Down time

[gavin]

Hello All

We've been offline for some hours while I fixed a problem caused by one of the malicious characters out there on the Internet. I learned a few things during that time ...

There may be some more periods of down-time later, but I hope that these will be planned and short.

all the best

G.

[POPZ]

Gavin - If it is of any consolation, I believe other forums are having rather severe problems at the moment. It must be very frustrating and rather time consuming for you. But this gives me an excellent chance to thank you for the way you look after this forum and us, the subscibers - BIG THANKS
POPZ

[gavin]

Thanks POPZ. I didn't know other fora had been having problems, but vBulletin have been sending out warnings about new vulnerabilities in a recent update they have been asking people to install. I may do some more site maintenance later tonight so may switch it off when the night-owls are dropping by.

G.

[beebreeder]

Is that why I have had to re-log in gavin, I have it set to auto login
k

[gavin]

Don't think so Kev, I haven't forced new log-ins. Maybe it just does it from time to time.

[GRIZZLY]

Don't think so Kev, I haven't forced new log-ins. Maybe it just does it from time to time.

I've had the same problem--almost as though there is a timed response built into the system.Still a good site - tho' a bit quiet at the moment.Good work by yourself Gavin.

[gavin]

It is also possible that updating the software that runs the site forces this, and if so you may have had to do it again this morning. As more than one of you has had to do it maybe that is what happened.

Yesterday I added patches to stop the kind of intrusion we had on Friday night. Early this morning when you were all sleeping soundly (I hope!) I did a full catch-up on new versions of the software. There are supposed to be a few new features which I haven't spotted yet, but, running Firefox at least, the Private Messages area formatting has gone awry. *sigh*

I, too, am pleased with the way this forum has turned out. Yes, it could be more active, but that will build over time and there is bound to be a surge of beginners as spring approaches. I felt that it is really important that there was a place for Scottish potential beekeepers to go to get good advice, having seen a crofter in Wester Ross on another forum naively ask Mr R of Gloucester for a repeat order of imported Carniolan queen-led Gloucestershire mongrels because their one colony - which had built up marvellously the previous summer - had died out over winter. When I challenged the sense of the transaction, several of the regulars criticised me for suggesting that Carniolans were inappropriate for an isolated croft and the supplier declared that 'they can forage off the fence-posts as far as I care'. No point in searching for the exchange as it was removed, I think by Mr R himself, before he was banned from the site. So the seeds were set for a Scottish forum, I had a word with the top brass in the SBA, and here we are. There were more reasons of course, one being the need for good communication across the beekeeping community in Scotland, and we are making progress there too.

One thing that really pleases me is that there is a good, helpful, positive, and also rational attitude on here. There are fora populated by people with a burning desire to preach to people about their own particular hobby horses, and one of them has a lot of good posts but also an element of grumpy hostility to one of the bigger beekeeping organisations, and sometimes just to authority in general. I like to think that this one is rooted in rational approaches to beekeeping issues and also pretty well aligned with the mainstream of beekeeping thinking in Scotland ... whilst being welcoming to all. Whether that is all true or not I can't be sure, but for sure I have all the regular contributors to thank for the way this forum is going. Thanks folks.

[gavin]

If anyone spots anything that has changed and you think I might have power over, do let me know. I've just had the forum 'time-out' on me while preparing that post, so maybe those settings have reverted to the defaults. I'll have a look. When originally setting this up I was guided in part by what was wrong with the BBKA one (sorry BBKA) - they have a particularly short time-out so I set a particularly long one. They have a closed appearance which stops passers-by seeing what is going on, as do some of the other UK fora. We went for totally open viewing but registering and logging in for posting and seeing the pictures in posts. Of course now we do have private areas, but these are very restricted members-only areas for focussed discussions. One of them will certainly open out when the ground rules are set, and the other is very technical and is essentially for a group of enthusiasts to talk amongst themselves.

[Jon]

I didn't have to log in again after friday's hacking.

With regard to bee forums/fora, sometimes less is more.
The more popular ones have loads of threads stating 'I got stung today' and suchlike which then get about 50 follow up 'me too' type posts.
I saw one thread recently on a bee forum which was titled 'I saw a bee today' and it got loads of responses.

The US beesource forum has posters from all over the world so if you log in now you will read posts from the australians and new zealanders re. swarming fever.
I think it's good to have a seasonal forum.

The bbka forum is good but it's not promoted adequately and there are very few new posters coming along.

The Irish one on yahoo groups is also good but the software and navigation is a nightmare. The only way to use it is to get the daily e-mail summary of posts.

Bee-L is good if you are interested in the scientific approach to beekeeping and the latest research on pests, diseases and pecticides.

Any forum should allow healthy debate without dissenters geting shouted down.
I have noticed on some that if the first reply to a post is critical another dozen of the regulars pile in with more criticism - a classic herd mentality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA

[Trog]

Hi Gavin. I've not been asked to log-in or anything but I notice that the latest discussions on the RH side are headlining the first few words of each post, rather than giving the title of the relevant thread.

[beebreeder]

Hi Gavin
Totally agree with Jon, this forum being quieter does tend to get a lot more interesting threads and very little of the herd mentality, I did not have to log in again, thanks for all the hard work, its much appreciated from down south.
k

[gavin]

Hi All

Thanks everyone, and yes Trog, the format of the 'New Posts' is one of the things that has changed. Jon is having problems making any kind of picture upload now. I don't see any reason why the software should pick on him. Does anyone else have difficulty uploading pictures?

I've decided to share something with you. The hacker was a 17 yo school kid from the eastern suburbs of a major city in the W of Canada. He sent me a note to apologise for what he did, which leaves me thinking that he must be a decent lad as I don't think I ever owned up to my misdemeanors when I was 17!

If you are reading, D, thanks for owning up and I forgive you. It was apparently a pal of his who decided to show him how to hack vBulletin fora. Not such a wise move as when you visit a forum like this the software records the trail, and it is a simple matter to trace the originator. In this case I knew which suburb of which city the hack came from and his family's service provider even before he owned up.

How do I know he is 17? Ah, the internet is a place that never forgets! You take care, D, and if you stick in at school you might even end up being paid for mucking about on computers.

G.

[chris]

Does anyone else have difficulty uploading pictures?
.

Hello Gavin. I can't upload an avatar. Not that I want to. Is it because I haven't earned enough "beauty points" ?

[gavin]

Hi Chris

I may be able to do it on your behalf if you'd like it up so feel free to email it to me. Apologies to everyone who is having difficulty uploading pictures. I suspect that vBulletin have done this in the recent upgrades - will chase it when I have some time.

G.

[chris]

Just tried to upload a photo via *manage attachments*. Can't do it either.

[gavin]

Sorry everyone. I found a setting to tweak and now hope that this is fixed. Is it?

G.

[gavin]

Apparently not. This will take longer to fix, so don't expect much to happen for a few days.

In the meantime it seems the only way to present images on the forum is to upload them to Flickr or Photobucket and to link to them from there.