New Sheriff in town....

[azeroth]

Look for some law and order around here.

Say good bye to your favorite spam.

Say hello to posting again.

Tasks already accomplished:
removed 5500+ spam-based user accounts
removed 2000 spam based user messages

todo:
registration filters
fix ban controls
swtich hosts
redesign layout
add features (calendar, links library)

For now:
Everyone gets 1 post per day, no more.

[krosch]

Thanks Azeroth for taking on the tech side of this venture, there is no way this would have gotten started without you.

Like you said, time to start taking back our forum!

[azeroth]

Okay, step one in the move is completed. We're on a new, faster server, with new, better technologies. Future enhancements are underway. You will notice some random downtime over the next few weeks, but no more spam nor lost posts. (There were about 3, 1 from krosch, 2 from gribble that suffered from poor timing.)

[MacDalund]

It lives! I think it's been about 5 years since I posted on here.

[azeroth]

hahaahhahah... w00t

Okay, removed *all* inactive accounts. Under the old rules this only happened if you never finished registering. 8,829 suspected spam accounts, gone. That's over 14,300 suspected spammers that won't be posting here anymore. Plus an additional 4616 active accounts that never made a post. New total: 18,900+ accounts wiped clear. Sorry if you're a lurker that got caught in all this, you can rereg, it's not like you had a history with the site to worry about losing.

Now when I "accidentally" erase UMD_TSar's account that I will accept legitimate bitching.

[azTest]

poke

[gribble]

Are we ever going to get the Old UMDbird logo back? Or was that just a stock logo from the old server or whatever the program was that we were running on before?

Also, is this the new layout or is this the stock layout from the new program and there will be a new layout produced after this? It's almost too foreign.

I say, if there is any say to be had, that we find the bird and put it in various sizes anywhere and everywhere that it can be seen on the page. The more birds the better. It will be like a flock of half-duck, half-gooses with blue shirts on, representing the masses of UMD and the city of Duluth.

I liked the old yellow and blue colors, because those give me some nostalgia. But I couldn't really say what colors would be better. It should be whatever color represents academic achievement paired with some other color that represents the area of Duluth. I'm trying to think, maybe something that has to do with shipping or iron. Although, to be completely honest, those are probably what the yellow and maroon of UMD represent, and I hate those colors. But, they would make sense for the UMDStudents website.

And also, is the one post per day rule done now?

Also, you should send email messages to all of the old users telling them that UMDStudents is up and running again. they might appreciate that. I don't think i ever got one.

Although, my friend, who was forbidden from logging into his account at some point, got an email about a private message, but since he can't log into his account he never figured out what it was about. I never got one of those.

[azeroth]

Hej Gribble!

Yea, this is still preliminary. The colors will change, but I'm pretty sure we can work the bird in though. A new logo will come in as well. Who is this friend? I sent a message to the UMDStatesman moderators to start to get a few people interested in what's happening here again. As for his bannination, I know nothing of the last 5 years of UMDStudents. I'll overturn it if you or he/she can tell me how he's getting stopped.

Yes, the daily posting limit is no more.


Onto the new front page. Officially, it's called a portal. Very alien, too cluttered -- at the moment. We've gotta make some hard decisions about the portal and what to include. The most important things are usability/design, and content. Once we know what we want up there right now and what features this site will (re-)acquire in the coming weeks and months, then we can determine how to structure the blocks of the portal.

Possible features to add, or re-add, or reconsider:
-- Professor reviews (want to preserve the old ones, i think)
-- class reviews
-- bookstore
-- marketplace (bookstore extension, maybe)
-- calendar events
---- iCal objects
-- email newsletter
-- ignore button
-- photo album (no porn)
-- file library (not for illegal/pirated material)
-- link library
-- forum structure
-- alumni tools?
-- current student tools?
-- RSS Feed


----

Do you have anyone you'd invite back to the site in these "alpha" days?

[gribble]

Awesome.

You've thought of a lot of good stuff to put up there. Is this going to be more tied into UMD now via links to school webpages and whatnot? Or is all this stuff completely independent? I suppose there's not too much of a point in linking to school pages, unless it's to the statesman or something. Do they even have a website? Baffling if not.

