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Found 16 results

  1. What character types are you tired of seeing? What would you like to see more of? Personally, I have yet to see a character from Mexico. A handful from Spain, no Mexicans. Which is a weird thing to notice, but I had too much time to think. I'm also terribly tired of the Girl who had wonderful childhood, has a single bad thing happen and then her parents shun her/she can't handle it and freaks out characters.
  2. Hey Everyone, So something I've been trying to figure out as far as a pattern goes is if there tends to be slower months in role-play over others. Our one site has been opened for over a year now and I didn't bother to mark anything as such last year and now I'm kicking myself as everything tends to be a bit slower right now [I'd say August-now has been the most noticeable.] I'm going to assume its the summer months as we were doing super well over late fall-late spring/early summer. Everyone on vacations, out in the sun, etc. Even advertising has been pretty dry. But I wanted to see if anyone else has noticed anything as such and the best way you guys handle it during the 'dryer seasons' of the year.
  3. There is a member on my site who just does not listen. We're constantly asking them to change their posts because they often godmode or write their characters as over powerful or perfect. And despite what we tell them, they kind of change the posts, but on their own terms, which sometimes requires us to again contact them and ask for edits. The other staff and I have had it up to here. We don't feel like we need to constantly be on this member's case about this stuff, but at the same time, they're not playing fairly and despite asking them to change their posts often, they don't seem to be understanding why. Punishment (or consequences) really need to happen... but we just don't know what kind would be appropriate for the situation. We don't want to ban them (I feel like that'd be more appropriate for a last resort thing), we just want to get the message across that they need to think about their character's actions, read our rules and specific thread stipulations, stop writing their character as all powerful / unable to lose or be injured, and apply realistic factors to their posts. So, I open this up to you ~ has anyone else ever dealt with a member like this? How did you handle it? What do you think is the best approach? Anything, at this point, will be useful! So, I thank you in advance! Anonymous poster hash: bfc46...d56
  4. THE MOUSIE GUIDE TO Writing a Quick-Start Guide How do you help potential new members navigate your site when you (and your staff) are not around? Perhaps your site has an unusual application process, lots of information available, or perhaps new members just seem to get inexplicably lost as they find their way around for the first time. The answer: A quick-start guide! WHAT IS IT? A Quick-Start guide is essentially an index, or a pathway, of everything new members need to know in order to set themselves up to play. It's usually a short document that ties together any topic prospective members need to read, and actions they need to take, to get OOC accounts sorted (if applicable) and character accounts applied. It may also go further and provide the member with tasks they can do after approval, to avoid that "I'm a member, now what do I do?" moment. So how do you write one? Let's start from the start. STEP ONE Make a list! Start by listing all of the actions a member needs to complete from registering their first account, to applying their first character. Include any topics that they should read along the way (or topics/forums that would be super helpful). Your list may look a little something like: Read the rules Read the plot Register an OOC account Get your OOC account sorted Read what character types we have Have a look at wanted ads/needed characters Register character account Fill out the profile Post the application Link your subaccounts Look at open threads Start an open thread Create a plotting thread Join the Discord This is a very basic list that might be used for a board that has both player and character accounts. You can see how it creates a logical pathway from reading those first important documentations, to getting involved, all in the rough order you would expect it to happen. STEP TWO Divide it up! Take a look at your list and see if you can start to spot sections. You might have "Getting your OOC Account", "Character Development & Registration" and "Once You're Sorted". Think about the stages that members are in as they work through this list, and then add them in as headings. GETTING YOUR OOC ACCOUNT Read the rules Read the plot Register an OOC account Get your OOC account sorted CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT & REGISTRATION Read what character types we have Have a look at wanted ads/needed characters Register character account Fill out the profile Post the application ONCE YOU'RE SORTED Link your subaccounts Look at open threads Start an open thread Create a plotting thread Join the Discord What these sub-headings do is help prospective members see where they are at a glance, rather than having a huge list of tasks to read down. It also breaks up the list a bit and makes it easier to follow. Sub-headings are great! Use them wherever you can. STEP THREE Write it up! Using these bullet points, write a very short introduction to the link, and then post the link to where the prospective member needs to go. Don't fall into the trap of putting too much information in your Quick-Start guide, let the posts you link to do the heavy lifting. This is just an index, so try to keep your points to a sentence---two at most. Remember, you can also use a direct link to the registration page, and also to the user settings (for custom-field based applications). You want this to be short, sweet, and direct focus to the links---and make sure that your links stand out as links! If your CSS has link colour very similar to the text colour, you may want to look into changing that, or using a bit of styling in the post to make sure people know it's a link. Below I've used bold text and red to note the links (they aren't links in the example, however). GETTING YOUR OOC ACCOUNT Check out our Rules Check out our Plot Register an OOC account using the name you'd like us to know you by Post in Introductions to get your OOC account sorted. Welcome! CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT & REGISTRATION See what character types we accept Need inspiration? Have a look at our Adoptables forum for ideas! Want more information about our setting? This forum has additional setting information. Fill out the profile. You may want to keep it in a word processor while you work on it! Post the profile in our applications forum. Hold tight! Our staff will review your application within 24hrs. ONCE YOU'RE SORTED Link your OOC and IC accounts -- this guide shows you how! Check out the list of open threads! Start an open thread of your own and post it to the list! Create a plotting thread to introduce your character to the community Join our Discord for more chatting and crazy plot ideas! You can see where I've re-worded some parts to more casual phrasing. "Read X, then read Y" can be abrupt, and destroy the tone of your documentation... but it's essentially what you're saying. I also added a couple of points, because... it doesn't matter how good your initial list is, you'll always think of something more while you're re-writing! STEP FOUR Style it up! You're basically done, but this is where you would add in your own header styles and other things that make it really fit in with the board visually. SO THERE IT IS Your awesome Quick-Start guide! Congratulations! I'd love to see what amazing guides this documentation helps to create!
