The links in the following post are dead.

/codex/YaBB.pl?num=1192140319

Can anyone point me to a live copy of this patch or are there more security issues with 2.1 than this will solve and I should be looking at full upgrade 2.1=>2.5. Also if full upgrade is nessisary does anyone have wild ball parks on time involved and relative headache?

Thanks.

J Sheedy wrote on Feb 4^th, 2013 at 5:06pm:

from the page
Quote:
so YaBB 2.2 has this fix built into it as to the .zip i cannot find a copy of this for you sorry  

also to the time for upgrading from 2.1 to 2.5.2 will depend on if you have mods on the forum also how big the forum is a standard size forum can take up to 90 minutes this includes all the preparation work as well e.g. backup of the old forum running full Maintenance settings on it setting up and testing YaBB 2.5.2 then make a backup of it then copying all files over that you need from 2.1 to 2.5.2 then running full Maintenance settings on this then testing the forum is working as you you want also checking all settings

Version 2.1 is no longer actively supported and patching it should not be considered as a viable solution.  Its not primarily a security issue, its a problem both with the current crop of very capable spam-bots (who will auto-register until you want to pull your hair out) and providing support (other than myself, I doubt there's anyone around that has worked much with YaBB 2.0 or 2.1) [or Bill perhaps ].

2.5.2 Has many improvements, plus built-in anti-spam  

As Xnoddyx indicated, if your forum does not have a lot fo modification, upgrading should not be terribly difficult.

Good Luck

depablo wrote on Feb 4^th, 2013 at 6:46pm:

John, that's a reasonable explanation. I'm with you on that.

However, there's really no good excuse for ignoring relatively simple requests to make a correction here and there to YaBB's codex. Please keep in mind that some of these requests have been made repeatedly over the last couple of years with nothing being done about them; literally nothing. That's inexcusable.

Thankfully, you and the rest of YaBB's team working here in the forum have been doing an outstanding job, and should be applauded. My hope is that your collective minds, in regard to YaBB's codex, will take this lack of management seriously enough to actually do something about it.

So please, to you and the other YaBB team members, apply whatever pressure you can to get things moving along in the way that you've been able to do with this forum.

By the way, I realize it's most certainly a big job to get YaBB's codex back in shape, no doubt. But seriously, is it that unreasonable to ask for an occaisional fix from time to time? Some of these fixes should only take a couple of minutes to correct.

Derek Barnstorm wrote on Feb 4^th, 2013 at 7:11pm:

Thanks Derek i was thinking http://www.boardmod.org/mods.php was for 1.x only   i will need to go have a look and see what else is in there as well.

J Sheedy wrote on Feb 10^th, 2013 at 12:55am:

I'm in agreement with you.

I'm pretty sure the restriction on posting links is so that spammers can't come in to spam the forum. But that doesn't actually work. The irony is that spammers simply make enough posts so that they can include links before they are discovered, and their posts are subsequently deleted or moved to a private area of this forum for further review.

So YaBB's policy of restricting links only ends up hurting new forum members whom of course sometimes have a need to post links. Go figure.

The real solution is for this support forum to install, and enable anti-spam measures that are known to work so that there are little or no restrictions placed on new members who come here for help.

JonB wrote on Feb 10^th, 2013 at 7:22pm:

That's the irony about the error you perceive as my "terrible logic" even though I remain open to your more logical explanation. After all, you may very well be correct; at least with the semantics, which has nothing to do with the actual facts.

So in any case, what remains a fact is that there are forums whose admins have been able to stop both hu-bots and spam-bots where this forum still has a problem with what you believe are hu-bots. So we've either been incredibly lucky, or as it's more evident, we've simply utilized YaBB's otherwise superb anti-spam features, which this forum clearly has not.

Please give these anti-spam measures a try. They were written specifically for YaBB, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how wonderfully effective they are.

As for those hu-bots you describe, that's the brilliance of the automated programming of spam-bots. Even an expert such as you is easily fooled into thinking that an actual person is the one spamming this forum.

Logically, the only human involved is the person who's been able to fool experts like you into thinking their spam-bot automation is a human. Again, this is brilliant on their part.

Jon, call them whatever you want; hu-bots or spam-bots or magical leprechaun-bots. The fact remains, spammers do indeed continue to post in this forum where they do not in other YaBB forums that use proven anti-spam measures to stop them.

By the way, I agree with you that it's unacceptable for a forum to ask questions that only people with a specialized knowledge can successfully answer.

To that point, just to better identify if hu-bots or spam bots were registering in our forum, I actually included answers with the questions I asked, and I explained this to registrants.

I'm using a different method of spam control now, but for a while we had the following alternating questions on the registration page of our forum:

Quote:

Can a hu-bot answer these questions with the answers provided? Of course they can, which is why it was determined that except on the rarest of occassions, only spam-bots were making attempts to register in our forum.

Silly, silly, silly, but it did make me laugh.

Oh, and if you think spammers haven't been able to post spam links in this forum, you haven't been around to see that it happens. They simply post a dozen or so times all over the place to accomplish this task. Thankfully, YaBB's moderators have zapped them away in a timely fashion.

Meanwhile, new members who come here for help are unable to post links as they may need to do. Then again, at least they're able to request help right after they've registered, and that's what counts.

Hopefully we can agree on at least one thing about spam in this forum. That is, it doesn't happen that often, and when it does, YaBB's moderators are pretty quick to get rid of it.