But there should definitely be a tie in to schedules of campus and certain community events that are related to students. I'm sure some people would be interested in being able to find out about what music is playing with a click of the mouse. I don't know if there's a website for Duluth that already does that. But if there is, that would be a good link to draw more people in. And I don't know how the school advertises guest speakers and lectures. But If there was an easy way to inform people surfing the site of those kinds of things, that would be good too.

I guess this might be alot to ask. And I don't know if you (or you all) have time to manage all that kind of stuff.

Oh, nevermind, I just caught the calendar events on there. Maybe you could categorize them though.

The email newsletter sounds good. Who's going to be running that? And will it be just for updates for the site or is it going to be a regular thing?

__

As far as people I'd invite back... obviously Krosch is already here. But just off the top of my head:

Tsar
Cole
Stang 76
ILuvBush

Who knows whether you want to bring back some of the old trolls or not?
Prophet
Deeman
nabisco/giftcard.com/octapochette (he kind of got ran out of town before though)
sevil niessuh maddas- he's my friend who got booted or whatever happened to his account

Those are just the guys that are most memorable at the moment. But there were a lot of other people who had been contributing irregularly or more so before the spam epidemic hit.

anyway.

[Slyder Pilot]

YAY WOOOOOO

[krosch]

We will be sending out a welcome back to the site letter in the near future, anyone who you think should be back. Talk to them, I am sure we will get a good mix of old users popping in and new users from the recruitment push we will soon be rolling out.

Welcome back Gribble and Slyder, hopefully more will soon join our numbers again.

[azeroth]

Yea,
Linking into campus events would be awesome. I'm not sure if I *can* automate it though. Aside from the technical issues (unless they publish iCal objects somewhere, it's mostly difficult and would require re-coding every year), I'd love to get them to post on here. It's a tricky issue because we want to maintain our independence while still integrating heavily. But yes, the calendar would definitely have multiple categories. I think the athletics calendar might be one of the best to start with.

It gets tricky, though, because a calendar that has a billion items is as useless as one with none. So somehow we'd have to find a way to promote items of interest and then prioritize "interest" according to some profile settings. For example, While we're all intersted in hockey, think about CSE lecture series. A digg-like voting system that favored your fellow CSE kids diggs and buries in this forum are worth more in CSE than, say, SBE folk.

It might be a while before Calendars come online though. PhpBB3 is a very new technology (Dec 13) and the modding community has some work to do.

---

The newsletter I have in mind would be an automated thing. There's one I know of that would email you the active forums topics from the day/week/month for each forum you are "subscribed" to. (There is a subscription feature in phpBB3, it may do this already. I haven't looked into this aspect yet -- Need to prioritize the feature list first.)

---

If Krosch agrees, we'll notify the active folk. The trolls can find their own way back

[krosch]

I have no issues with any of the names presented and we will get moving soon and getting new users into the site. Which is very important as much easily as getting some of the big posters back.

[WUB]

[Revenge of Chucky]

I can't believe Donny actually talked Shawn into coming back Props and Whoop Whoop to you both.

It could be more user friendly but honestly having all that junk gone is worth it. Now if only I had something to say...



Take it easy guys.

[azeroth]

I'm interested in any and all feedback for the useability. So... this *is* umdStudents, i know we have opinions... let's hear 'em!

[i4adodge]

Wee-haw! Thanks to everyone who's responsible for bringing this one back from its apparent grave.

[Slyder Pilot]

Yay! Brian's back!

[i4adodge]

I did pop a note over to Josh/UMDivX letting him know this is back online. Who knows if he'll actually show up or not though.

Sean, how the hell are ya? Did you guys get the xmas card?

Donny: is there any way to allow us to use avatars from a 3rd party site like imageshack or photobucket?

[Slyder Pilot]

Yeah we got it. Thanks for sending it. How're you guys doing?

[azeroth]

Donny: is there any way to allow us to use avatars from a 3rd party site like imageshack or photobucket?

I'd rather not, due to potential lag, virus, and size issues. I'm going to move the old avatars either today or tomorrow, I'm not sure how that was missed during the move. If no one can upload an avatar, I'll dig into that as well.