been in a few forum communities in his life, I think you might just be overstretching your admin powers to control the people. Do you really want to manually screen permissions for each member?

I for example joined - bad timing - to try and see a picture as an attachment on a thread. It's not because I am looking for a 'dick fix', but I have a tight ridged band, I've been unable to stretch it, and apparently this one guy who keeps it retracted has stretched past the tightness and documented the process. I wanted to see the pictures to see if there's some hope in it for me, as an alternative to minor surgery, full surgery, or just giving up and living with it.

I have tried flesh tunnels, Glansie, network54 place, weird glue and devices I bought in Japan, bathmate, vacutech pulsar, phallosan forte, everything - I'm 27 and I tied my frenulum through the Yahoo group when I was 16 or something, when I discovered I had an issue. I do understand why you have done away with the tying part of the forum as people can get a bit obssesive.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, I think your actions in controlling the forum and community are going to have a detrimental effect on it. Point is I have a lot to contribute, a lot to gain, and I'm a perfect member. Not only did I have to wait for my account to be manually approved, but now my account can't do much anyway. You tell people to look in this thread, and they have to go to the last page to figure out what's up with the site.

In my case, I certainly don't have the patience to wait around, I came back to check if my account was activated and I can't see what I wanted to see anyway. What's the point? I am the perfect target market, the ideal community member. And instantly I'm confused, unwelcome, and can't get any benefit out of being here.

Just let it go. Keep the bots out, keep the underage out, and keep the horny bastards in check. But let it be, don't be a helicopter parent.

Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-05-04 12:18:25
Just let it go. Keep the bots out, keep the underage out, and keep the horny bastards in check. But let it be, don't be a helicopter parent.

That's exactly what I'm doing.  And I'm trying to not let these particular entities get access to the dick pics.  I don't think that in particular is overstretching by any means.

It's not possible to both allow everyone access as before and not allow everyone access.  But, let's go back a little and address the other parts of your comment.

Do you really want to manually screen permissions for each member?

I already do, due to the bot spam.  Every year the security questions leak and then random spam bots wreck the place until I change the security questions.  So I do some minimal checking on the registering users, and approve them, nowadays within 24 hours even.  These days it seems like it's about 99% legitimate users (most of whom never return the next day to post or even to read, even before the permission rework, oh well).

Some users are obvious (either way), they are easy to sort.  Some aren't so much, and I'll gladly admit I'm not absolutely sure how I'll deal with them.  The change, which has been sitting on the back burner for a few years (and as I said, things probably should always have been opt in), was in part triggered by an influx of young users, some with an apparent penchant for self-harm, and I don't want to feel responsible (or anyone to feel responsible) if they do anything stupid despite a handful of people telling them otherwise.

I for example joined - bad timing - to try and see a picture as an attachment on a thread. It's not because I am looking for a 'dick fix', but I have a tight ridged band, I've been unable to stretch it, and apparently this one guy who keeps it retracted has stretched past the tightness and documented the process. I wanted to see the pictures to see if there's some hope in it for me, as an alternative to minor surgery, full surgery, or just giving up and living with it.

You're right, it's bad timing.  You hit a transitional period, and this not being my job or even a super important hobby, I'm not spending hours upon hours working on it.  I hope it'll clear up soon enough though.

The dick fix comment was meant to be in jest really, maybe I shouldn't have put it there.  But hey, there was at least a smiley :P  I'm sure there are at least some people who feel robbed and not because of a lack of information or educational material.

I tied my frenulum through the Yahoo group when I was 16 or something, when I discovered I had an issue. I do understand why you have done away with the tying part of the forum as people can get a bit obssesive.

While I'm glad it worked (and it indeed goes without complications for most people), your age at the time is also exactly the reason why I don't want to give access to the body mod board to randoms.

Anyway, I digress. My point is, I think your actions in controlling the forum and community are going to have a detrimental effect on it. Point is I have a lot to contribute, a lot to gain, and I'm a perfect member. Not only did I have to wait for my account to be manually approved, but now my account can't do much anyway. You tell people to look in this thread, and they have to go to the last page to figure out what's up with the site.

In my case, I certainly don't have the patience to wait around, I came back to check if my account was activated and I can't see what I wanted to see anyway. What's the point? I am the perfect target market, the ideal community member. And instantly I'm confused, unwelcome, and can't get any benefit out of being here.

