RadioRob

I looked up your IP address from your post above and plugged it into the firewall protecting the site/server. I'm seeing a bunch of instances where the firewall is flagging the request as malicious. It looks like it's flagged 56 requests for you as suspect in the last 24 hours. An example in the logs: Ray ID 64ef50720bad3631 Method: POST HTTP Version: HTTP/3 Host www.companyofmen.org Path /posts/2122004/edit Query string Empty query string User agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.212 Safari/537.36 Service WAF Rule ID OWASP Block (981176) Rule message Inbound Anomaly Score Exceeded Rule group OWASP Inbound Blocking OWASP Score 85 Action taken Challenge Additional logs [TABLE] [TR] [TD]960024 · Meta-Character Anomaly Detection Alert - Repetative Non-Word Characters[/TD] [TD]OWASP Generic Attacks[/TD] [TD]Log[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]981317 · SQL SELECT Statement Anomaly Detection Alert[/TD] [TD]OWASP SQL Injection Attacks[/TD] [TD]Log[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]959072 · SQL Injection Attack[/TD] [TD]OWASP SQL Injection Attacks[/TD] [TD]Log[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]981257 · Detects MySQL comment-/space-obfuscated injections and backtick termination[/TD] [TD]OWASP SQL Injection Attacks[/TD] [TD]Log[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] What I've done for now is lowered the firewall sensitivity settings to see if that quits catching the false positive. If it still frequently seems to occur, let me know, as I'll have to create a specific rule to disable SQL injection protections for the post edit path (/posts/{id}/edit). See?!? Even the firewall knows how much of a troublemaker you are!

I've named "Clubs" as "Groups" (by editing the language files). Clubs have two views for forums... condensed and expanded. You can see an example in the test I created earlier. (I made this group as I wanted to let members create their own groups for specific areas of interest such as location specific discussion like a city, or a group dedicated to a specific provider, or a topic. https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/groups/1-washington-dc/ If you click on the forums link inside the group, it will take you to: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/forum/40-forums/ Inside of the forum I created a specific topic with a few replies: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/topic/124322-test-topic-1/?tab=comments#comment-1817007 As you can see, there is not a way to change how the the replies are displayed. You CAN change how the topic list itself is displayed. You would do that from the topic list page (in this case https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/forum/40-forums/) and clicking one of the two buttons to the left of the "Start New Topic" button. It will toggle how much of a preview you get of the initial topic.

The default view is Linear. I think you’re thinking of the Threaded view which put the replies in somewhat of a nested view based on reply. Most of the major forum software providers moved away from it for a few reasons…. - It was difficult to support in a mobile view. It did not play well with responsive design which lets developers do cross platform UI development. - People never used the correct reply to track the tread properly. - It did not work with multi-quote.If someone was quoting multiple threads, it could not be nested with the reply. Ultimately the major developers just decided to not support it saying it was too much effort to try and make it work properly given how few people actually used it. There might be an unofficial mod to support this, but I’ll have to look to see if there is one compatible with the most recent release of the software.

I drive a BMW, which requires Premium. When I filled up, it cost $3.74.

That will need to be something discussed by the moderator team. I'll pose the question in the moderator forum.

I'll leave this open a few more days. If there are no suggestions, I'll create the copy myself. The folks here tend to have a lot of opinions on stuff related to the site, so before I just did it myself, I wanted to offer the chance to have folks contribute.

I found the problem That was the hint I needed. As I suspected, it was a permission problem. I ran a query for all members (non-banned), and took that result to reset permissions for anyone who might have been effected. I've also noted this for when I convert the site again later when we do the actual conversion so it does not happen again.

It’s most likely a permissions problem. Permissions have to be manually set after conversion. Let me look at that.

By the way... if the majority of folks don't like the stock images I picked, feel free to recommend replacements. I'm by no means tied to selections made. They're just quick "what could go here" type selections. I literally went to the stock image picker and searched for things like "deli", "spa", etc.

The main test board address is: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/ On that page, you will see a list of all of the forums. The DEFAULT view looks like cards... so as you scroll down on that page, you will see a list of all of the different forums such as the Deli, Spa, etc. A direct link to the Deli for example: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/forum/8-the-deli/

If you don't like the images, you don't have to see them. You can make it look like the traditional table. Find the "Start a New Topic" button. To it's left should be 3 buttons. Click the first one. It will switch your display back to the traditional forum index view.

