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Announcement DPF "State of The Forum" - April 2021

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Announcement DPF "State of The Forum" - April 2021
noone said:
Hmm, Anything goes section is missing all of 2019, 2020 and 2021 posts. :eeyore: but glad to see that the disney emoji's survived :) Off to look at the rest of the forum.

PS - what is reaction score and points about?
PPS - thrilled all my pm's survived :tigger:

UPS - may i assume we all need to change our passwords after the hack?
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Changing your DPF password would definitely be a good idea, as well as enabling two-factor authentication either with a text message or setting up google authenticator or other authenticator app.
 
Thank you for bringing the forum back and doing updates! Here is some of my feedback, some of which come from having a tech background:

What are your suggestions for making the forum better? (More mods? The addition of some specific forums? etc..)
  • I definitely think there should be some more mods added, and people who have the powers to stop something like this from happening again (ex: being able to run updates, have more access to the tools necessary stop things in their tracks, etc.). Just anything you can do to prevent something like this happening again, or at least it being so damaging.
  • Definitely try to keep things updated, keep an eye out for known vulnerabilities (if possible).
  • Something I suggested in the chats while the forum was down, is that as a newbie (I joined in Feb) I found a lot of dead links and advice that was no longer applicable or referenced things that no longer existed or worked in pinned posts meant for newbies or referenced in general. I'm willing to go through all the pinned posts/material again and help clean up the forums a bit if wanted.
What features did you like/dislike in previous iterations of DPF?
  • If feedback is added back, I found the process of doing it a little strange. If it could be more streamlined that would be nice. I can't remember specific examples, I was only able to do it 4 times before the wipe.
What does DPF need? Can we grow it or increase activity?
  • As I mentioned in the first set of suggestions, I think making the place a bit easier to navigate as a newbie and making sure pinned posts are cleaned up every so often and/or updated (if able). I was confused quite a bit by posts meant to help me. If I wasn't quick to figure things out/find what I need through searching etc, I might have given up and gone somewhere else.
  • Good news is this community came up fairly quickly when I was searching around about Disney Pin collecting, though not sure how much the wipe might have affected search results. I know google SEO is quite literally it's own job (I haven't done it but have had coworkers do it) so not sure how much to suggest/help there, but I think just making sure things are updated and managed well (and reaching out through other social media platforms, etc) should help things along. Maybe have "partnerships"/affiliations with other disney pin collecting places. Forums aren't as popular as they used to be but taking advantage of using other platforms (Instagram, Discord, Facebook, Twitter, etc) might help.

I'll let you know if I think of more! I'm glad we're back.
 
Cicada said:
A lot of the modifications from the previous version will need to be restored or replaced with newer versions, and some aren’t available. I’ll need to take a look at what we had, and worst case, when user feedback comes back, I can try to manually pore through any old backups from our host to see if I can retrieve the feedback data, or — if you remember your feedback score, I should be able to manually change it (honor system!)

and yes — very curious that they only seemed to delete posts randomly. My guess is it was a kid who found an exploit/vulnerability for the version of forum software (or perhaps in one of the forum modifications/add-ons) we were previously running, and just went through randomly deleting stuff manually.

the person attempted to hold the forum hostage for a $1000 ransom and basically had access to some inactive moderator accounts, but it doesn’t seem they had much more access than that.

I mention “manually” because it seems they had access to the accounts for at least 4-6 hours before our smod/admin @starry_solo or @dancecats banned all the other mod accounts, and may have given up on trying to cause more damage when there was no response from the mods/admins in their “ransom post” in the private Moderators forum.
Click to expand...
Maybe an idea would be, if a moderator is inactive for a certain amount of time, remove mod access temporarily until they come back? This way if an old mod account is compromised, the person can't do much with it. Since inactive accounts are more prone to this. I think this was a system set in place for a forum I used to have mod side access too (though wasn't technically a mod, was a press team. It's been quite a few years).
 
