Changes to Forum Operations, 4/10/2003

[Penny Century]

The Big Meltdown after last night's episode has pointed out an immediate need to decrease the number of HTTP calls our forum makes to the server. To that end, I've made a few changes to board specs.

1) Posted images will not show up in threads, even if the image is within our size limits. Instead, vBulletin will show a link to the image.

2) Images will no longer show up in .signature files. Again, vBulletin will generate a link to the image.

3) Forum searching has been disabled for all users. This was a tough call, but searching is a very server-intensive process, and let's face it, vB's engine sucks anyway. [G]

4) The board's server load limit has been reset to a lower number. You may occasionally start getting "server is too busy" messages again, although I hope the first three steps will drastically reduce the number and frequency of such messages.

In addition, periodically I will turn off hot linking for sites outside the ST Network. If you use McAfee, Norton AV, or other Web virus protection, you may notice that images will not load. During such times, you can get the images to load properly by temporarily disabling your virus protection. The forum is set to disallow direct uploads, dynamic URLs, or any file without an approved extension, which will provide you with a fair measure of protection while hot-link disabling is in effect.

These measures are subject to reassessment as needs change, and our host's head techie is working with me to ensure against factors such as malicious mischief. In the meantime, thanks for understanding.

Penny