My Introduction!

[Jedintada]

Hi There Just wanted to drop in to say hi and also to introduce myself here! The Forums look very interesting and i cant wait to become a member of the community!

[madd74]

Ah huh, I will believe that when I see it I am sure you are a bot, but hey I have been wrong before with Piper the Cool

[sewcute]

There are a lot of new people here!!!

that's good right

[madd74]

It sure is, and thanks for noticing

However, some people, like the person above, are more likely bots, attempting to either spread their name, or their links. Unfortunately for them, links to their sites will not EVER happen. Hey, I do not mind if people want to promote their like, like PiperTheCool who joined recently, however that is due to him actually being a human. Some times bots just post to see if they can, or what they can get away with.

On my site, not much, but something like that post was a good discussion starter, and has no links attempting to point to anywhere.

Speaking of getting people here, I am in the works of some cool competative play and the like, and I feel it will attract at least a few people Oh, don't forget the ROM games that one will be able to play from the actual site

[Cpt. Blackbeard]

Ahoy Mateys, seems like the best place to place my first post. Mad already knows I'm human, or the smartest bot he ever saw

[madd74]

Madd says, you are smartest bot ever saw

It is rare that bots on my board know to send me human like responses on a totally different forum. Kudos to your master for programming the

greatest

bot

ever

[Cpt. Blackbeard]

Aye Matey, and wait until you taste my cooking
Can't reply to your PM here yet but I'll look it over. I seldom listen to anything on the computer though, I have headphones instead of speakers and only wear them when I have to. I like quiet.

[madd74]

You cannot reply to PM yet? Hmm... keep in mind, have not had many people since I upgraded to 3.0.6 so not really sure how I have all of the "new reg user" group thing setup. I will look into that, very rarely to I agree with defaults

I set number of posts before auto approve to 2, meaning the 3rd post and on go through no problems, and that seems to kill off any attempt for bots to register (which is hard enough as it is), so that should be good now.

You like quiet, well, some people are like that, and more power are to them. Hey, I am anti-spam and anti-ad and you notice no spam on the boards, and no ads

FYI, nice smiley

What exactly do you cook? I might approve your posts, not sure I can up and do the same to your cooking...

[Cpt. Blackbeard]

Yes, by default PMs are disabled for newly Registered User Group, as I have posted on phpbb I consider it a major oversight on their part that it is impossible for a new member to contact an Admin by default, just like my trouble logging in here after registering, without phpbb to send you a message with you still would not know about it. I had a Contact Link added on my Forum so even a Guest can use to send me a message if needed.

I'm no chef, I am a bachelor and truck driver (concrete) though and do a lot of my own cooking, frozen dinners get old fast. My menu is limited but what I cook I cook well, at least I love my own cooking I added a Recipe Section to my Forum, mainly for my own use though anyone can read them. When I find one I like I add it there and I encourage my members to do the same.

You can tell a good active Admin by the lack of Spam, good job. You'd find none on mine either. I'm laid off for another month and spending a lot of time there now, I love it. Trying to learn how to code and build the main webpage with it as I go, slow but progress. Was just thinking the other day, I haven't listened to a radio since Mid December, probably lots of new songs out I haven't heard yet, I only listen while driving.
Well it's late, been a bust evening chatting with my other Admins and I'm bushed, they are still going strong. See you latter sir.

[madd74]

Yes, that is certainly an oversight, and I am certain someone is already in the brainworks of making a MOD that allows the new user group to send to admins if wanted

I actually have alternate contacts, but if you are like a lot of people, you disable javascript so you would not see the "cool" little menu on the bottom. Even so, if you did, there is no clear "contact me" button. It is something I certainly plan to work on.

I use to live from frozen dinners so I know all about that. Well, I would say it better to have a limited menu and cook great, than a huge one and mostly cook like crap I can cook when required, and one of my specialties is chili. I have had no complaints and people have really enjoyed it. Of course, the biggest "secret" is letting it simmer over night. Ah yes, that cooks those flavors right in!

I agree with the good active admin. I remember when I was not. It was not anything other people would see, because of other measures to combat spam. However, the Russian posts would confuse the heck out of my board, and I would have posts from 1970 I would not ever see, because they were "so old". Well, I think I fixed that problem since after converting to 3.0.6 and switching user names to be alphanumeric, I have had no issues with those posts.

That sucks about being laid off. On the bright side, more game and admin time I plan to take a route similar to Google. Nice clean main page without lots of clutter. Just have your image, a <H1> tag, and some links and the like. I also want to have my "you are not using cookies/javascript" redirects to attempt to help those who are paranoid about turning it on, or at least give better options for those who do not want to or cannot for whatever reason.

In terms of "getting people", the biggest thing I am looking at is "giving away" free money and stuff. Money really does not mean as much to me as... what's that word... "traffic" I know what some would think, "Um, if you have no ads to make money, and charge nothing, what do you care about traffic for?" it is a great question, and some day, I will answer it

I have not listenend to the actual radio for a long time. It gets so old hearing nothing but ads. I have a 6 disc in my car, and like to crank out that. While I mainly listen to the first disc (a video game burn disc I made), I at least have the other varity when I want it!

So, thank you for your post, and joining, and for beating MY HIGH SCORE (which I will get back, don't worry!). Catch you on later, so I hope

[Cpt. Blackbeard]

I see the menu bar, though I don't recall seeing it before I logged in, it still isn't a phpbb default solution, and I don't see it corrected yet in the 3.0.7RC1 release.
As for the game go ahead and beat it, I can get higher. I'll PM you a screenshot from my board.

[madd74]

You are certainly correct, it is not a phpbb built in and really would be a great idea if it was. I mean, if it was not for phpbb, I would have not ever known there was a problem because I would not have gotten any PM.

Ah huh, you do that, and then I will get higher than that

[sewcute]

I didn't know bots would post things like that, I only thought they posted spam type things.

[madd74]

Well as I was attempting to post last night before my piece of *&^# phone was being a *&#^, bots can post for a varity of reasons. While spam is the most prominate, some times bots attempt to post because they are "new" bots and the author is checking to see how it works. There may be times when they want to also know what boards are "vulnerable" to attacks also.

I changed my CAPTCHA (the visual confirmation most people on the web are familiar with) to a new one, and since then, not a single bot has made a successful post or registration to the forum. Many bots will use OCR (Optical Character Recognition). This is what you would use to take something you write and have it fed into a word processor on your computer. This is the reason many CAPTCHA programs have goofy stuff all around it. The problem is that OCR is really good these days and it can get by these CAPTCHA attempts. Well, there are some words, however, that when you scan it looks like other words. The program I use (reCAPTACHA) takes words that cannot be read by OCR and uses that as the defense against these bots. Plus, every time someone uses reCAPTACHA, that is another word that gets digitized. This means old text can be done by millions of humans around the world, while at the same time preventing rouge bots from going ape shit in web forums

[sewcute]

Go you! I guess my message was too short I can't have less than 13 characters! dang!