Top Mud Sites Forum Return to TopMudSites.com
Go Back   Top Mud Sites Forum > Top Mud Sites News > TMS Announcements and Feedback
Click here to Register

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 07-01-2007, 07:51 PM   #1
Lasher
Administrator
 
Lasher's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2005
Name: Derek
Location: Orlando
Posts: 357
Lasher has a spectacular aura aboutLasher has a spectacular aura about
Arrow New Forum Software.

Welcome to our new forums. Just in case you missed the email or link on the home page, some of the key differences are listed at

For some reason I received the "Announcement" email twice. If you did too, I apologize for the extra spam.

This forum has been in development for a long time, but I'm sure there will still be lots of cosmetic details and tweaks that are needed. Please bear with me as they are worked through.

If you report issues please post whether you are using the 'TMS - Dark' or the 'TMS - Light' style.

Rather than post a huge list of everything that is different now, I will post them gradually to increase the chances of being read. Please encourage your players to take part in the discussions here too - it is good exposure for your MUD and if we can get a sense of real activity going around text based MUDs we might just pull in some new players, which benefits ALL muds.
Lasher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-01-2007, 07:55 PM   #2
Brody
Legend
 
Brody's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: North Carolina
Home MUD: OtherSpace
Posts: 1,599
Brody will become famous soon enoughBrody will become famous soon enough
Send a message via Skype™ to Brody
Re: New Forum Software.

I'm a big fan of the dark style. Looks great, Lasher!
Brody is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-01-2007, 07:59 PM   #3
Lasher
Administrator
 
Lasher's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2005
Name: Derek
Location: Orlando
Posts: 357
Lasher has a spectacular aura aboutLasher has a spectacular aura about
Re: New Forum Software.

Thanks, I do prefer the dark style too, but when if I'm outside and it's bright it can be a little hard to read.

Thankfully it's easy to switch between the two.
Lasher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-01-2007, 09:45 PM   #4
Ide
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Seattle
Posts: 361
Ide will become famous soon enoughIde will become famous soon enough
Re: New Forum Software.

ditto what Brody said, thanks for the upgrade Lasher.
Ide is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-02-2007, 03:17 AM   #5
Belerik
New Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Midwest
Posts: 3
Belerik is on a distinguished road
Re: New Forum Software.

I'm quite the lurker, but I've been a fan of vBulletin for quite some time. Good choice of software. You might consider a dark gray alternate post background. Would stir things up a little and keep them from becoming monotonous with the vast black theme.
Belerik is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-02-2007, 03:52 PM   #6
KaVir
Legend
 
KaVir's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Name: Richard
Home MUD: God Wars II
Posts: 2,052
KaVir will become famous soon enoughKaVir will become famous soon enough
Re: New Forum Software.

I'm generally not fond of change, once I've gotten used to a particular forum, but in this case I very much like the new colours and style. A vast improvement over the old "cartoony" forums, IMO. The extra goodies look good too.
KaVir is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-04-2007, 07:16 AM   #7
Aeran
Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 208
Aeran is on a distinguished road
Re: New Forum Software.

I think the new forum rocks! It is a big improvement.
Aeran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-04-2007, 03:07 PM   #8
Lasher
Administrator
 
Lasher's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2005
Name: Derek
Location: Orlando
Posts: 357
Lasher has a spectacular aura aboutLasher has a spectacular aura about
Re: New Forum Software.

Thanks! Hopefully we can get a little more activity going now - the entire thread history was put into a sitemap and submitted to Google so over time that should help too. Google works on their own schedule and they haven't crawled the pages yet but if you've taken a look at the 'who is online' detail page from the link at the bottom of the forum home you can see that Yahoo is all over it already.
Lasher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 01:43 AM   #9
Rathik
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Arizona
Posts: 35
Rathik is on a distinguished road
Send a message via Yahoo to Rathik
Re: New Forum Software.

The dark theme feels like it's about a decade old. Fortunately I like the light theme. It's a nice change.
Rathik is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 05:09 AM   #10
scandum
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 315
scandum will become famous soon enough
Re: New Forum Software.

The new forum is definitely an improvement, good work
scandum is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 05:39 AM   #11
Aeran
Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 208
Aeran is on a distinguished road
Re: New Forum Software.

Have you tried the full WYSIWYG editor that can be turned on in the options? It is really nice .
Aeran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 09:27 AM   #12
Brody
Legend
 
Brody's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: North Carolina
Home MUD: OtherSpace
Posts: 1,599
Brody will become famous soon enoughBrody will become famous soon enough
Send a message via Skype™ to Brody
Thumbs up Re: New Forum Software.

I just tried the WYSIWYG editor for the first time. VERY cool stuff.
Brody is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 11:28 AM   #13
Lasher
Administrator
 
Lasher's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2005
Name: Derek
Location: Orlando
Posts: 357
Lasher has a spectacular aura aboutLasher has a spectacular aura about
Re: New Forum Software.

I thought that during the conversion I'd defaulted all accounts to WSIWYG editor, guess not. I wonder if it's worth going back and doing it now or if that is just going to annoy people who already got used to the standard editor.

In the meantime, it's amazing how quickly the spammers find you. This forum hasn't really been indexed yet, hasn't been submitted to any forum directories, etc but I've banned about 50 spammer sites already. We're a fairly low volume forum so I just have it set to email me every post, but still surprised by how quickly they find a small VB forum online 5 days.
Lasher is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 11:57 AM   #14
scandum
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 315
scandum will become famous soon enough
Re: New Forum Software.

We actually use a nifty little application to advertise the various wonderful products of our clients on forums. Once a profile has been created for a specific web page it's easy to add new users with a www link and also leave a little message on the forum itself if desired.

So instead of dealing with 50 little spammers you're probably dealing with one or two bulk mailers, which I've always found to be a much nicer name for those working in this dynamic and interactive internet branch.

If there's an unusual pattern in the creation of these accounts it's fairly easy to put a halt to it. On my own forum I block every sign-up that adds a www address upon creation, it's fairly effective. Another option is deleting the www field and making their email address public, this to give the lesser bulk mailers some email addresses to toy with.
scandum is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2007, 01:38 PM   #15
the_logos
Legend
 
the_logos's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,305
the_logos will become famous soon enough
Re: New Forum Software.

I don't use vBulletin so I'm not sure what configuration options are available but I've found that for small forums (ie those not worth spammers sending humans to beat the CAPTCHAs) it's pretty easy to keep spammers away if you can set up, in registration, a question/answer of some sort that is easy for a human to parse but not for a spambot.

For instance, on one of the registration questions is something like, "Please enter the current month and year in a format like 05-2007." Invision (the forum software we use) doesn't allow for specific question/answers but it does allow us to require that answers are in a particular format (in this case, XX-XXXX). We've had zero problems with spambots since I instituted this method.

It only works, of course, as long as a forum is small enough that it's not worth it for spammers to incorporate the 'answer' to that 'question' into their software or send a human to sign up for the account, but it's easy enough to change the question regularly too.

--matt
the_logos is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply


Thread Tools


New Forum Software. - Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Forum Software updated. TMSOne TMS Announcements and Feedback 8 05-13-2007 04:53 PM
What Forum Do You Use Fern MUD Administration 7 04-17-2006 08:38 PM
Update solution for java software Hephos Tavern of the Blue Hand 2 12-02-2004 11:10 AM
pk forum again Shao_Long Bugs and Suggestions 30 06-11-2003 09:17 AM
New to the Forum SheWhoHasNoName Introduce Yourself 0 07-20-2002 03:55 PM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:45 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Style based on a design by Essilor
Copyright Top Mud Sites.com 2022