Topic: Hope this site is better protected than SAAC Forum

[DKutz]

Please tell me that is website is better backed up and protected than SAAC was.  It would be horrible to lose all the info on here...

[rodster]

+1000

[midlife]

My understanding is that C. Turner backs up the forum regularly (probably once a month).  He works in the IT area as his day job, IIRC, so he pretty much knows what needs to be done.  He is one of the two main administrators. 

The worst that has happened to this forum is when Photobucket dropped its free support and required a $300 annual fee to use their service.  Many of the photos used for reference were stored on Photobucket and now are difficult if not impossible to retrieve.

[rodster]

My understanding is that C. Turner backs up the forum regularly (probably once a month).  He works in the IT area as his day job, IIRC, so he pretty much knows what needs to be done.  He is one of the two main administrators. 

The worst that has happened to this forum is when Photobucket dropped its free support and required a $300 annual fee to use their service. Many of the photos used for reference were stored on Photobucket and now are difficult if not impossible to retrieve.

There is/was a browser 'fix' for that.  Don't know if it's still working but it was before the big SAAC crash and burn.

Do you find it an issue here?  I don't recall having a problem viewing photos.

[CharlesTurner]

We pay extra for daily backups.  We can also download full backups of the database and the web server file system at any time.  There's a couple higher levels of site hosting that we may consider which have an even higher level of backup/restoration options.  Also, other improvements such as dedicated virtual servers instead of being on a shared system. 

Randy is right that I work in IT as my regular job.  I'm employed by a large bank, so the systems that I work with are enterprise level.  This site is a basic apache web server with mysql database and SMF forum software.  It's not very complicated and I like to keep it that way.

[midlife]

There is/was a browser 'fix' for that.  Don't know if it's still working but it was before the big SAAC crash and burn.

Do you find it an issue here?  I don't recall having a problem viewing photos.

Yes; there are many old threads with photobucket links that do not show the picture.

[J_Speegle]

There is/was a browser 'fix' for that.  Don't know if it's still working but it was before the big SAAC crash and burn.

Do you find it an issue here?  I don't recall having a problem viewing photos.

Depends on the thread and the poster. I have been going through all my old posts as dead links are discovered, uploading the pictures to the gallery here and then reattaching the link so that they stay fixed. If the link die now it means we have a big problem and you likely cant see the thread anyway.

Believe we are in good hands - betting a fair number of years and time to it  Additional efforts may mean more cost as will loading/storing more pictures on the site.  Hope we never have to deal with the issues SAAC and the Hipo site have seen - EVER

[RoyceP]

I don't know about the backup of this site but it is still using the older http site address and www. Both of those things are disappearing because of security issues, modern forum hosts are all using https addresses.

Please tell me that is website is better backed up and protected than SAAC was.  It would be horrible to lose all the info on here...

[CharlesTurner]

I don't know about the backup of this site but it is still using the older http site address and www. Both of those things are disappearing because of security issues, modern forum hosts are all using https addresses.

We're not exchanging social security or credit card numbers, so the urgency is low.  Our hosting provider offers an extra cost cert, but I don't believe it's justified for our site content.

[sah62]

We're not exchanging social security or credit card numbers, so the urgency is low.  Our hosting provider offers an extra cost cert, but I don't believe it's justified for our site content.

You might consider it to protect passwords while in transit during the login process. Certificates can be had for free these days: https://letsencrypt.org/

These need to be renewed every three months, but that's easy to automate if you have shell access on your hosting platform. Something else to consider is that browsers will soon be warning users when they visit sites that aren't TLS-protected. Just wait until the confusing alerts start popping up!