  5. Whenever I'm gone, my members go utterly, utterly silent. They don't even put in an effort to chat with each other. I'm a pretty talkative person and I like being involved, I like hanging out with them, but if I'm away, everything is dead. Is this a consequence of me forcing myself into conversation too often when I'm around? Am I actually prohibiting them from getting to know each other? Or is the issue something else? I feel this is a common thing admins have dealt with as I've heard the same thing from others. Anyone ever solved this/Remedied this?
  6. I've been working on getting some affiliates together for my site, and I've been pondering a lot of questions. Many sites I've seen have quite a few with both static and scrolling. So, I'm wondering, how many affiliates do you think is the appropriate number to have? Where do you put the buttons? Do you have static, scrolling or both? Currently, I have my affiliates in the description of the adverts forum. I'm not sure how big I want it to be, though it will stretch to take as many buttons as I want to put. I'm also concerned that scrolling affiliates will be visually distracting. So. Experiences?
  7. I asked this elsewhere, but wanted to get more bang for the buck. I'm curious to know how y'all choose what goes into the sitewide wanteds and what goes into the personal wanteds. I'm guessing it's a lot easier for those of you who have canons based on fandoms. It's a fair assumption, I think, but please correct me if I'm wrong! I'm very curious. The site I run isn't based on anything but historical events. My staff and I were debating on this a few nights ago, because we seem to have blurred the lines and gotten confused over what is defined as sitewide and personal on our own site and for posting our own personal ads out on directory resources as staff members. I'm working on streamlining the process better since our site has sprouted large groups apart from the historical BEIC and native groups that we consider canon. The problem, I think, is that we over complicated things. So, to simplify matters, we tried to distill the process down to these scenarios. Do we define a site wide by: 1) By the group they are in by forum (BEIC, native, etc) 2) The group they are in by world built creation 3) Roles 4) Any combo of 1-3. I know for sure that personal is what it says... personal. So personal plots, personal wanted family members / friends, etc. I consider some of the groups to be personal smaller groups, but those are considered by others to be potentially part of the site wide wanted. So, hit me with it. As a staff member: What goes into your site wide wanteds across the directory resources? What goes into your personal wanteds across the directory resources? Have you ever experienced too much blurring between your own sitewide and personal wanteds?
  8. Hello everyone, I'm new to RPG Initiative but also on RPG Directory and even Reddit. I'm a veteran role player for online, freeform and text-based storytelling style RPGs. Basically, I love to write and I have a big imagination and I adore being around likeminded creative spirits. I'm also a veteran of Worlde Arcane, which was my favourite game for long time but it no longer exists. Just mentioning it in case anyone comes across this post and wants to reconnect. Looking forward to being a part of the community. I don't just advertise on directories like this, I use them as a Game Master resource to talk shop with other Admins and Mods and get ideas, etc. etc. Oh, and as the subject said, I'm from Canada (Toronto)! Hello!
