30 August - Scheduled Forum Downtime

[Mike1]

At some point tomorrow morning (Saturday, 30 August), I'll be closing the forums down for an upgrade.

The upgrade is pretty straightforward and I hope the forums will be down for no more than 25-35 minutes. I'll get everything opened back up as quickly as possible. There may be a couple of pages that will look a bit unusual for a few minutes, but that shouldn't present too much of a problem.

If you arrive here to discover a message saying the forums are down, give it about 45 minutes and check back.

[Mike1]

I meant to say there is one, possibly significant change that will take place as part of this upgrade.

Forum spam attacks are on the rise and many spammers know a lot of people will set up their accounts so the password on the account is the same as the username. It's a simple exploit that allows the spammers full access to your account and to your Private Messages, where they can send their spam via your account.

When the upgrade runs tomorrow, it will sweep the database for accounts using common usernames and passwords. And it will remove the password and insert a random password in its place. An e-mail will then be generated for each of these accounts, containing this new, temporary password.

So everyone needs to pay attention to this short list -

1. If your password = your username, please change it today.

2. If you're changing your password, please make it something unique and change it often. Please don't give the spammers a chance by using a password like '12345' or 'qwerty' or 'password'.

3. If you do not care to change your own password, then you need to make sure you have a valid e-mail address associated with your account. Be sure this domain is not black-listed, for without the new password e-mail, you're not going to be able to access your account.

4. If you find you cannot log into your account and cannot locate the new password e-mail in your Inbox, then use the Contact Us link, located at the bottom of every forum page. Please supply your username in this message, so we will know which accounts we need to address.

I've run this upgrade on over a dozen sites and it seems the accounts affected by this change are falling between 3% and 4%. And I'm yet to see anyone have a problem with the changes, so if everyone will address this today, we should be able to keep problems to a minimum.

To change your password -

Click on the Quick Links menu item, in the Navbar

Click on User Control Panel

In the left-hand column, under the heading Settings & Options, click on Edit Email & Password

Enter your current password in the uppermost field. Then enter your new password in the next field, confirming it in the third field. Click on Save Changes and you're finished.

[Mike1]

This is just a reminder I'll be pulling the plug in another 60 - 90 minutes.

We won't be away long.

[Mike1]

The upgrade process is complete. 20 minutes, in and out.

There were 23 members that were using their usernames as their passwords. Those passwords have all be reset and e-mails have been sent to these members.

If anyone notices any problems as a result of the upgrade, please post in the Tech Questions forum.

[vmac3205]

Wow, I didn't even have a chance to notice it was down. Nicely done. An advantage of living in the Pacific time zone.

[Panache]

The upgrade process is complete. 20 minutes, in and out.

Mike,

What can we say, you are darn good at this!

Thanks for taking care of things so quickly

Cheers

Jamie

[Carolina Kiltman]

Very smooth transition! I was on before, started my Caffeine Fix , came back and the site was "down" Returned after feeding the Cat and getting my Caffeine Fix and it was up. Great Job.