Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

glad to see the studio's back, doreen

looks like your duet with yourself is missing a few pieces and other threads as well. are we protected now from bots, do you think?

j

I hope doreen is sleeping like a baby as I post this. She must have had a heck of a night

no, not at all. Forum upgrade, Still.
Doreen's been protecting us. There's a new system intact that will safeguard us from those nasty little sneak attacks.

j

you caught my edit I think

that is good news thanks. missing posts are no big deal, they can be reposted. About a week before we got hacked posts were being altered. That was what I was worried about.

I had my first good night's sleep in two weeks.

I had been sleeping like a baby, gotting up every two hours and crying.


I hope you have good your highness

Yep...one of my long-winded replies is missing (about piano's and my daddy) and that is just a brief perusal.

What happened?

February ku is missing too

I missed the one about your dad, sure would like to see it. I hope you got it saved somewhere.

At first I thought it was another hack, but I think it was an upgrade. A spy bot hacker thing showed up a couple days, the Doreen had to make some changes to protect us. I think that is what happened... Or maybe it was an upgrade gone awry a rye dam how do spell that

Nope...but I lived it, can always tell the story again.

Morning Jack. Glad to see you had some good news (and some sleep).

Yep...all the haiku I posted yesterday are poof! Hah! Should have backed them up...good lesson.

My last reply to judih and Doreen on the Studio Eight question is gone too. Maybe yesterday was just a dream...

that's a fact jack

a dixel? not a nodule

I posted something about sitting by my mothers death bed listening for her struggle for that last death.

when I said I knew how i was going to die, i meant i been practicing my last death. like I was looking down at myself

done smoking sooze. I found a cigarette and I was thinking hell I got one more cigarette wont make a difference i allready got lung cancer, then i thought hell no, it could take 15 seconds off the time I got left. A fellow could get famous in 15 secs. I would not want to miss that. turns out it was not a nodule, but something like a dixel or twixel or dwizel, don't know how to spell it. a ghost in the machine, something to do with the technology, my doctor wants me to wait three months get another ct see if it is changed, Diamond Lil and Homeboy want me to see a pulmonary guy, why wait they say. What ever it is it saved my life. Self pity is gone and that is why I was smoking two packs a day. jitterbug can smoke a cigarette (OP's) and go weeks with out smoking another. I also think genetics has something to do with it, some people can get away with it some can't. dam am spilling my guts here, sorry

taobacco is good stuff, I used to love it, maybe one man's meat is another man's poison. But it stopped being something I enjoyed and became a death wish for me.

got to go, about a hour and half tilll sunrise trying to get ready for it.

The answer is.......

are you holding your breath?

Have a seat ladies and gentlemen...

We worked very hard to do an upgrade to the software... this time with help.

But it didn't work.

We had the same exact results as the last attempt. The same code all over the page.

We tried everything to restore it and couldn't do it so we again had to resort to asking the host to restore it from their most recent backup.

Sooooo..... we have come full circle 2 times now.

We only lost a few posts.. i donno how many but we are still running the same exact versions of the software as we were before so we are still vulnerable to bots registering.

Bottom line is, the software upgrade for the FORUMS are no problem. That is achieved easily enough. But without the accompanying skin/style (the way these forums LOOK) to have a visual recognition in the registration process, we don't have that and we cannot update the the skin without making a mess for some reason.

I don't think this has to do with anything we are doing wrong.

I think we need a new skin and so I will be looking around for one which also has a banner placed at the top so I can continue changing the banners. It will take some time for me to do this and find something I like.

One of the most beautiful things that came out of this experience is that I discovered I'm not the dummy I thought I was. We had help this time. Thanks very much to firsty for all his hard work and help. You see the exact same results happened no matter who did it so it's not just me.... My conclusion is there's something wrong with the style/skin code OR there's something wrong with the instructions to install it.

The host was very kind to restore the site for us from back up but they have also informed me that the next time they have to do it for us, they will charge us a substantial fee.

Sigghhh...

That's my story.

And I'm sticking to it.

And the lesson is...

Back EVERYTHING you write up. Copy conversations even if they are important enough to keep.

The internet is temporary.

No matter WHERE you go on the internet, it's got the potential to go POOF!

This lesson carries over to your own computer also.

They say you should back up all your files in at least 2 places. One, on your own extrernal hard drive .... two, on CD or an off site disk like a storage server on the net.

Good morning all! Gotta get to the work that pays me now!

Be well, be happy and carry on!

Edited posts, the last time it happened people’s posts were being altered. Mnaz, Z, Izzy, mine. I am going to keep an eye out for that. Doreen he used the same user ID, and then when I posted something about it there was another new member joined to cover his newest member id. Which makes me sure he was reading over the posts and tried to hide. lit fuse has one of those security deals where you get one of those funny looking codes to register. Not sure how much something like that would cost maybe firsty would know? not sure if it would help. I googled his user ID and he showed up on a list of sites have been trashed. Some of the hacker sites keep records like that.
Maybe we could take up a collection.

I knew you were having a tough night, thanks
And thanks firsty.

the internet is full of slippery silicon documents that crash and burn at the touch of a button.

StillT- The people you are referring to are not people. They are bots.

I explained it best, I think, on the General Discussion board.
http://studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6275

There is no person by the name of Cyber-Soldier. It is a name that was created by hackers to crawl the net and search out phpbb discussion boards like this one and execute a script to hack the boards. The edited posts by this hack were not done by a person.

At any rate, the current version of our software is supposed to have safeguards against such hacks.

That doesn't mean it has safeguards to keep bots from registering. People who send out bots to register do it for the sole purpose of displaying the links to their websites which are usually porn sites, hubs, or sites where something is being sold.

I zap 10-20 of them a day which is why we need the visual confirmation (typing in the letters seen when a person registers .... because bots can't read and they can't type obviously)

Sooooooo... the purpose of last night's attempt to upgrade was to put the visual confirmation in the registration process.

But as I explained, the skin/style has to have the visual confirmation in it in order to accomplish this and we have now had 2 failed attempts trying to upgrade the skin.

That's what firsty and I were trying to do last night.

I hope this explains it better.

We will either have to move the forums to a new location and start with a clean install of the skin/style to see if that works and get the database moved to the new location (which includes the posts) or we will have to select a new skin and try again right here.

That's all for now.

Back to work for moi.



(ps - firsty's a gem! I am thrilled to have a member of this forum who is so kindly offering his expertise and help! Thank you so much, firsty!)

Onward!

doreen, i was getting notices of new members needing activation or deletion (or at least i was all day yesterday), so i'd come over, take a look and delete.

Now, it's stopped. There's a new bot for which i got no notification.
So, something definitely was working differently for while and it was a nice touch.

j