  9. TL:DR This is two questions really: 1) How do you deal with claims of admin favoritism toward yourself as an admin? 2) What experiences have you had with getting new admin in place of the old, and what were your main concerns, or pain-points while it was happening? Background: I'm still only considered a temporary admin on our site while our main Admin figures out how much time they're going to be able to devote to the site. They've been entirely absent in an admin capacity for some time (three months or more) and log in intermediately. There are quite a few loose ends in regards to major plots and site maintenance (like managing the store) that I don't yet have the credentials to edit or manage. I plan on asking for these, but if I get full-admin status, what do you all use as checks for yourself in regards to being an admin? I bought a store item fair and square with my site credits, but the item says to contact Admin for official details. That would be ME now. How do you all deal with creating fun stories and getting items for your characters without it seeming like favoritism? Should I worry what others might think about me showing favoritism to myself? In addition to this weird thought of favoritism I'm worried of showing towards myself comes the fact that there may have to be some smudging of story-lines and character adjustments (maybe even major plot-points) if and when we transition the full site to me, particularly because previous admin do not want their characters to be anything more than NPCs. Have any of you experienced admin transitions? What was your experience as an admin or a player?
  10. I poked around asking about this, but I thought this would make a good topic. I had intended to transfer a lot of our information from threads into pages on jcink, using the webpage maker feature. This became a huge discussion between an admin and I today on how we want it to look, how we want to use it, and how we'd organize it. For example, perhaps we could do articles and blogs as well as important documentation. Just considering all the possibilities and how we'd make certain things look and be easily navigable. So, I started digging up sites that I knew had pages for documentation to see how they did things, and that meant asking around for people to share their sites for inspiration. Anyway! Do you use the webpage maker feature? If so, then what do you use it for? If not, why not? If your site isn't hosted by jcink but has a similar feature, what is it? How did you organize yours? Layout, categories, etc. Did you use a lot of html, was it easy to do? Does this feature automatically use the skin theme you have for your site? If possible, link me to your site or PM me! I want to see it all.
  11. After a discussion with @Gothams Reckoning here, I told him that a discussion about staffing a site is more suitable in the forum. I think, ultimately, it is a matter of preference and control. Some want to share, some want to keep all control for themselves. I want to share. I knew sites with only one administrator and one moderator (or no moderator at all) which were doing well, and sites with several who were doing well. And the same thing for the same numbers, who weren't doing well. I think it is a matter of investment in the story. Sharing the duties and sharing the fun is the best, so that nobody gets tired or overwhelmed. A site having a few core people invested in it from the beginning, has activity which lures other members to join and has the chance to last more, because it has already a core of interested/ enthusiastic people. And this is what I am needing, in general, first and foremost. A second (or third) staff member is needed because hopefully people don't get busy at the same time, because then there is a serious problem among the staff... I think that two people staffing a site can write among themselves and create activity until others join. It is also wonderful when there is one staff member in an opposite timezone, to be there when the other isn't. Staffing a RPG is a volunteering job, which shouldn't take all one's free time. Also, if somebody doesn't want to do a certain task (such as advertising or commenting on bios) nobody can force her to, as long as she contributes with other needed tasks. And I think that involving more people, with more focused responsibilities, avoids burn-out and, at the same time, helps with the community spirit (being invested, a feeling of belonging, of ownership... of being important and meaningful, something like this enhances motivation to help.) Sometimes, when my staff is busy, I feel overwhelmed with doing too much myself and not receiving enough feedback, at least (when I would have preferred concrete help too, not only feedback). Sometimes it feels lonely that I don't have even to whom to ask an opinion (timezones adding to it, but not only this) and I think this is the worst part. They all know that I’ll manage somehow, I always do – but for how long? Everybody sees the site survives without their help… but I am always saying that I need help, because I really feel I shouldn't do it alone! And if everyone pitched in, nobody would feel tired and overwhelmed, because it would be little to do for everyone. Many people judge the number of staff only from the point of view of the number of members, and think that staff duty is only to approve bios and to update lists, needing access to the control panels. There is so much which gets overlooked - the research, the plots, the creation of events.... And we are all people who have a life outside the board too, one wouldn't need to get overwhelmed with duties. A few responsibilities that one can perform while still having time to write. The number of staff shouldn't depend on the number of characters and members, because there are sites for which, no matter how many members/ characters are there, the staff has certain tasks to perform anyway. Or even more tasks if there aren't too many characters/ members, because they have to replace /complement for the missing ones too (eg NPC-ing their role). I found that most tasks have to be done when the site has 4 members equally as when it has 30 members, and most of them don't even require access to panels (except the coding and graphics staff, who of course needs access to administration panel). One needs writing NPCs, researching, leading stories, writing chronicles and lore., no matter how many or how few members you have. And mostly this is what I need help with/ sharing tasks with. You said also why not members? I would have loved if all members wanted to help as if they were staff, everyone with what they love doing: some with advertising, some with leading a thread or another, some with writing NPCs, some with writing articles for the monthly chronicle. And at the same time, if people want to help, why not be appointed as staff, in charge with the thing they want to help, just to make it official and their work recognized? This doesn't mean access at the control panel. It means their names listed among the staff, eventually (not necessarily) the names on a different colour, or a title below them.