Cicada said:
A lot of the modifications from the previous version will need to be restored or replaced with newer versions, and some aren’t available. I’ll need to take a look at what we had, and worst case, when user feedback comes back, I can try to manually pore through any old backups from our host to see if I can retrieve the feedback data, or — if you remember your feedback score, I should be able to manually change it (honor system!)

and yes — very curious that they only seemed to delete posts randomly. My guess is it was a kid who found an exploit/vulnerability for the version of forum software (or perhaps in one of the forum modifications/add-ons) we were previously running, and just went through randomly deleting stuff manually.

the person attempted to hold the forum hostage for a $1000 ransom and basically had access to some inactive moderator accounts, but it doesn’t seem they had much more access than that.

I mention “manually” because it seems they had access to the accounts for at least 4-6 hours before our smod/admin @starry_solo or @dancecats banned all the other mod accounts, and may have given up on trying to cause more damage when there was no response from the mods/admins in their “ransom post” in the private Moderators forum.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! The forum I'm an Admin on has some rather inactive Mods, and I am going to share this so that maybe we can remove Mod access when a Mod doesn't sign in for a month or something, so that this could be helped if something like this happened on ours! I've been working on some Mod How Tos, a Mod beginner guide and listing off basic Mod duties, etc. . . . so this will be a good thing to add in to discussions! Really appreciate your sharing the info!
 
noone said:
Hmm, Anything goes section is missing all of 2019, 2020 and 2021 posts. :eeyore: but glad to see that the disney emoji's survived :) Off to look at the rest of the forum.

PS - what is reaction score and points about?
PPS - thrilled all my pm's survived :tigger:

UPS - may i assume we all need to change our passwords after the hack?
Click to expand...
Hi Noone!
 
slbrabham said:
Has anyone tried to create a thread in the For Trade or For Se section in the Marketplace? It says I don’t have privileges. I wanted to play around with it and couldn’t.
Click to expand...
The biggest change I’m working on right now is how the marketplace works — they’re currently “closed” for new threads because the “DPF Marketplace” tab at the top will be the new place to look for listings — when an item is listed in the “new” marketplace, a thread will automatically be created in the old marketplace forums for discussion.

The new marketplace should be easier and more visually appealing when browsing for trades/items. If anyone is so inclined, try making a test listing or two in the new marketplace — please add “TEST” to the item so that I can go through and delete the items and listings after we’ve worked out all the kinks.

appreciate everyone’s patience and support through this! we’ve already received some very generous donations from James and Nancy (I’m not familiar with their screen names here) and these will go toward hosting fees and any forum add-ons/modifications that require payment.

Thank you again! ♥️
 
stratasfan said:
Thanks for sharing! The forum I'm an Admin on has some rather inactive Mods, and I am going to share this so that maybe we can remove Mod access when a Mod doesn't sign in for a month or something, so that this could be helped if something like this happened on ours! I've been working on some Mod How Tos, a Mod beginner guide and listing off basic Mod duties, etc. . . . so this will be a good thing to add in to discussions! Really appreciate your sharing the info!
Click to expand...
Awesome — and yes; as the forum grows and (hopefully) comes back to life, we will definitely need more active moderators to keep things running smoothly, as many have either stopped visiting/logging in, or stopped trading :o
 
Cicada said:
The biggest change I’m working on right now is how the marketplace works — they’re currently “closed” for new threads because the “DPF Marketplace” tab at the top will be the new place to look for listings — when an item is listed in the “new” marketplace, a thread will automatically be created in the old marketplace forums for discussion.

The new marketplace should be easier and more visually appealing when browsing for trades/items. If anyone is so inclined, try making a test listing or two in the new marketplace — please add “TEST” to the item so that I can go through and delete the items and listings after we’ve worked out all the kinks.

appreciate everyone’s patience and support through this! we’ve already received some very generous donations from James and Nancy (I’m not familiar with their screen names here) and these will go toward hosting fees and any forum add-ons/modifications that require payment.

Thank you again! ♥️
Click to expand...
Just curious, will auctions still be a thing? Those are one of our favorite things to do.
 
