Updates to the forum
Below is a list of updates, upgrades and improvements done to the forum. There are a whole TON of improvements, upgrades and bug fixes we are working on behind the scenes so watch this space!
August 2020
- vBulletin software upgraded after the previous version got hacked (a problem with the people who make the forum software I'm afraid). Also moved to a new server and improved the way attachments work
October 2019
- vBulletin software upgraded (the software which runs the forum)
January 2019
- Moved site to Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- The site now runs off two servers; one for the database and one for the website
- This should result in the website running much quicker and more troublefree
- Also made it much easier to reply and post topics
March 2018
- Tapatalk has been setup for those who use the tapatalk forum app on their phones
- Image upload fixed and allowed ability to upload much larger images and files.
Feb/March 2018
We were hit with a large scale attack from China. This caused the website to go down for a week. Some data has been temporarily lost but we are working hard on restoring it and hope to have everything more or less completely back to normal within the next couple of days.
This attack caused hardware failure, so we've had to spend a fair bit of money on new hard drives (and over a weeks salary for one of my full time web developers) on getting it sorted.
We believe this attack may have been going on for some time, which will explain why the website was sometimes lighting quick, and sometimes slow as an old dog. Now we've got this attack sorted and prevented similar, we hope that the site should be permanently lighting quick from now on!
We do not believe any data or confidential information has been stolen.
We have implemented strategies and much better backups to firstly prevent this happening again. And, if it does, ensure we've got better backups and redundancies to minimise downtime.
Latest update (Mon 15th March at 12pm)
- Everything should be back to normal now
1st December 2017
- Database improvements to improve speed
30th October 2017
- Fixed PayPal or GoCardless (the direct debit system) not going anywhere other than a 404 page once people had paid for premium membership
23rd October 2017
- More work on getting the search working properly. Hopefully it should all be working properly now! Let me know if it doesn't!
19th October 2017
- Re-building of search indexes to get search working properly (this may take several hours to run)
- Improved security
18th October 2017
- Installed Google Recaptcha to prevent spammers trying to sign up
- Installed StopForumSpam to prevent spammy forum posts
- Improved email configuration
- Improved forgotten password and contact us pages
- Facebook integration - click here for info
- New 2017 paid member stickers ordered ! :)
- Set up an updates page (the page you're looking at) to log updates
- Search engine optimisation improvements
17th October 2017
- Made it so that the site was https
- Enabled paid subscriptions so you can subscribe online
- Made it so that images and attachments could be up to 8 mb each (previously 2mb) and attachments up to 15mb each so it’s much easier to add images, PDF files, etc
- Made it easier for people to register and post topics / reply
- Sorted out new theme & logo
16th October 2017
- Made it so you can login with your username or your email address
- Moved over to new server