I Hate Spam!

I just spent the last 30 minutes deleting users from our discussion forum that were blatant spammers. I'm 1/17th of the way through my list of "members" to comb through. What a pain!

If I accidentally delete you, I am very sorry. I am bleary-eyed at this point. I tried to err on the side of caution and keep the "members" that looked like regular people. But for the most part, if there was a link to a website on your profile and the website had anything to do with mortgages, casino games and rated R material, I deleted you.

Because of people like this, our forum had to basically shut down for several months because it was just way too much for me to moderate on my own. But after several conversations with my husband, he convinced me how valuable this forum is to people who are genuinely interested in the Paper Illusion product and what it could do for them, I had to find a way to make it work.

So, earlier this week, I upgraded the software to the newest version and implemented some security features. Now, anyone registering on the forum needs to fill out a field indicating they are a real person (and not some computer robot-thing-y) who can read a graphic. Also, I am personally reviewing every person who registers to see if they appear legit. Red flags for me are what I would consider inappropriate websites and email addresses that promote inappropriate material.

Eventually I'll make up a list of "unacceptable" words and load that into the software, so anyone trying to use those words in their profile or posts will not be permitted to do so.

Of course, this shouldn't effect anyone who is genuinely interested in what is being discussed at the forum, since we're not about mortgages, gambling and mature-marriage-practices. But if you happen to be in the mortgage business and are interested in Paper Illusions, please forgive me if I deleted you. Mortgage brokers are not bad people...it's just unfortunate that people who spam a lot happen to be spamming on behalf of mortgage companies.

Anyway, the forum is "open" for discussion again to new & registered users. Please bear with me as I finish "cleaning house". I'm on there everyday and there's plenty of people genuinely interested in discussing Paper Illusions and the projects that can and have been done, so feel free to join in! (Unless of course you're only interest is to sell mortgages, promote gambling and/or sexually explicit material...you guys can just take your keyboards and go take an ecourse on discussion forum etiquette.)

Discussion Forum being upgraded...

For a few months now I've been in a quandry as to what to do with our discussion forum. We were getting hit with so much SPAM that it was miserable trying to stay on top of it. Eventually I had to practically shut it down. I left it up for people to read because there's some great content in there, but I had to block everyone from posting. Of course, this put a HUGE damper on our community.

Well, a few weeks ago, it dawned on me that I could upgrade it. After all, it's been out there for several years and I know there were newer versions available. But, given the circumstances in my life I wasn't ready to try and figure out how to do it yet.

Then...last night, I had the bright idea of contacting customer support at phpbb for help, and lo and behold they helped me! I've had such bad luck with customer support staff on other web applications, I just expected to get the same kind of run around. But nope, a gentleman in the UK set me straight.

So, I'm working on upgrading the discussion forum at this time. There'll be some quirky things happening, but bear with me, I'll get it smooth going soon enough. I'm committed to see it through!

Some of the improved features include:

• Private Messaging
• Registration Process
  
• Search Capabilities

But what I'm really excited about are these NEW features:

• Attachments: Users can post attachments (photos) themselves
  
• Reports: Users can report spammers!
• Mail/Print topics: Users can easily mail or print project instructions and other detailed posts
• Forum Subscriptions: Users can subscribe to forum categories...when a new project is posted, registered users can be contacted automatically.
• and more...

I'll keep you posted when the upgraded version is completely installed, and we'll celebrate!