Forum software update - Forewarning

[admin]

Folks,

I think the time has come to bring the software running this forum upto the latest release. Since the numbers of spammers trying to gain access to the forum has now reached a silly level again (790 requests in the last month!). Thus I will decide on a time to do this and let you know.

It will mean some downtime whilst:

I make a backup of the database,
Restore that database to a local machine
update the forum software on the local machine to bring the database upto date
Make another backup of the database
Do the software update on the live site but with no DB conversion (since this won't work on the live site due to the quantity of data)
Restore the database so its the new version
Make the new software live

Hopefully that will take a half day of work and during the update process I will stop anyone logging into the forum. As you can see it can be a bit risky so that maybe extended if things go wonky!

Martin Searle
Sprint 15 Association Webmaster

[Robert]

Well done, Martin - sterling stuff. I bet no-one noticed, but thanks to you we can continue to have fun without even being aware that these issues exist. You are a true star, my friend.

[Martin Searle]

Folks,

The PHPBB software is now fully up-to-date and equally hopefully no-one has spotted any changes!

Martin S.

[Martin Searle]

As an update: the Anti-spambot measures seem to be working as I have had NO requests to join since I changed the method to asking the answer to a simple question which anyone should be able to find\know the answer to. I have checked that you can register since I thought perhaps it was broken but it works fine.

Martin S.