Trouble Registering

[Wingy]

Hi guys, I was sent an e-mail by Vern to help Donna here register. I'm not sure what to make of this:

On Mar 23, 2012, at 9:35 AM, Donna Shelley wrote:

> I can't log in to the Forums and I can't register. No matter what I do or enter I get this message
> The Verification code was not the same as the image presented on screen, please go back, refresh (hit F5 on most browsers) and try again.
> I've tried re-registering to no avail.
>
> Here's my info:
> Donna L. Shelley
> genr8torx (at) comcast (dot) net

P.S. Sorry I haven't been around much. Grad year has been crazy (scholarships, registering for universities, etc) and my AP courses have been demanding. I should have more time on my hands after my AP exams in the first week of May.

[brell]

Rob, perhaps you would look into this?

[RobSeegel]

5747505959350 wrote: Rob, perhaps you would look into this?

I'll look into it. I've a mind to replace that captcha with something else to test its effectiveness. It's called spam fruit and much easier for real people than spam bots. I tested it out a while ago on my own Mac. I'm going to need to get permission from Vern and access to try it out. I've long known that the existing captcha unfortunately made things a little too rough. Unfortunately, the existing captcha system is either too easy or too hard.

I'd held off up til now since it's been reasonably easy to distinguish between real and fake accounts, and both Brell and I keep up with clearing out bad accounts regularly enough that it isn't too big a deal. Incidentally, Brell - no need to note the deletes any longer. It's a shame the system doesn't log that info automatically, but I don't believe it will serve any further purpose.

[Semi-Native]

Anthony, if you haven't already, please email Donna and let her know this problem is being worked on.

And best of luck on your exams!

[Semi-Native]

Oops, never mind. Since the email was originally sent to Vern, I'm assuming he took care of answering her.

[brell]

Rob, anything that can replace the existing captcha system must be tried.

Perhaps Rob will need to be in touch with Donna while he is working on this problem.

[RobSeegel]

2030272E2E420 wrote: Rob, anything that can replace the existing captcha system must be tried.

Perhaps Rob will need to be in touch with Donna while he is working on this problem.

I created an account for her, and sent her an email letting her know what I did. I asked her to let me know if she has any problems. As for the captcha, that's a separate issue I'll ask Vern about. There's not much I can do unless he permits me access to make changes.

[brell]

Can't you do it as an admin? Freddy could update the YaBB via his admin account.

[RobSeegel]

No, I'm afraid not. The admin console gives you the ability to reconfigure the current installed software, which is fairly powerful, since so much is configurable. Unless I missed something though it does not give you the ability to change the software (either directly, or through mods submitted to the board mods site).

At a minimum, this requires FTP access to the machine (or virtual machine) that hosts the forum... I was reading up on the board mod tool, and it looks like I'd have to download the software via FTP, use boardmod to patch it (or do it manually), and then re-upload it back to the host machine.

[RobSeegel]

Well, I've asked for FTP access. Without it, I'm afraid that there's not much I can do. Basically, I would need to do the following:

- download a portion of the boards current configuration
- back it up (so that it can be restored) I'd probably put it under version control
- use boardmod to apply changes
- test the changes locally first.
- push those changes back up to the server

With any luck, it should be a painless process, with little risk involved. If SpamFruits looks like it's not working as expected, it will be easy enough to reverse the modification.