Forum software

[hex11]

I tried browsing Chex Quest forums a long while back, and it was almost useles

[GreyGhost]

Did the page lockup on you?

DarkJedi188 said:

I'll make sure to check out that Zandorum thing if I get a laptop with a larger hard-drive and more RAM, which might happen next year. Might.

It occupies less than 5MB of drive space.

[Nuxius]

My only real concern with this old software is all the security holes that are in it. Either DW has some great coder in the background that has patched these vulnerabilities themselves, or we're just going on a wing and prayer here. Hope it's not the latter.

Outside of that the only thing I don't like the utterly broken "marking threads read" system.

PROTIP: If you're surfing DW, and don't want to have the stupid forum software "conveniently" mark all of the threads read for you before you're ready to leave (because you spent to long viewing a certain post or were doing something else in the background for too long, etc) then just go to the bottom of the forum and click on "Currently Active Users" (open it in a different tab). Just leave this tab open in the background and it will refresh every minute or so, keeping your status active, and will prevent this from happening.

[188DarkRevived]

GreyGhost said:

Did the page lockup on you?
It occupies less than 5MB of drive space.

No, it's just that my old rust-bucket is already very crammed with a whole bunch of things to distract me from my college work as it is.
The fact that I just spent the last 2 hours on someone's Heretic2 server and thought that it was only 1 hour proves this.
I need to minimize some of my immersions until like Christmas at least. :p

[Maes]

Gez said:

Also, 500x500 avatars, rank icons, and 2400x600 signature banners. All in Blingee animated GIFs. That's the basic minimum that people expect from modern social networks.

Animated GIFs??? Duuude, that is SO 90s! Not even FLASH cuts it anymore, too 00s! What we need is context-sensitive, mouse-over AJAX previews of links using browser-in-a-browser widgets.

And POST SIGS????! That's so, like, the BBS days! What we need is an APPLICATION BAR for each user as a sig, with interactive AJAX previews of self-installing, pointless, wasteful and invasive applications. Also, we need a version of Doom that works with Zynga points, with the same gameplay as "Mafia Wars".

[NightmareZer0]

yukib1t said:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

[Blastfrog]

I think it'd be kinda nice to increase the max avatar size to 64x64, since that's roughly how big it is on 1920x1080 that 48x48 is on 1024x768.

DarkJedi188 said:

I'll make sure to check out that Zandorum thing if I get a laptop with a larger hard-drive and more RAM, which might happen next year. Might.

Dude, it's the exact same thing as Skulltag, just a newer version of it. If you can run Skulltag, you'll have NO problems running Zandronum.

[Dragonsbrethren]

hex11 said:

I tried browsing Chex Quest forums a long while back, and it was almost useless. The avatars themselves didn't stand out so much compared to the huge-ass signatures full of images and walls of texts. Probably at least 75% of everything rendered on screen was this useless extra junk, the same stuff over and over again...

If you think that's bad, several of the old ROM hacking boards I used to visit used a forum software that gave users a header in addition to a signature, both of which were html enabled. Yeah, you can probably guess where that led. Every other user having their own background images, fonts, text colors, etc. in addition to the standard forum crap. I'm ashamed to admit even I took part in that. I rarely even have a signature nowadays.

[Blastfrog]

I remember back when I went on Sonic Retro regularly (this was like in 05 and 06) that a user named Heran Bago started a short-lived fad that got shut down by the administrator of the time, Simon. Each user has a rank, most being regular Members, but some of the more 'elite' ones being Tech Members, and this was represented by a graphic. They still have this system, but there's more ranks now.

Anyway, what this guy did was he ran some kind of invisible script in his signature that displayed an image on top of the existing member rank to make it look like you were a different rank. It was fun while it lasted, I guess. :P

[Aliotroph?]

Dragonsbrethren said:

If you think that's bad, several of the old ROM hacking boards I used to visit used a forum software that gave users a header in addition to a signature, both of which were html enabled. Yeah, you can probably guess where that led. Every other user having their own background images, fonts, text colors, etc. in addition to the standard forum crap. I'm ashamed to admit even I took part in that. I rarely even have a signature nowadays.

