JonB wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 4:29pm:

Thanks!

I'll take the plunge soon; probably sometime after the new year since I'm swamped with a lot to do right now.

I didn't know about XAMMP. I realize this sounds like a cop out, but I have staffers for server stuff; generally speaking, even though I do like to learn this stuff, and know it myself.

I didn't know about the Fbackup program either. It looks fantastic. I like that it can back up files as they are. That's how I do it. I'm religious about backing up, and use the Cobian backup software (also free). Admittedly, Fbackup looks more appealing on the face of it than Cobian does.

Quote:


I hate to dispel that myth, but Apple software is also full of bugs, inadvertant 'we made the decision for you' issues between versions and stuff that just does not work as advertised. "fanbois" are just jacked in a bad spot, as they have railed against "M$" for so long they are reluctant to deal with reality other than on Mac boards. (I do Mac network support).  Oh, want to do something Steve didn't imagine, be prepared to learn bash scripting (they have their own version called 'Apple Script'.  Got a tricky permissions issue - welcome to 'term'.  and so on.

I'm not saying their stuff is poorly engineered, just that its far from perfect, and their culture leads to little self-deprecation.

I know, blah, blah, blah... 

Edited:

Thank you Batchman for your feedback! I know you're right, and I appreciate the help.

I think it's great that BoardMod was created; very impressive.

I'm still using the YaBB 2.4 version, and I've very rarely had any problems with it. Any problems I've had were quickly fixed thanks to help, and tips I read in this forum, and once very recently, direct help was given rather quickly.

As for adding mods, and implementing other features, including updating to the latest stable YaBB version, I guess I'm waiting for things to get back to normal here in this forum, and also on the  BoardMod forum, i.e., waiting to see if the experts involved can stabilize things, and get things up to speed. After all, if people who are far more intelligent than I am in the way of using their own forum are having problems with it, then it doesn't make sense for me to go forward with it myself.

Yes, I realize the forum is using a beta version, so bugs will be messing things up, but like a forum software reviewer wrote about another forum's software, maybe the people behind YaBB should only have, and use the latest stable version of their software online publicly. Mind you, this same reviewer happens to think very highly of YaBB, so his views weren't a slam; just a professional suggestion that actually makes a lot of since.

Think Microsoft's software versus Apple's software.

On that note, my waiting is kind of like what I did with Windows 7; I waited for a while to see how others did with it before I upgraded. I'll probably do the same with Windows 8.

Dandello wrote on Dec 9^th, 2011 at 7:44pm:

Edited:

Thanks Dandello. I appreciate the encouragement. I'll figure it out just as I did with YaBB back in 2002. Ironically, once I got past the learning curve of how to install YaBB correctly, I ended up being a "go to guy" for YaBB installations. Go figure.

I'm reminded of the time when a company asked me if I could set up a database for them on their Macs. I didn't know one thing about a Mac, but I was pretty well versed with PC databases, and I knew that a Mac was very user friendly. So while I'm learning what to do, as they're watching, I somehow figured it out, and got a database going for them. But again, Mac is user-friendly, relatively speaking.

The environment for "newbies" here in YaBB support wasn't particularly friendly in the old days, so webmasters who asked for my support were "afraid" to participate here as I suggested. Still, some of them chose to use YaBB even though as the years passed pretty much all of them left YaBB for easier, and more friendly pastures. i.e., many hired staff to operate other forums, and blogs. It seems that a lot of them now rely on user-friendly social networks like Facebook. Again; no fuss, no muss.

In any case, hopefully after the holidays I'll be able to spend some time on the Board Mod to figure out how everything works. Thanks again.

For me personally, excluding mainstream projects, maintaining a chat forum versus Facebook (really in addition to it) is the way to go. That's why I'm hoping I can get up to speed again with the learning curve of using YaBB.

Dandello wrote on Dec 9^th, 2011 at 3:50pm:

Thank you Dandello!

I've never used any of the Board Mod services; to get it going just seems too darned complicated.

SpamFruits, for instance, looks great, but there only seems to be a download icon, and no instructions. Pretty to look at, but for a non-geek like me, how in the world is it installed?

Please keep in mind that the majority of webmasters like me, won't be as savvy about these things like the rest of you are. You guys know these things like the back of your hand. I think this may be one of the reasons that Facebook took off like it did; no fuss, no muss; just do.

I had quite a learning curve back in 2002 while trying to follow what to the rest of you are easy instructions to install YaBB. I was so afraid of it that I stayed with YaBB 1.4 until about 2 1/2 years ago when I finally upgraded to YaBB 2.4 ... really only doing this because spammers were inundating me with spam posts. I needed to have a moderator on duty 24/7. Thankfully, surfers from around the world visit our forum, so at least we had options.

YaBB 2.4 is obviously far better. Unfortunately, even though spammers are unable to post in our forum because admin approval is needed to finish their registrations, I'm still invalidating or deleting a couple hundred attempted registrations every day. Yes, it's easy to do, and it only takes a few short minutes, but it's still a pain.

So, from someone relatively ignorant like me who isn't as savvy as the rest of you, using Board Mod seems daunting. As for the webmaster community in general, chat forums are simply too complicated to stay abreast of in terms of fighting spam, and installing updates, which is why it seems that so many are simply socializing their websites via Facebook and Twitter.

Obviously, to survive with YaBB, I need to get my act together, and get back to that learning curve to figure this stuff out.  

But on that note, think of it from my perspective, and frankly, the majority of other webmasters; if experts like many of you here are unable to get in front of these spammers, how in the world are people like me going to stay on top of this?

In the glass half full department, YaBB 2.4 is very clearly a terrific forum that runs quite well when everything has been installed correctly. And the spammer issue? Bottom line, they aren't able to post any spam in our forum.  

Edited:

No worries.

That will be fine. In 2.2 just add after:

    &fatal_error("no_reg_reason") if ($member{'reason'} eq "" && $regtype == 1); 

Instead of (2.5):

    &fatal_error("no_reg_reason") if $member{'reason'} eq "" && $regtype == 1; 

The Anti-Spam Question won't install with 2.2, no. The same as I mentioned above though, it might work with a bit of adapting.

And I haven't tested it on 2.4. If the 2.5 version doesn't install on 2.4 though, then you could try the mod file for 2.3 attached to this post here (one of them should work):

http://www.boardmod.org/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1316894374/4#4

There's a sticky here with the versions that the anti-spam mods will work on:

http://www.yabbforum.com/community/YaBB.pl?num=1321729071/0#0