The Spammers are Coming!

Apparently, we've attracted a few spam agents. Over the last few days, our humble forums have attracted registrations from users who are obviously registering specifically to post spam messages or advertise spamfully in their profiles. So far, nothing drastic has happened and we've caught the fraudulent users before they could post anything.

However, this does make us mindful of security, so please do keep a wary eye out. If you notice usernames in the forums that do not match names in the game, page me right away and let me know. There are a few users who use different forum monikers than they use in the game, but we know who they are and they are relatively few.

Mars, Feaelin and I have also been discussing the possibility of changing out the existing forums for new, updated ones. This is always a tough decision, as any major forum change tends to be a disruption. There nearly always exists the threat of data loss if posts and threads cannot be accurately migrated from the old forum to the new one, and getting used to a new forum is sort of a bother.

Nonetheless, Feaelin has worked up a brilliant plugin for phpBB3 that actually uses the MUCK's username and password setup as the validator for the forums. This means that you could log into the forums at any time using any charactername and password that is currently active in the game. We would then disable the registration through the website entirely, thereby eliminating the issues we're currently having with spammers AND uncomplicating the whole 'Alt Privacy' issue in one fell swoop.

Neat idea, potentially a lot of hassle. Therefore, I am not making any promises. I am very interested in Feaelin's project, though, so we'll see. Stay tuned for updates.