Get in there - I probably need to get a life but

[London Stone Paving]

Absolutely buzzing. For the past 4 months I have been unable to access the Brew Cabin from my work site but we have just changed internet provider and I am back in.

[lutonlagerlout]

Wb steve
LLL

[Tony McC]

I wonder why that happens? MickG had problems for a while and had to do summat similar to changing IP to get back in.

I don't block anyone other than obvious spammers. On the one or two occasions where I've had to eject someone from our midst, they been told they're being ejected, and they've been told exactly why they are being ejected. No-one gets blocked without full justification.

[mickg]

for a while, it was over 12 months I was forced into exile and pushed sideways into obscurity, I still cant access the forum on my old ISP

I had to change ISP's which in hindsite was a great result as I now have BT Infinity which for most of the time is much quicker than the other ISP I use

did you manage to check out the Virgin trains wifi as I am travelling down to that Landan town this weekend coming and would hate to not be able to acces the brew cabin for 2 hours whilst drinking my cup of cappuccino coffee, if you recall i did mention it last year

[TheRockConcreting]

I also get shut out, when on my mobile network from time to time, tells me im not logged in and won't let me pass. Been trying to get to the bottom of this for years, its got me stumped.

[mickg]

i get that from time to time on my mobile and its normally during the day but when I get home in the evening its back working again

[Tony McC]

I *did* have a word with some Virgin eejit pretending (and failing) to be in Britain and I think his argument was that the train wifi access goes through a proxy and that the proxy probably doesn't tally with the security checks of the software running the Brew Cabin.

Given that the software running the Brew Cabin is more or less the same as Noah used on the bulletin board he had inside the Ark, I'm not even sure it does *any* security checks, but I don't know enough about it to give your man an argument.

I did have a discussion with a major DIY shed some months ago and they told me they were struggling with mobile access and wondering what plans I had to rectify the problem. I patiently explained that I have neither the money nor the technical know-how to convert the whole site to smartphone-friendly coding, and the bloke in charge generously put me in touch with a web developer who may be able to help at a more realistic price. How realistic depends on just how much money my ex-wife lets me keep when she drags me into court later this week. Her need for foreign holidays, fags and new bovver boots is, of course, far more important than my need to invest in this website!

[mickg]

what you mean to say we are *still* coming second to your EX wife ???

[Carberry]

I *did* have a word with some Virgin eejit pretending (and failing) to be in Britain and I think his argument was that the train wifi access goes through a proxy and that the proxy probably doesn't tally with the security checks of the software running the Brew Cabin.

Given that the software running the Brew Cabin is more or less the same as Noah used on the bulletin board he had inside the Ark, I'm not even sure it does *any* security checks, but I don't know enough about it to give your man an argument.

I did have a discussion with a major DIY shed some months ago and they told me they were struggling with mobile access and wondering what plans I had to rectify the problem. I patiently explained that I have neither the money nor the technical know-how to convert the whole site to smartphone-friendly coding, and the bloke in charge generously put me in touch with a web developer who may be able to help at a more realistic price. How realistic depends on just how much money my ex-wife lets me keep when she drags me into court later this week. Her need for foreign holidays, fags and new bovver boots is, of course, far more important than my need to invest in this website!

Could probably get it done for ~£1000-£1500 if you get done with Joomla, developer sets up the front end and template then can show you how to update it with all the data yourself which shouldn't be too difficult.


Great thing with Joomla as far as mobile access is concerned is that it scales to the size of the screen automatically.

[TheRockConcreting]

I did have a discussion with a major DIY shed some months ago and they told me they were struggling with mobile access and wondering what plans I had to rectify the problem. I patiently explained that I have neither the money nor the technical know-how to convert the whole site to smartphone-friendly coding

The problem is not a smartphone compatibility problem it's more of a IP problem, say i'm in Colchester tethering my phone to my laptop, try and get on the forum but just get told im not logged in, but when i travel somewhere else i can access the forum as normal.

[mickg]

I was thinking Ning may be more suitable, its used to power 2 landscaping foums i go on

[Tony McC]

I use Joomla for the Manchester Triumph Owners Motor Cycle Club, where I set it up and then got one of our members with slightly more free time to take over the day-to-day running, and it works well for that scale of a site, but I'm not convinced it is quite right for a site as big as this. Ian P, the technical guru, suggested Drupal, but again, I can't see how to extend it to such a big site.

And Ning is fine for forumses but once you try to stretch it to everythjing else I do with pavingexpert, and remember that the Brew Cabin is but a small part of the whole, it becomes a nightmare to manage.

After speaking to all sorts of web developers, I'm reasonably convinced that a html/css-based content management system is probably the way to go.....as soon as I get the ex off my back. It's come as something as a shock to her system to be told that she can't keep stamping her feet and demanding money now that we're divorced, so she's taking me to court to extract more money on the grounds that she was married to a bastard who suddenly stopped paying all her bills and she's had to go out and get herself a part time job.Life can be so cruel, sometimes!

Anyway, after the posts yesterday, I started thinking about what I'd discussed over the years regarding the various problems with The Brew Cabin, and I was, some years ago, told summat about static and dynamic IP addresses, but it's completely lost in the mists of time now. Does it ring a bell with anyone else???

[enigmaenigma]

A large majority of internet users have a dynamic IP assigned by the internet service provider…and this means that they are constantly changing, being issued with a new IP number.

Amongst other things / considerations, think of it like trying to hit a moving target.

So if a hacker / naughty netizen find’s that IP number X, Y, Z leads to an insecure computer, then the continual changing / issuing of a new / dynamic IP address means that the insecure computer isn’t behind the same number for long…there are other reasons, but that would drift off course into a different area.

As such, and should a spammer use an IP or IP range that’s dynamic, you aren’t actually blocking that spammer, but any poor innocent sod that happens to inherit or be a part of that IP range.


Block listing IP numbers or ranges that are assigned to home internet connections, as opposed to specific server IP numbers, is a recipe for disaster…innocent people will always be caught up in the block etc.


As for the site updates etc:

To be perfectly honest I would avoid any CMS unless it was free / low cost like word press etc…because you have shown you can make HTML pages / posts etc, so why add a CMS into the equation now.

Not to mention, the CMS would be separate from the forum, which creates content in, well, a forum software manner…the only thing I can see a CMS doing, is being used for all the stuff you have created already, and that’s separate from the forum.

I would have thought you might set up a vbulletin, invision, or another of the usual suspects for a forum type software, and then had your HTML pages alongside…selecting the flavour of forum software based on criteria such as security, license fees etc.

Just can’t see, considering the fact the forum software means users create content, and the HTML pages already show you can create / upload content…as to why you would add a CMS on top of that.

[rab1]

Just what he said ???

[lutonlagerlout]

<scratches head>
LLL ???