58 replies to this topic

[jonny]

Well, the forum is back up, and updated, thanks to our illustrious Chris. However, we're still waiting for word on whether the data itself can be restored or not. Fortunately the wiki was untouched, so in any case you won't have lost everything, but I realize how much the forum meant to some of you. So once again, I apologize for letting this happen, and I will try to make more of an active effort in making the German site a better place in the future.

If the data isn't restored, I will attempt to rebuild it like it was before. In any case, I will petition for an official volunteer administrator for both the wiki and the forum. For now, we must simply wait. You may use corrupt's temporary forum in the meantime.

[Thalon]

I thank you very much for your work to restore the forum!
I really like a german place, because I have some problems to understand the explanations to difficult problems.

I am shure that my english is also terrible to read for you ^^

Thalon

[Chris]

The hosting company has said that although they have backups, they're only used in response to hardware failures.

Therefore, I've sent a note to Jonny asking him to recreate the forum areas in an empty state. I tried to do this already, but it seems there can only be one authorized user to do it (either that or there's still something wrong with the site that prevents me from doing it).

Alternatively, if someone has an interest in maintaining a more complete German site, I believe someone around here owns the www.autohotkey.de domain. Perhaps it could be transferred to whomever has the time and server space to run the site.

[jonny]

What he said.

I'll get right on setting up an empty forum.

[Chris]

I've recreated the German forum, which is at http://s89775182.onlinehome.us/forum/

It will probably undergo some refinements in the coming weeks, but it should be safe to create a user and/or create new topics.

It's regrettable that all the content is gone. Other than the hosting company, I doubt anyone else has a backup of the old forum.

Although my initial request was denied, it might be possible to persuade the hosting company (1&1) to provide someone with a backup, which could then be merged into the existing forums or at least made available publicly as a downloadable zip file. However, I'm not sure what kind of persuasion would be needed or how to go about it.

[Thalon]

That are great news!
I am only a bit sad about the fact that the old contents maybe never can be restored!

But thx for recreating the german forum!

Thalon

[jonny]

I've made a post in what I'm reasonably sure is the General Chat section of the newly resurrected German forum, making it known that I am accepting volunteers for forum administrator(s) and moderator(s). You can also notify me in this topic, if you haven't made a user yet, but are pretty sure you want to help out in this way. Details in said post.

[toralf]

Hi Jonny,

I would voluntere as a moderator. although I might be only visiting in-frequently.

[Thalon]

Hi!

I do some administration in another forum and I am user in about 8 foren each day (of course 2 of them are the german and the english AHK-forum).

I would like to prevent the german-forum from being used for spam (as seen today) and giving threads useable names if only "Need help" (or similar) is posted.

I am having a look at both forum (?) about 3 times a day and so I maybe would be usable as moderator if you would need one.

I do not have the knowledge about updating forum-software or something similar (just a bit advanced computer user ), so I would like to apply for simply moderation...

Thalon

[toralf]

I removed the spam (thanks Thalon). But since I'm not that often in the forum, I would support Thalons application.

Regarding the SPAM: It seams to me that most of the posts and the accounts are automatically generated. Is it possible to have a picture that is only readable by the human brain (numbers and chars strangely written with lines for distraction, so that OCR doesn't work) on the account generation page (the user then has to type the string into a third field)? This might atleast prevent automatic account generation.
Does such a thing exist for the forum?

[toralf]

A translation from the link AGU provided:

It is integrated into phpbb, if phpBB Version > 2.0.11

It is in the ACP:
"General" => "Configuration" => "Activate visual confirmation"

@Chris: do you think this is something worth to be turned ON?