Announcements

During the month of December 2011, a bad patch for our web software forced a database rollback to an earlier state. Users are encouraged to re-post their own content to aid in the recovery efforts. Some registrations may have been lost as well. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Yesterday there was a serious attempt to breach the security of the site. Based upon log records, it is highly doubtful this person succeeded in gaining control. However, in my investigation of what had occurred a few peculiarities in the normal behaviors of the site were observed. I decided to do a database rollback to the last known good install of 10/25/2010, along with a slew of password changes, as a precautionary step. If anyone did a password change or some other setting within their Profile it will need to be done again.

I've created a new listing for possible roles people may choose from when they register called Blog Fan. Those choosing this category will have a subscription setup for them so they are notified when new or updated public blog postings are made by anyone on the site. (CEBUG members are normally subscribed to notices for ANY blog posting, public or private.)

Other changes involve the lifting of the restrictions to Ohio residency only. The FAQ on access has been updated to reflect this change. Access to other rights on the site will continue to be limited as they have in the past. I have also altered the overall Profile field to be a checkbox list so as to make the selection of multiple items easier as people register. Anyone with an existing registration on the site needing help with adding a subscription of this type into their own settings should contact me!

An issue with the Notifications system was recently detected where notices about new or updated content were not going out as expected. Even worse, the settings within most users accounts for existing subscriptions were obviously messed up. The cause of the problem has been traced to a recent update when integration between the Private Messaging subsystem and Notifications was activated.

Unfortunately the number of bogus registrations attempts on our site continue to rise. (Read more on who may access this site.) Of particular concern are those registrations made by friends and/or family members of those already active here. I have made a slight change in our registration form asking for what we are calling a CEBUG Member Referral code. This is a made up series of words or string of characters - similar to a pass-phrase - we intend to use to identify such persons.

I have now created all the accounts I have records for of CEBUG Members and a few others that were registered here in the past. There were several that had not visited the site in some time so I decided to send them invitations instead. I did the same thing for all past members of CEBUG who were not active too.

Those returning to our site may find many content items missing from the site as the site is being re-built from scratch. During preparations for moving the site to a new server, all of database backups for the site were lost. Overtime, I hope to restore some of the missing content from other files found on my site. (For content I wrote.) However it is hard to say exactly what will or will not be restored at this time. Anything considered to be outdated, such as older event notices, will be let go.