I approved you well within a day, and all my links lead to the exact post (which in turn links back to the previous post it is a reply to), it's not really hard to go to the right place.

Your account can do quite a lot: you can post an introduction, you can post in the general discussion or in polls, both comments and new posts.  You can ask questions and get answers.  Were it not for the change being very recent, you wouldn't even know you're missing out on anything.

This change cannot be made without a backlash, no matter how mildly I do it (I could have just hidden images, I could have just hidden the board — I could still go on separate permission groups for those two things, but that doubles the load with barely any perceivable improvement for the users).  Do you perhaps have any suggestions that serve the purposes I laid out?
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-05-05 12:08:14
Roughly half of the current userbase handed over to the sorting hat and likely sorted.  After the previous weeding out silent accounts, this half makes up people who have signed in at all in the last month.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: skinfores on 2020-05-08 12:06:10
Thanks for all the hard work anyhow. I do appreciate that moderating is unpaid work that isn't easy.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Boy0414 on 2020-06-09 00:05:00
I got the same problem as well. As I’m newly register, I can’t see any of the members sharing their journey as I wanted to know how their progress going on and consider the process..  :'(
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: soundsgreat87 on 2020-06-09 03:05:29
Then you should introduce yourself!
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-06-11 17:08:09
Roughly half of the current userbase handed over to the sorting hat and likely sorted.  After the previous weeding out silent accounts, this half makes up people who have signed in at all in the last month.

To make this clear — not like anyone ever reads what I write here —, I've gone through everyone that I wanted to sort, if they haven't really signed in for a long long time, they probably won't care about missing out on features either.

If you are a pre-existing user and feel like you should have access, please tell me in PM.

If you are a new user, don't make it your first comment out of the blue that you demand access, because, you know, the point of this was so that random, completely unknown visitors don't get to see all the dicks.  So maybe go and write some sort of introduction that can convince us.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-06-27 19:20:38
Quick server upgrade done.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2020-12-06 17:20:38
SMF 2.1 is starting to get to the finish line (https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=575228.0) so I'm thinking about upgrading to it someday soon.  I'll make a complete backup, shut down the forum, and hope for the best for the upgrade process.  Parts of the forum are modified due to bugs in the 2.0.x series, and some of the extra modules (eg. the Gallery) might cease to function (at least temporarily or entirely.

The Gallery in particular is a bit of a thorn in my side because they refuse to support anything but MySQL and I had to patch out the MySQLisms in their database code multiple times.  Also it appears they don't really support the free version of it anymore, just the pay-for one ("SMF Gallery Pro" that's a 49 USD licence for one year of updates).  I'll be on the lookout for alternatives, and if you can find any, please tell me (https://pulledback.org/index.php?topic=1716.0).  If the new version of the forum has better post attachment support than this one, we might just ditch the entire Gallery and create a gallery subforum where people can post stuff.  We'll see, I'll have to install the new SMF somewhere and play with it.

In the meantime, I recommend people to get a Discord account (it's free, you can use any email or username you want, if you want to avoid association with your normal accounts or whatever) and hang out on our Discord server (https://pulledback.org/index.php?topic=439.0) — it's also a good idea for the annual "Kylar forgot to renew his Domain Name and now there's a stupid placeholder instead of the forum" event that you can enjoy every November.

When I get the courage to dunk the forum into the holy waters of SMF 2.1, I'll make a new post about it.  For now, there's nothing to worry about.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2021-11-22 21:19:23
Hey if you tried to set your birthday in your profile and it kept reverting to 0001-01-01, now you can do it.
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: hung.part.timer on 2023-02-05 14:13:18
I stumbled upon another forum which is using this same simple forums software except it was mobile friendly. This site renders at the desktop size when I'm on my phone and it's not the optimal experience. Is there a setting to make this forum render at mobile size when I'm on my phone?
Title: Re: Site updates
Post by: Kylar on 2023-02-05 18:08:51
I stumbled upon another forum which is using this same simple forums software except it was mobile friendly. This site renders at the desktop size when I'm on my phone and it's not the optimal experience. Is there a setting to make this forum render at mobile size when I'm on my phone?

Not that I know of... other than updating to SMF 2.1, which however would make us lose the Gallery.  I personally don't mind that, but I'm sure a lot of people would miss it.
Or well, there are some other themes besides the default one that we use now, but most of what I encountered in the 2000s when running SMF were right garbage, so I never looked into that part with this site.