New phpbb

[Korin]

Why cant you upgrade to the recent verison, maybe that will get rid of the spam bots.

[James]

Sometimes it helps a little, but it never 'gets rid of them'. The only time I get close to 'getting rid of them' is when I spend some time writing custom features to block them in the forum. And then three months later they start to trickle in again.

[Korin]

The version is a bit outdated, since last time you changed the theme/version was in 2007, correct? When are you gonna change the theme/version again?

[Sun Fin]

Mate you don't understand the controversy last time James decided to change the skin and phpbb

[Korin]

Mate you don't understand the controversy last time James decided to change the skin and phpbb

So the version/phpb skin was better before he switched? I would like to know this story.

[Sun Fin]

Mate you don't understand the controversy last time James decided to change the skin and phpbb

So the version/phpb skin was better before he switched? I would like to know this story.

In 2007 James announced he's intent to upgrade the phpbb which meant the skin would change. There were a great number of members who had been here for anything up to 5 years who were very attached to how the forum looked at the time. Due to this James' proposal was met with a great deal of hostility. Anyway James did it anyway and within a few months most of us adapted to the change to the extent that I don't really remember what it use to look like now (I was a relatively new member when the change occurred).

However I imagine that the backlash that the idea received in the months leading up to and immediately after the change has made James reluctant to do again. Especially since upgrading an entire forum like this takes a great deal of work and James is a busy guy IRL.

[Ranbir]

That was a version 2 to 3 update which changed a lot. We're still in v3 cycle so updates aren't mandatory. Maybe all the custom stuff James has lengthens the update time, who knows.

[James]

That was a version 2 to 3 update which changed a lot. We're still in v3 cycle so updates aren't mandatory. Maybe all the custom stuff James has lengthens the update time, who knows.

Yep, that jump from v2 to v3 was the big reason behind the site redesign. The forum software changed around so drastically that the old design was completely incompatible (though they did include a version of the old theme which lacked a lot of the new features). What we have now is some kind of mishmash of the old theme, the new phpBB theme, and some things about the new theme which forum members disliked (e.g. avatars and user information being on the right-hand side).

The new versions of phpBB coming out are versions of 3 with small improvements. Sometimes those improvements include security improvements which help to combat spammers, so they are helpful updates in that sense. But there's a catch: to really combat spammers I have do some custom work which is specific to our forum, which means those little updates require me to re-do a lot of custom work. We also have to work with a sizable database that never wants to update cheerfully. As a result I tend not to update every time they update.

[Shikanosuke]

I think we should be happy the Admin gives us a free forum almost entirely free of spambots. It's appreciated.

[Korin]

how do I donate to stop the spambots