You can switch off the card view that displays the images. There is an option to change the display when viewing the site from a desktop. Once you set the option, it will remember it for you.

It’s a point in time snapshot. This was from right after I reorganized the forums. It was not meant to be a “live mirror” of this site. Your test post was a status update. These are in your profile: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/profile/2529-poolboy48220/?status=1914&type=status Where were you trying to post?

#truth

It deletes the message as well. Bad wording on their part, I agree.

I wanted to solicit some feedback from the community regarding descriptions for each forum. The Invision boards give us the ability to highlight them more to make it easier for new participants to understand the content inside that area. Xenforo lists a description as well, but only when you hover over the link of the words themselves (such as "The Lounge" or "The Deli"). Feel free to share suggestions for forum descriptions. I'll collect them all and pick the best ones to use here on both forums! Examples of CURRENT descriptions: The Lounge: A place to gather and exchange ideas. NO Politics, NO Religion, NO War. The Deli: An area to discuss Escorts. The Spa: Discussion about Masseurs. Please be careful so as not to compromise their licenses. Tips for your suggestions: Keep it short and sweet. Descriptions should not be longer than 200 characters. We can use rich text such as bold, italic, and smileys in our descriptions. No profanity or crude descriptions. These descriptions are public-facing! Think about when you were new to the site and did not have an understanding of what was here. What would be not only descriptive but also fun?! We do not need to put forum rules in the description. There is a spot for those inside the forum itself for that.

I made a post about this in the Announcements section about new forum software that I'm experimenting with. You can check it out at: https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/ Be sure to read the announcement here first so that you have some background about what's going on.

When I setup this test board, I had a few different goals in mind: Get some experience in testing the Xenforo conversion process. (This includes getting an understanding of the time it takes convert the database.) Let users get experience with the new software and see the benefits of it. Have a period of time where both forums were online so that there would not be a "shell shock" from the change. Document what is changed during the beta process so that I can do it again when we do the "real" conversion. You'll notice I tried to stay true to the legacy look and feel of these forums, including preserving the primary colors, logo, etc. At the same time however, I wanted to add some fresh/modern touches to it. Hopefully it feels somewhat familiar to everyone and is not something that feels totally out in left field. Regarding storage, what is happening is that when a file is uploaded... it is not actually put on OUR server. It's stored on a 3rd party service called Wasabi (https://www.wasabi.com). Uploads are simply taken, put on the remote host and then embedded into the post. We can store 1TB (meaning 1024GB) of data for $5.99 a month with no extra cost for bandwidth.

Somewhat of the opposite of paying a provider...