Mcgilligan said:
SoraPandora’s account is still locked (because the hackers used her account).
Could one of the moderators unlock it?
Click to expand...
Yes absolutely— i assume you have contact with them? I can reset their password/send them a reset password email once I’ve unlocked it
 
BellesEnchantedRose said:
Just curious, will auctions still be a thing? Those are one of our favorite things to do.
Click to expand...
Yes, I should be able to open up just that forum for new threads — the other for sale/trade/wanted forums however, will still remain locked down and have auto-created threads when people list their items through the new marketplace.
 
Cicada said:
The biggest change I’m working on right now is how the marketplace works — they’re currently “closed” for new threads because the “DPF Marketplace” tab at the top will be the new place to look for listings — when an item is listed in the “new” marketplace, a thread will automatically be created in the old marketplace forums for discussion.

The new marketplace should be easier and more visually appealing when browsing for trades/items. If anyone is so inclined, try making a test listing or two in the new marketplace — please add “TEST” to the item so that I can go through and delete the items and listings after we’ve worked out all the kinks.

appreciate everyone’s patience and support through this! we’ve already received some very generous donations from James and Nancy (I’m not familiar with their screen names here) and these will go toward hosting fees and any forum add-ons/modifications that require payment.

Thank you again! ♥️
Click to expand...

Just posted a test trade thread through the new Marketplace. However . . . you can't post a thread without entering a price. But for trading . . . no price is needed or wanted really. What should we do on that? Enter a zero?
 
Hmm. I put a picture on a trade but it doesn’t appear on my post (at least not on my phone). Also does this mean sales/trades are restricted to one per post now?
 
Cicada said:
Yes, I should be able to open up just that forum for new threads — the other for sale/trade/wanted forums however, will still remain locked down and have auto-created threads when people list their items through the new marketplace.
Click to expand...
What about games? They appear to be under marketplace as well. I need my games.
 
Cicada said:
Since I haven’t been around — has someone started a DPF Discord? I think I saw some plugins/addons that support discord integration with the forum.
Click to expand...
Yes, it was started by @hiddenjumprope . Here is a link to a link...
disneypinforum.com

General Chat Platforms - GroupMe & Discord!

Hello all! Happy that the forum is back up and running! If you'd like to join a general DPF chat, you have 2 options! 1) GroupMe for general chat: GroupMe This was created early this year(?) and has gained quite a bit of traction in the past week or so. Feel free to join; there's a lot of...
disneypinforum.com disneypinforum.com
 
Cicada said:
Since I haven’t been around — has someone started a DPF Discord? I think I saw some plugins/addons that support discord integration with the forum.
Click to expand...
Oh that's cool! I created the discord (someone beat me to the link) so definitely let me know what I can do/what you need.
 
Hmm, i just tried to reply to a post by clicking quote and it didn't show up as a quote in the reply box like it used to. So i'm not sure how that works now.

At any rate i was trying to say Hi back to you mominator :tigger: :lgm:
 
noone said:
Hmm, i just tried to reply to a post by clicking quote and it didn't show up as a quote in the reply box like it used to. So i'm not sure how that works now.

At any rate i was trying to say Hi back to you mominator :tigger: :lgm:
Click to expand...
After experimenting, you have to choose +Quote on the message(s) you want to quote, but then you have to click on the "Insert quotes" box as well to actually include the quoted message.
 
Glad to see we are back! FYI, I had seen the message on FB saying the site was back, but when I would come to the DPF.com link it was showing me the XenForo admin login page. This morning I remembered, I should try to clear my cookies. Which worked (yay!). But it may be worth mentioning on Facebook that if you can't see the site, to clear cookies.
 
I am VERY happy that the platform is back up. Big THANKS to everyone working on it!

Losing some history is unfortunate, but not the end of the world in my eyes. A lot of it is older stuff that is probably no longer relevant. We'll quickly build things up again. The one exception I can think of offhand is the pinpics references. That thread was very helpful for pinpics trading. I hope we'll be able to find/restore that one. The "I Collect This" thread also was helpful in knowing who collects what. But that one would be easier to recreate.

I very much hope that our feedback profiles will be able to be retrieved. Those were also hugely helpful for trading, not just here but elsewhere as references. Also the connection to tapatalk. I was very dependent on that for posting, especially photos.

Thanks again! Great to be back.
 
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