Alright guys.. it's beyond obvious that it's time to upgrade the Features message board. The spam is out of control and frankly I think we could do better.

Unfortunately, we can't just upgrade this particular piece of software because it's no longer a free install. Granted, The Features could spring for paying for the software but 1) that's a slippery slope that would require them to continually buy the newest version and 2) I would prefer that they save any and all money for going out on tour, recording new songs, or making new merchandise. With the amount of free forum software out there - seems like we could find a good alternative.

So I'm coming to you guys to find out what you'd like to see. phpBB? Vanilla? Something else?

My biggest hurdle so far is that I'm not sure that we can convert these forums over to something else.. so we may be starting over. Not something I want to do but this board is being exploited so heavily that it's probably worth it.

So let me know what you all think please. Sorry this has taken so long to take care of. My available free time to devote to The Features site has been less than slim and hopefully the fans do not suffer because of that.


Michael

Is there any way, with the current software, that the regular messageboard users can monitor and delete spam? For instance, if 5 or more different users "flag" a listing as spam, it could be deleted from from the page.

Myspace groups would resolve the spam issue, but no one uses them and they'd be hard for new fans to find.

Is there no way for this forum to add a "word varification" password for every post like blogger comments do? It'd be annoying, but it'd solve the problem.

I didn't think spam is really that much of an issue. What you've seen lately is what happens when I have limited access to the computer for a week. I take care of about 3 or 4 spam posts a day.

Spam always shows up in the first available forum, so I suggest that you create a "spam" forum before the main forum. Most spam will be posted there and then enable some control that erases the forum every day/hour/minute/etc. Would that work?

I'm still happy to erase spam when I'm not on vacation.

i thought we already lost all of our old posts anyway. isn't that kind of like starting over?

but whatever. i think the spam is funny.

Of course you do!

you obviously didn't read the one about how the horny seaman earned a lifetime supply of frosted mini wheats for he and his crew. talk about a comedic twist ending! whoo!

plus i had NO IDEA that i could view "sexi free sex internet ponography sex pix" at the click of a link.

i really don't see any downside. help me out here.

Wait a second here... you are telling me by placing small ads around the country I can generate wealth beyond my wildest imagination and view free sex on the internet?!?!?! To borrow, err steal from comedic genius Yakoff Smirnov "What a country!"

I've always felt that phpBB does a pretty good job.

For the first time I can remember, a spam thread just showed up in another forum. I'm all out of ideas.

I say kill it. But, that's just me.

Well, it's not my call to kill it or not.. just my call to make sure it's not being exploited to send out tons of spam. Which I believe it is. Our Dreamhost account has been under suspicion for awhile now and I can not longer convince the tech support people that we don't have anything exploitable.. because we do.

So it should be noted that the switch has nothing to do with Carl's moderator duties.. that is top notch.. it's what is going on behind the scenes that is becoming a problem.

The same goes for the Blog. Gotta upgrade that thing too.

Pauki mudag! Nehui pizdit linki s drugih sites. ebannie licheri. Zaebali nahui.
http://payk.org

haha...there's your answer

Either Michael enabled a Spam filter, someone is helping me out (and doing an excellent job), or this is an official spammers holiday, because I've seen not one spam thread all day.

Okay, I'm sure I just jinxed it...