  12. Don't know what to say? Try these questions (not mandatory): How long have you been RPing? Just over a year What are your favorite RP genres? DC Comics How do you like to RP (Forum, chat, email)? Forum What is your favorite book, movie or type of music (or all three)? OOoooo too many, but Super Troopers always make me smile when I'm sad. What other interest/Hobbies do you have? Roller Derby and school-bleh What's your favorite color? Red What's your favorite drink? Anything with bubbles I've only been role playing for a short amount of time. I was a late bloomer. I also started my first site recently, so I'm learning everything I can. Happy to be here. <3 Bamf
  13. How to protect your MyBB forum from spam. This guide was written by VirusZero. Do not reproduce without permission. If you have a MyBB forum then you likely have at some point had to deal with spam. Most admins do inevitably have to cross this bridge. So, with that in mind, this guide will attempt to show you some of the most common ways to handle spam and what I feel are the most effective ways to manage spam and keep your forum clean. Before I start, please keep in mind that most of this was originally written for MyBB 1.6 forums though much remains the same for both 1.6 and 1.8. Several of the plugins listed have not been officially converted to MyBB 1.8 and, as such, may not function as expected (or at all) on MyBB 1.8. If you are running a MyBB 1.8 forum and use these plugins, they may still work for you (if you add "18*" to "compatibility" in the pluginname_info array). But you should always take a back up before ever attempting to install one of these plugins. (Just to be on the safe side.) Spamalyzer The Spamalyzer plugin (version .93 ) by ZiNgA BuRgA is one of the most effective methods to combat spam on a forum with the least amount of negative impact on users. This plugin stops spam by combing through each post to look for certain behaviours used extensively by spammers and then denying posts with those behaviours from ever appearing on site. For those who have never installed a plugin before... 1- Download a copy of the plugin from ZiNgA BuRgA's site. (Right here for MyBB 1.6 or here / here for MyBB 1.8.) 2- Use an extractor program (one that can handle 7zip) to open the file up. 3- Take the resulting 2 folders (admin and inc) and upload them to where your MyBB is installed. If you've changed where your admin files are located then rename the admin folder to whatever you changed it to first. For easy install, you can put them into a zip file then upload them to your MyBB install folder with your host's cPanel. Then you can click on the .zip file and click "extract" from cPanel (extract to your home folder so that the folders inside the .zip get merged with the existing folders of the same name.) 4- After uploading the files, go into your copy of MyBB's ACP. 5- Click "Plugins" from the left menu 6- Click "Install and Activate" beside the Spamalyzer plugin. After this plugin is installed you will need to configure it for optimal use. To do this go to "Configuration" then and look for the setting group titled "Spamalyzer Settings". Please keep in mind that the following settings are based on what I have used and what I have found to work well for me. This does not mean they are a perfect fit for everyone. They will, however, hopefully provide you with a starting point to make any tweaks and modifications to best fit your forum. Once inside Spamalyzer's settings page...Under the header "Thresholds and Exclusions" Look for the option titled "Groups to Moderate" and set that to groups "1,5" (these are your guests and validating members. Most spam that this will pick up will be by guests so there's no real reason to have this plugin running against members. Though if you do get spambots registering then feel free to add your member group ID, which should be 2, here.) If you do want to leave registered members up for checking, you will probably want to set "Registration Age (hours) Threshold" to like 700 hours or so. This way members who have stuck around for a while are excluded from checks (since most spammers will be joining up to spam right away, not like 4 weeks later). Then find "Ignored Hosts" and add: to the end of it in order to make it so that most free forums can advertise with you without issue. This will mean that even if a site (like say support.jcink.com) uses some of the words on the keywords list that it wouldn't count and the spam filter would just let everything go. Though this does nothing for other self-hosted sites (you can add them in if you wish, but it's likely more a hassle than is necessary). For the options under "Spam Weighting Factors": - "Weight per Simple link" set 0.3 (Simple links are like [*url]somelink[*/url] ) - "Maximum Simple link weight" set 3 (Simple links are rarely used, even by spammers... but there's no sense having this too high... just in case a legitimate user posts a simple link.) - "Weight Per Complex Link" set to 0.5 (complex links are like [*url=link]words[*/url]) - "Maximum Complex Link Weight" set to 4 (You'll want a limit on this because guests will be posting links to their sites and if they have a lot this setting, if left too high, could unfairly flag them as spammers.) - "Same Host Link Bias" set to 0.15 (This punishes spammers for linking to the same place over and over. We want this set fairly low because guests will be linking to their sites a few times and we don't want them punished for it.) - "Duplicate Keyword Bias" to 0.3 - "Badword Weight Factor" to 2.5 (this means if a spammer uses the same keywords over and over... they get penalized more heavily for it.) - "Weight Per Day for Bumping Old Thread" set to 0.15 - "Maximum Weight Applied for Bumping Old Thread" set to 3 (If they bump a thread that's over 20 days old they will still get penalized, but not