UPDATE 5/13/21: Given the positive feedback from members, I'm going to look at plans to move forward with changing the forum software. My goal is to do this in approximately 2-3 weeks, most likely on a Friday or Saturday evening. (Once I know the specific date, I'll post it.) In order to make the transition, I will need to take the boards offline for approximately 6 hours. Once the initial conversion is complete, I will need to manually set group permissions and start configuring various features. I anticipate this taking another 1-2 hours... at that point, I'll be able to unlock the doors and let everyone back in. Once the forums are re-opened, legacy posts may look funny and some posts may appear to be blank. Given the sheer size of the forums, it will take around 24 hours for all posts to be reindexed and rebuilt. This will naturally straighten itself out as the posts rebuild in the background. (This may also mean the site is a bit slower for the first day since a lot of resources are going to be dedicated to the rebuild/reindex process.) ----------------------------- Now that the migration of the forum to it's new long-term server is complete, I'm starting to look at slightly longer term stuff for the site. One of the biggest challenges I'm running into is the software powering the site itself. Our Xenforo license is expired. As a result, I can't download security updates/patches. Xenforo itself is software I don't fully know and understand. When problems occur, I can try to figure it out... but it can take significantly longer to do. If we ever want to do anything with the review site later, Xenforo does not have capabilities of supporting it. As a result, I want to look at switching the forums from Xenforo to Invision Community. In a nutshell, Invision provides not only forum software but a full suite of software designed around helping webmasters build virtual communities. This includes forums, image galleries, blogs, software downloads, e-commerce (donation support), etc. I realize most people most likely don't understand the full implications of what this means, so I've setup a demo that you can actually take for a spin. Take a look at https://www.companyofmen.org/beta/ You can login with the same username/password you use here on this site. I've basically imported a COPY of our existing board into the new software. (This is from a backup I earlier so anything that happens on that test site will NOT happen here and has no chance of breaking anything here. This test instance will eventually be deleted and anything on it will be lost. So don't post anything there that is important!) Some features I think that are worthwhile to mention include: Improved text editor for easier posting of messages. Ability to attach files. (No need to restrict images to remotely hosted files.) Clubs... ability to have a sub-group within the site that can be managed by individual members. (These can be public, semi-public, or private/invite only.) Ability to accept donations directly via the website. Calendars/events... we have a number of different events that the community tends to attend/support such as the DC Meetup, Palm Springs Get Together, MAL Weekend, etc. Whomever is organizing an event can have an area for people to RSVP, post messages about the event, etc. Ability to pick their own photos from their computer, or find stock photos to insert. Ability to pick how content should be viewed. (If you don't like the "card" view of the forum list, you can switch it to the classic grid view, or a topic display view. It remembers your setting per member. So your view does not interfere with how another person views the site.) You will not lose your password, avatar, or signature. Feel free to login to the test site and play around! Make posts and in general kick the tires. I'm going to note a couple of things: There are many areas that are still unconfigured. It does not make sense for me to spend days tweaking the software yet as I'm going to lose all of the changes when we do a final "live" upgrade. If you use the beta site to harass other members or break our normal rules, we reserve the right to take action against the behavior on the "live" board. If/when we do migrate the site to Invision, it will take several hours to fully convert. I will need to take the live site offline while the conversion takes place so that we don't lose posts while everything is moved. In my test import, it took about 5 hours to get the data converted. I'll be able to turn the site back on after the initial conversion completes, but some individual posts may look a bit weird or show up as having no content for the first 12 hours or so as almost 2 million posts have to be rebuilt in the background. I don't have any sort of plan or ETA for if/when we would actually make a change. In terms of the Invision license itself, it would be my donation to the community since I had an extra unused one from another site I managed. It's cost is annually around another $50 per year, but includes a lot of features not available today and includes our ability to support a new review site if we're so inclined.

The boards themselves don't have a Private Message viewer. While I could technically view the messages themselves from the raw database, it's not very easy to do. (I would have to figure out the user ID of the person, run a query on that field, then take all of the results and sort them by age. Each individual reply is its own message record in the database. So unless I have a reason to need to do something, it honestly does not make sense. Instead of worrying about individual messages, I like to look at the trends of the data. You'll notice I've posted some stats from time to time as it is helpful to understanding the community at a macro level. What times are the most popular for the site? What type of device do people use? What sections of the site receive the most views? Being able to answer these types of questions is important to helping grow the community. By the way... in terms of new user registrations... it looks like while COVID put a hampering on many hirings, it did not dampen the interest. Starting in May of last year, we have seen a significant increase in user signups. (These do not include registrations blocked/denied to spammers.) [TABLE] [TR] [TD]01/01/2020[/TD] [TD]48[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]02/01/2020[/TD] [TD]67[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]03/01/2020[/TD] [TD]43[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]04/01/2020[/TD] [TD]32[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]05/01/2020[/TD] [TD]103[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]06/01/2020[/TD] [TD]83[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]07/01/2020[/TD] [TD]97[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]08/01/2020[/TD] [TD]124[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]09/01/2020[/TD] [TD]149[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]10/01/2020[/TD] [TD]144[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]11/01/2020[/TD] [TD]131[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]12/01/2020[/TD] [TD]196[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]01/01/2021[/TD] [TD]131[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]02/01/2021[/TD] [TD]173[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]03/01/2021[/TD] [TD]208[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]04/01/2021[/TD] [TD]220[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Creation of topics under Site News is limited to moderators/admins only in order to keep the noise down. I've set the permissions to allow replies, but initial postings are limited. The best place to post would be The Lounge.

SOME of you have rather large private message boxes. There are private conversations going back to 2002 saved!

Not with Xenforo. But that's a topic I'll be posting about soon! I have a proof of concept I'm working on now and close to showing off to the rest of the forum.

If I'm in Dania Beach, I'll typically grab a car. No parking and it gave me the ability to hit other locations outside of FLL easily such as Adventura, Haulover Beach (nude beach), or to just head down south to MIA. Dania Beach hotels are literally off of I-95 (Griffin Road or Stirling Road). Free parking, easy access to the cruise terminal, lots of food options nearby. Firebirds is a decent mid-tier restaurant that is not crazy expensive with good food and friendly people. Even if you did not have a car, it's literally a 10 minute Uber ride to Wilton Manor.