July 2006 Archives

The forums are back up and running. There's good news and bad news about the hacker festival we had around here today (July 11). The bad news is that I am still working on a permanent fix. It could happen again -- but hopefully in the next 24 hours there will be something up preventing these kinds of attacks permanently.

The good news is three-fold:

1. It's over for now. Happy posting.

2. The attack was a file-based attack and not a database attack, which means that all of your private info is secure (emails, etc) and that you have nothing to fear. This site is highly protected and my host takes security very seriously. The attack today only affected the index file, which the hackers took over to cause a redirect to their own site. Their motives - other than just causing general uproar - are still unknown.

3. You guys are really into this web site. I'm happy to see the love. You have no idea how many emails I received about this before I even got home to check my messages. Glad to see you are all on top of the game, and that the site is like a drug for you. ;)

Anyway, again, my apologies for the blip in the system. From a developer's standpoint, hackers and the "work" they do is fascinating. Seems they're always one step ahead of the game. From a user's perspective, not so much. They're just annoying.

I'll let you know what the forum developers say about all of this. Honestly, they were quite confused, as I am running the most recent version with all of the standard security measures in place. So this was a new-ish development for them, and we'll see what unfolds as a result.

Well, clearly the forums have been hacked. It will get solved. Please be patient. Sorry about this... you know how sneaky these people can be.

Just hold on tight. Site should be back up soon.

The new and improved assistantsinfrance.com site!

After switching the program we use to run the forums, I decided to take advantage of the overhaul and re-do the main pages of the site. This means I can entirely clear out the old program being used to run assistantsinfrance.com (Mambo), which will free up a lot of space on my server. Good news, too, because over 2,000 assistants and their almost 30,000 forum posts can start to add up.

A few things to note:

The forums

The forums are open and all users who signed up with the old forums should be able to login. If you have a problem with this, please contact me by email. Thus far, only two or three people have had issues, so the switchover has been fairly seamless.

Moderators

I'm looking for people willing to moderate forums for any given amount of time. You decide how long. Moderating means a few things: moving topics to proper categories, editing double posts, having "moderator" appear next to your name in the forums. Moderators are in charge of specific forums. So, for example, if you are always reading the "Assistant Lounge," maybe you'd be willing to keep it organized and respectable by moderating it. Contact me if you're into the idea.

Member database

The old site had a member database. Do you want it back? We can keep it if you prefer it to the user groups in the forums. Your call.

Links

I'm going to work to bring in the links from the old site into this new one, and then have a few pages of useful links broken down for everybody. If you have any link suggestions, or if you want to be a doll and just whip up a link list (with a name for the link and a corresponding URL) then I would be more than happy to post it.

Suggestions!!!!

Please contact me with your suggestions!! I'm in the dark unless I get feedback, and I read and respond to every email I get. I do all this web stuff as a hobby (I know, I know...), so don't get too high-tech on me, but send me your ideas.

Ok... that's it. Thanks for roughing it through a few days of adjustment.