Did any of them have login-stealing scripts and SQL injection hacks? (It was a board for hackers after all.)

[Dragonsbrethren]

Surprisingly, I don't think anyone ever tried anything like that. I'm amazed in hindsight.

[hex11]

GreyGhost said:

Did the page lockup on you?

If you're referring to the truncated double-post at the top of this page, then yeah, sorta. I've been using a really crappy wireless link for the past couple days. And that's something a lot of people who have nice home fiber or cable connection can easily forget: wireless users are at the mercy of the winds, and adding more bloat to the web will only make things worse. I'm not talking about the fat & happy dudes who have wireless home network, but the poor saps who travel or are otherwise dependent on these flaky outdoor connections. The area I'm at has several repeaters, but one of them is down currently... I had to kill dhcpcd and assign myself a static IP, route, etc. otherwise it'd be totally unusable (the link keeps disconnecting every few seconds, so dhcpcd has no chance to catch up). And even with images & CSS disabled in browser, it's very tedious.

[Bloodshedder]

Aliotroph? said:

Did any of them have login-stealing scripts and SQL injection hacks? (It was a board for hackers after all.)

ROM hacking is nothing like web hacking.

[chungy]

Aliotroph? said:

Did any of them have login-stealing scripts and SQL injection hacks? (It was a board for hackers after all.)

If he's talking about Acmlmboard (and I'm almost sure he is), it was about one of the most poorly coded and security-hole-riddled forum systems ever designed, so yeah.

[Ed]

Probably should have just put a poll in this thread to say whether it is a good idea or not.

[188DarkRevived]

Sodaholic said:

Dude, it's the exact same thing as Skulltag, just a newer version of it. If you can run Skulltag, you'll have NO problems running Zandronum.

I'll make it my hard-earned Christmas present for a successful semester. That will make it so much more enjoyable! :)

Anyways, I am now 100% satisfied with this forum because, surprisingly enough, the admin is very responsive and understanding of my stressful situation. :)

Cheers guys! I love this place.

[Aliotroph?]

Bloodshedder said:

ROM hacking is nothing like web hacking.

I'm well aware of that, but the sorts of people into things like ROM hacking are often likely to hack just about anything they meet simply because it's fun.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Aliotroph? said:

I'm well aware of that, but the sorts of people into things like ROM hacking are often likely to hack just about anything they meet simply because it's fun.

Nah, not really. Some of them, sure, but the majority are just like the guys here.

[DooMAD]

Dragonsbrethren said:

If you think that's bad, several of the old ROM hacking boards I used to visit used a forum software that gave users a header in addition to a signature, both of which were html enabled. Yeah, you can probably guess where that led. Every other user having their own background images, fonts, text colors, etc. in addition to the standard forum crap. I'm ashamed to admit even I took part in that. I rarely even have a signature nowadays.

It's still in use, behold, the clusterfuckery.

[188DarkRevived]

Aliotroph? said:

I'm well aware of that, but the sorts of people into things like ROM hacking are often likely to hack just about anything they meet simply because it's fun.

I'm acquainted with some people who hack Sega Genesis/Megadrive ROMs specifically for the sole harmless purpose that most of us here edit WAD files. Just to customize and prolong the life of their favourite nostalgic classics. They dedicate themselves to this particular cause and nothing else.

[Aliotroph?]

They sound weird. Everyone I've known who's been into that sort of hackery has had their hands in 10 different things just because they were interesting. I'm like that too (though I've never done ROM hacking because I'm not into consoles), and as a result I never get anything done because I have no focus.

[Blastfrog]

Aliotroph? said:

They sound weird. Everyone I've known who's been into that sort of hackery has had their hands in 10 different things just because they were interesting. I'm like that too (though I've never done ROM hacking because I'm not into consoles), and as a result I never get anything done because I have no focus.

ROM hacking is just game modding for console games. Nothing more.