Forum was hacked

[mgormez]

Happy Easter,

Perhaps you haven't noticed but the WATD forum was down due to a hack. Many other forums using the same software were hit as well. That had as positive side affect that a fix was quickly produced on the support forum.

This forum is up and running again thanks to that but I'll need to tweek it a bit here and there and upgrade parts of the site to prevent future exploits by script-kiddies. The system still has some items that need to be removed and fixed.

Anyhow, that means there can be periods that things aren't working properly or it is down for a short time. The software has been upgraded this evening which should prevent the same abuse and an addittional security step has been put in place but offers no guarantee of course.

Let me close by thanking everyone for the support!

[Alban]

Many thanks, Mike for working through the Easter break to get it up and running so quickly.

[mgormez]

Many thanks, Mike for working through the Easter break to get it up and running so quickly.

Thank you! It was an interesting learning experience.

We are not quite there though, on the moment a "fatal error" emerges when performing a search and clicking on a posting. Likewise when clicking the "View posts since last visit" link on the frontpage.

And we are still struck with one template because the database is not totally clean yet. Or so I suspect.

[dan]

Good work Mike. Long may WATD continue. I hope you can keep the hackers at bay.

I think this site is really important for discussing many issues (past and present). A number of people have told me that this forum has helped them deal with the past and feel that their memories, issues and sense of injustice are a shared experience.

This site has also directly led to some reconciliation between former St Vedast-St James pupils and their teachers which is a good thing for all. I am hoping we will hear from more teachers on this forum?!....

[mgormez]

Good work Mike. Long may WATD continue. I hope you can keep the hackers at bay.

Lets hope so Though this site went trough another difficult time during the first week of April. Due to the death of Terri Schiavo and a hoax by a moron who found some picturers on this site of a deceased Lisa McPherson[1] that looked like Terri and a bit of photoshop to remove the name. That hoax, the subsequent corrections by readers and other sites reporting the hoax caused such a load (12 gigabytes in less than 7 days) that I had to place those images somewhere else for the moment and ask for additional bandwidth from my ISP otherwise we wouldn't make the end of the month. Which we got so all is well again. And on top of it, it seems we finally got rid of all the hacker stuff from the database (fingers crossed).

[1] (Publication endorsed by family as a warning to others, allowed by two court rulings in Florida. She was held for 17 days incommunicado by her cult and died.)

Anyways, thanks for the nice words!