outrageously. This way if a legit user bumps their thread it doesn't erase their bump.) - "Special Forums" set this to whatever the Forum ID number (where it says "showforum.php?fid=#") for your advertising forum is. (I also recommend that if you have a guest friendly question section that you add that section's FID also just in case a spammer tries hitting there too.) - "Weight Factor of Special Forums" set to 1.5. (This increases the weighting for those sections, defined above, making spam like actions worth 1.5x more. So if they would have gotten a 3 spam points previously, it'd be worth 4.5 after this. You probably shouldn't set this higher than 1.5 simply because it can end up punishing legitimate users too harshly and detecting them as spammers.) For "Spam Weighting Factors (user)"... If you don't have the user groups enabled (only guests) then this won't make much difference. Though you can probably leave these at defaults since they're acceptable enough. For the values in Stop Forum Spam section... - "SFS Username Frequency Weight" to 0.8 - "SFS Email Frequency Weight" to 0.8 - "SFS IP Frequency Weight" to 0.8 - "SFS Weighting Limit" to 30 These are for your server checking into Stop Forum Spam's database to see if a poster is listed. Though since email likely won't be used by guests it has little value here. But username and IP have a lot of value here since spammers tend to recycle the same usernames and ips a lot. For Akismet, just leave the Akismet API blank because it's not overly useful (Stop Forum Spam does a better job here anyway). For Google Lookups, this section is somewhat difficult to really judge how effective it is. I've had it set but some Chinese spam still got in even though it should have just deleted it. But anything in Italian or French has gotten deleted. - "Foreign Language Weighting" to 10 - "Native Language" to "en" (or whatever language your forum is...) - "Google Search Results Weighting" to 0.2 - "Maximum Google Search Weighting" to 3 - "Minimum Google Search Message Length" to 50 For Spam detection heading... - "Report Post Weighting Threshold" to 7 - "Unapprove Post weighting threshold" to 10 - "Block post weighting threshold" to 15 These settings determine after how many points a post gets before it is reported to staff, unapproved and reported or just erased entirely without notifying staff. This allows a guest to have some spam-like behaviours without actually punishing them right off. (But still notifies staff to have a look, just in case something is amiss.) Though getting a score of 15 is actually quite difficult unless a user is deliberately trying. (Since the limits on links and means at best they could get 6 points... which isn't enough for a report. And the keywords selected are ones that are very unlikely for a legitimate user to ever actually use enough to be seriously penalized for. ) Under the Misc options... You can leave the "Keyword Minimum length" and "Ignored Keywords" without too much issue. (Though if you really wanted you could add any roleplay related terms you can think of to it. But generally it isn't necessary since they won't be detected by the bad keywords filter anyway or any of the other settings.) In the text box for "Bad Keywords" clear it then paste in: These keywords are commonly used by spambots and adding them will ensure that their posts get filtered. You can leave "Reporter User ID" to 1 to use the root admin's account to show as reporting if you want. Though you can also use another account (like a shared staff account or something) too just for visual difference. This one is purely up to you. You can set "Don't Duplicate Report" to "yes" purely to prevent a lot of duplicate reporting (just in case members can see a post that makes it through somehow and they report it...) Important safety tip - Even though Spamalyzer will prevent spam posts from showing up on site, it will still keep a record of the spam posts it's caught (detailing why it classed them as spam). These logs can be viewed in the ACP by "Tools & Maintenance" (top menu) then clicking "Spamalyzer log". You can then click the spam weighting number beside an individual post to see why it got that rating. Periodically you may want to prune these logs (to keep your database size down) by clicking the "Prune Spamalyzer Log" tab (in the Log section) and then entering a number to determine how many days worth of logs to keep. (I recommend pruning down to 15 days at first when using this system until you get used to it, just to occasionally check for any accidental mislabels of legitimate posts. But after a few months of using it then you can probably prune all, or all but 2-3 days, once you're satisfied with the system and it's tweaks.) IP2Location IP2Location is a plugin that detects the IP of a visitor then matches that IP to a country (based on CIDR ranges). It allows admins to restrict certain countries from either registering (by denying them access to the registration page) or it can actually block them from the site period. This latter option is the one we're after. (Thus preventing spammers from known bad countries from either registering or accessing the posting pages.) Like other plugins... - Get a copy of IP2Location from the source (MyBB 1.6 version / MyBB 1.8 version) - Go to IP2Location (Lite) and click "IP v4 BIN". - When asked to register click "Not now, bring me to download page" and download the .zip file titled: "IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN.ZIP" - Unzip IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN.ZIP. - Upload ip2location.php and the ip2location folder into your inc ->plugins folder. - Upload the IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN file (that you unzipped earlier) to a folder of your choosing on your server (I suggest /inc/). - Click "Plugins" from the left menu - Click "Install and Activate" beside the IP2Location plugin. - Go to "Configuration" (from the top menu). - Click "IP2Location Country Blocker" from the list of plugins. - Enter the precise exact location of the uploaded IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN on your server (EX- if your bin file was in /inc/ then you may need to write in /www/mybbfolder/inc/IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB1.BIN) - From the list of countries choose which ones cannot view (Windows users can press ctrl and click to select multiple options. Note- Do not select all, you will block yourself!) Due to high volume of spam/few registrations it is generally safe to block: China, Russia and Iran. - Choose the action you want to happen with blocked countries (either registration page only or all pages.) - OPTIONAL - Change the message you want to display to blocked countries. You may want to give an email address so users blocked in error can contact you and let you know. - Click "Save Changes" when done. Register Time Register time (v 1.2.1) is a plugin designed primarily to stop spambots from registering on your forum. It won't do anything to stop guest/unregistered spammers from getting into your guest ad section. I'm including it here though because some spammers will attempt to register accounts first and this can help stop them (which, if they can't register, means they can't drop spam in your other sections). - Upload register_time.php to your inc->plugins folder. - After uploading the files, go into your copy of MyBB's ACP. - Click "Plugins" from the left menu - Click "Install and Activate" beside the Register time plugin. - Go to "Configuration" (from the top menu). - Click "Register Time Settings". - Now set "register time" to 30 or so seconds. - Click "Save settings". Note - This is a core feature in MyBB 1.8 (according to here). So MyBB 1.8 users don't need to install this (it's already there). However you may have to look through the options to find out where/how to configure it. Stop Forum Spam Stop Forum Spam for MyBB 1.6 is another plugin that won't stop a spammer from filling your guest ad section... But it will keep spambots from registering (and thus delivering spam that way). Note that like with Register Time this mod has been added to MyBB 1.8 by default so for 1.8 users it is unnecessary to install it. - Upload the inc folder (and contents, with file structure preserved) from the Stop Forum Spam to your inc folder. - After uploading the files, go into your copy of MyBB's ACP. - Click "Plugins" from the left menu - Click "Install and Activate" beside the Stop Forum Spam plugin. - Go to "Configuration" (from the top menu). - Click "Stop Forum Spam check". - Ensure that a checkbox is beside "Check Username?", "Check email address?" and "Check IP?". - Set "confidence level" to whatever you feel comfortable. (Lower numbers here mean more are rejected... 40-50% is probably a good level to use though. If you want higher protection then use 20%.) - Set "Log Denials" to "yes". - Set "Failsafe" to "yes". - Click the "Save Settings" button. .htaccess For self hosted forums, admins often have the option to use a .htaccess file (which lets the server know who is allowed to access a particular folder and who isn't). We can use this to our advantage to block entire ranges of IPs from known problem users with minimal effort. (And if they tried to visit any part of the forum at all they only get an error stating they can't view that page. So this means bots can't use urls to direct access your ad section to fill it.) Now because one of the largest producers of spam is China and the actual chances of getting any legitimate traffic from China is low (due to their heavily monitored internet, which would necessitate them to use VPNs or proxies to access out anyway) this makes them relatively safe to block without severe consequence. (The largest producer of spam is actually the US... But we don't want to block them because it affects too many legitimate visitors.) So how do we actually block using .htaccess? 1- You need to open your cPanel (or whatever equivalent to cPanel you have) and log in. 2- Once inside, look for "File Manager" icon and click it. 3- It should open up a menu asking you where you want to open up, and below that it should have a check box for "show hidden files" (or something along those lines)... make sure that box is checked. 4- Open your file manager and navigate to where your MyBB install is located. 5A- If you don't see a .htaccess file already there, Click the "New File" button at the top and name it ".htaccess" (without the quotes). Then open this file. 5B- If you see a .htaccess file there already then just open it up. 6- Now go to http://www.ip2location.com/blockvisitorsbycountry.aspx and select: - IPv4 - China - Apache .htaccess deny - Then click download and save the resulting text file somewhere. 7- Open that text file and copy it's contents. 8- Paste the contents of that text file into your .htaccess file. 9- Click "Save" (or Submit). Warning - editing .htaccess can block large numbers of people in a hurry. So be very careful about which IPs you add. And editing this file should always be done carefully and cautiously. (And it's a good idea to keep the cPanel open, then test the site, just in case something goes wrong so you can easily/quickly revert any changes.) Moderated Boards Having forums where all posts must be approved by moderators before they can appear is fairly effective. However it has a few major (and glaring) flaws... 1- large volumes of spam can overwhelm moderators. (Larger forums can easily get over a thousand spam posts in a day.) 2- this depends on moderators to actually approve posts. (And if no one either checks in for a few days or they have to go offline for some time can easily lead to issue 1.) Guest advertisers also can contribute to the first issue because if they don't see their post show up right away (when they hit submit) they may post again. Because of these major flaws, I do not recommend using moderated boards as a solo anti-spam solution. I feel that there are other, far more effective, solutions. Many of which are automatic and don't require constant staff attention. Though having it as a secondary option can be useful in cases. (Like if you have a guest ad account that's being abused...) To set this up: - Log into your ACP. - Click "Forum & Posts" (From the top links section) - Scroll down to your ad forum (or whichever forum you want to moderate) and click it's name. - Now in click "Edit Forum Settings" (it'll be in the first row of links under "home >> Forum Management") - Scroll down and locate "Moderation Options", now check the "Yes, moderate new threads" and "Yes, moderate new posts" options. - Then scroll down and click "Save Forum". Password Protected Boards Password protected boards are generally disliked by most advertisers. (Since it takes them an extra second to enter that password before they can post.) But they are quite effective at stopping a good percentage of spammers from ever managing to post on your site. On MyBB, you can create a password protected board by: - Log into your ACP. - Click "Forum & Posts" (From the top links section) - Scroll down to your ad forum (or whichever forum you want to add a password to) and click it's name. - Now in click "Edit Forum Settings" (it'll be in the first row of links under "home >> Forum Management") - Scroll down and locate the "Forum Password" option. Enter the password you want inside the text box. - OPTIONAL - Scroll up to the forum description and enter the password here (so guests can easily locate the password.) - Finally scroll down to the bottom and click "Save Forum" button. You may also want to add notes in the forum rules (like if you have a link back and first link section) about the password. To do this: - Log into your ACP. - Click "Forum & Posts" (From the top links section) - Scroll down to your forum that you want to add the notes to. - Scroll down to "Forum rules" and make sure the drop down is set to at least "Display rules for this forum in thread listing". - Then give them a title (if not already done). - Then just add a note about the password (and what it is) in the "rules" text box. - Finally scroll down and click the "Save Forum" button. Guest Accounts Guest accounts for advertising are almost universally hated by advertisers (because it slows them down even further). But they are effective for keeping spam out. Though guest accounts should generally be reserved for cases where other methods to allow advertising have failed (simply because they are somewhat cumbersome and generally loathed). Before you actually create a guest account, you may want to create a new usergroup for guest ad account. (This way you aren't giving guests complete access to post wherever they want...) - Log into your ACP. - Click "Users & Groups" (From the top links section). - Click "Groups" (from the menu on the left). - Click the "Add New Usergroup" tab from the top. - Enter a name for this usergroup. - Then under "Copy Permissions" select your banned user group. (Because banned user group should have no posting rights across your forum...) - Any other options here can be configured if you want. Otherwise click the "Save User Group" button. - Now click "Forum & Posts" (From the top links section). - Scroll down to your ad forum and click it's name. (You may have to repeat from here down if you have a first-link and back links section also...) - Now click "Permissions" (from the second set of tabs). - Then scroll down to find the ad group you just created and click "Set custom permissions". - Now give them the ability to post ("Can view forum", "can view threads within forum","Can post threads", "Can post replies"). - Then click "Save" to apply their permissions. To create a guest advertisement account: - Log into your ACP. - Click "Users & Groups" (From the top links section) - Click "Create new user" - Enter the username, password, email address, - Then set primary group to the ad group you just created. - Then click the "Save User" button. Closing the Ad section This is the last, and most drastic, option available to admins. However it is a choice worth considering in certain cases. (Like if your forum is getting overrun with spam despite employing other options.) Guest advertisers will HATE this (especially if you've recently posted any ads yourself). However this can be a necessary course of action. (Though please, if you employ this... stop posting ads while your ad section is closed. It's incredibly rude to do so.) To do this... - Log into your ACP. - Click "Forum & Posts" (From the top links section) - Scroll down to your forum that you want to close down and click it's name. - Scroll down to "Access Options" and then uncheck "Forum is Open?". - OPTIONAL - You may also want to add a short note (in your forum description detailing your ad section is closed temporarily due to extreme volumes of spam). - Then click the "Save Forum" button. If you have multiple ad forums (like a first link and link back section) then you may want to close them down, using the above method, also. Those are some of the most common methods of combating spam. They are not the only options though. (There may be other plugins which will provide spam protection.) And as time goes on, newer and more powerful options may present themselves. And I can't guarantee that this guide will be 100% relevant/accurate once newer plugins are released. But hopefully this guide has give you an overview of the options, how to configure them (and tweak them) to protect your sites. Thank you for reading and if you have questions, comments or concerns regarding this guide... Please feel free to ask here or PM me.
  14. The age-old debate over roleplay terminologies and what they mean exactly. On my board, I have Character Bazaar which is where the wanteds, adoptables, and exchanges go. I have these three as their own separate subforums and it's causing some confusion, which suddenly has me confused too though I had very distinct definitions in my head. Now it is an ongoing debate and one that I think might over-complicate things. To me, wanted ads are like classifieds. Looking for a tutor! Someone is looking for arranged marriage! You know, that kind of thing. Adoptables are characters within a group or family that already have some history, some background, name/age and some of their personality decided -- kind of like this orphanage of poor characters who just need a player to pick them up, dust them off, and love them. However, being new to RP, this seems to not always be the case. One of my friends is saying that an adoptable doesn't always allow room for the player to grow, therefore even a fleshed out character can be a wanted ad for a player to pick up and make that character their own. I think that's where the distinction is for many roleplayers? The ability to flesh out the character further themselves. If this is the case, I may just combined wanted/adoptable subforums into one, but it leaves me wondering why use two different terms for something that may basically be the same thing? How do you guys treat this? The way I set this up makes my friend and also my admin have to figure out more on how to split up her wanteds/adoptables which makes more work for her, I think. A few of the adoptable threads from my members have a mix of wanteds/adoptables which is fine to me. For instance, one person has two fleshed out characters for a retinue, with a few open wanted positions listed at the bottom. *shrugs* This doesn't bother me but it does make me think, ah, maybe time to combine.
  15. In the last 48 hours, our site has been hit by spam posts originating from Rusian Federation based IP addresses. Anyone else getting hit? We have reported all hits to JCink admin and it's being dealt with as an ongoing issue atm.
  16. This is such a delicate sort of topic because I have found that I've been on sites where staff will take an original character and place them up for 'adoption' by another member and essentially allow the history to be copied which I personally don't like but, it's hard because I've definitely been on the 'abandoned' side of the spectrum before where you are really involved with a writing partner and their character is entirely intricate to your character's life and plot and then they suddenly up and vanish without any warning and your character is stuck married to and having children with this non-existent person and you're kind of left in the lurch. I'm curious to know how other people approach this because on my site, I will only place a character up for 'adoption' if they were a Wanted Ad of a member to begin with. Otherwise I encourage members to create an plot reason for that persons absence. i.e I put up a ad for my character 'Jill seeking John Smith, age 29, PB this, backstory this.' A person takes them, creates their own history and app around my character and my backstory, plays them for months and then vanishes and has no intentions to come back. What I do then is clear that app put a wanted ad up for the same character indicate the brief past encounters that might be relevant but ask the to re-create their own version of the character/history and their own whole new app. I do the same for all members who have lost a wanted, I'll allow them to place a version of the character they requested back up for adoption so long as the new member creates a whole new history. ...The issue is I've had members come back and ask for their applications only to be enraged to see someone else is playing a version of that character because they were planning to play that character somewhere else and accuse you of plagiarism. (Some of the members apologize after they realize the histories are completely brand new but some of them don't care and then go on to spread malicious word about you and the site because they feel slighted.) I usually have gone out of my way for these members to e-mail them their old histories since I view those writings as 'their property' when I easily could have just said I deleted them. (I always just archive old apps) I honestly don't know how to even respond to these sorts of things because who is in the wrong? If I created this character and you played him does that automatically make them your character? Are we not allowed to request that someone take up this crucial plot role? If certainly wouldn't be that way with a Site Canon, so where is the line? I'm curious to see if other sites have had these problems or if I'm just being too accommodating with members/past members.
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