New Features and Changes

Looking good man, looking good..

Obviously he didn't try the "Go Advanced" link.

I agree with RAK and Stuecaster.

Here's how well krazdkiller is doing at http://www.sevenforums.com................... BANNED

There is no doubt that he has a "banned" signature. I am an active member of that forum. I can see he has not posted for more than a month, but I cannot see a reason for the ban. Perhaps the offending post was deleted.
Odd that he should praise the site, however, after being banned. Very democratic.

I keep getting garbage similar to this:

Digerati said:

I keep getting garbage similar to this:

Click to expand...

Sorry. Very little time today. It is a snapshot of searches being made, from around the world, in many different languages. The character set doesn't exist, so you see weird looking characters. Is designed to improve the search relevancy of the post, thereby making it more accessible throughout the Internet. It is working, but there are some draw backs. It now comes to immediate attention that the site is in fact receiving many foreign visitors who may not be able to write or read in English properly, hence a large bounce rate off the site. Whether in a foreign language or not, this indicates people are in fact finding the post, even when its searched on in a foreign language thats outside of character-set.

That makes sense, thanks for explaining the hows and whys. Not sure I see it's usefulness. Perhaps more useful, or at least interesting from a trivia perspective, would be a "hit counter" showing the number of unique IPs that found the page.

But even then I'm not sure the count would mean anything and just be a waste of space. I note in that image above you will see just two English words - words NOT entered in to this thread by you or me. That means it is searching on the whole page, including the ads and links, hitting on "keywords" that have nothing to do with the OP's question. In fact, I can see where a large quantity of false hits might hog resources that in the extreme, impact performance or even could deny service. Not sure the benefits outweigh the risks - unless I'm missing something.

Forum Security Vulnerability Found - file2store.info

Ladies and gentleman,

DO NOT BE ALARMED,

However,

We must inform you that:

A security vulnerability was found on not only Windows 7 Forums, but many high profile websites using community software such as vBulletin, WordPress, and other software. The origin of this attack is unknown, but it apparently redirects the user, when searching on Google, to file2store.info website.

This is a spam site.

At no time during this situation has the user database in anyway been compromised.

Jelsoft, Inc., Crawlability, Inc., Windows7Forums.com, and many other websites are looking into the origin and method of the hacking attempt. The goal and purpose of the hacking attempt is to hijack links and redirect them to a spam site.

This problem has been isolated and removed on Windows7Forums.com. If you saw JavaScript errors in Internet Explorer on certain landing pages and threads, this was a result of this script. As a result, we have initiated high security measures by rebuilding our data store, locking down all essential files that power the website, and requiring additional methods of password authentication when trying to access certain website required directories.

If you find that you are being redirected to file2store.info in anyway while accessing this site, please immediately use the Contact Us button, respond to this thread, or enter a HelpDesk ticket on our website ASAP. We can confirm the problem is eliminated on our end, but until a final resolution is found, there is no telling if it may pop up again. However, we have taken every step to prevent it from popping up again.

Alexa search results show that thousands of sites over the last several weeks have been plagued by this problem of unknown origin, including sites powered by blogging software such as WordPress(?) and many others. The problem no longer exists on this website, but research has found that this problem has been cutting our traffic in half every other day for the last month.

This problem was submitted as an anonymous tip. Therefore, if you notice this problem or anything similar, please immediately report it to the forum administrators immediately.

Your data and personally identifiable information is secure on this website. That area of the database is not accessible and hardened by multiple levels of security.

It is recommended at this time that you do clear your Internet browsing history, including cookies and temporary internet files.

Is this in any way associated with this popup, which I have started getting today? It is only on this website, of the 6 I have already visited. Whatever its puprpose, it is worthless, *** two click gets rid of it.

Link Removed due to 404 Error

Ok. Thanks Hayden. But Why only here. Since my previous post, I have been on more sites than I can count, without the popup? Have we got a malicious member?Perhaps it is enroaching via one of the 10 or so external links the site now automatically loads!

RAK said:

Is this in any way associated with this popup, which I have started getting today? It is only on this website, of the 6 I have already visited. Whatever its puprpose, it is worthless, *** two click gets rid of it.

Link Removed due to 404 Error

Click to expand...

I have just clicked on Link Removed and got the same screen :

Link Removed

I clicked to cancel and the thread opened.

I get the same. No matter what link I click on in the forum.

There was no danger with this popup. It was an administrative error to try to block some file locations from being accessed. The wrong one was blocked and was being called. This problem has been solved. This was not from a third-party, it was just a bug on our end.

Also, I can confirm the previous problem has been 100% eliminated as of right now.

Hayden said:

When we get further down the track, I reckon we should add a more.. darker theme to change up the mood of the forum a little x)

Click to expand...

The site is already more like an link encyclopedia than a place for forums. Does it really need any more?

Forum looks oright to me - bit slow sometimes from my end but workable

A patch for this has been created and applied to the forums which changes the "salt" of the encrypted password for all user accounts. It is recommended that users change their password, if possible, with the focus primarily being on admins today. We have reinstituted the security rule of being required to change your password every 90 days. This applies to all users, including administrators.

New Style

A new style is now available for your viewing pleasure. If you do not like this theme, please switch over to the old format. The unofficial name of this theme is "RAK's Theme".

Mike said:

A new style is now available for your viewing pleasure. If you do not like this theme, please switch over to the old format. The unofficial name of this theme is "RAK's Theme".

Click to expand...

Looks Good Mike !!

Font to small for my eyes - went to classic 2.2.0.

This is good to know. We will be testing to see if traffic drops off because of this new theme. If that is the case we will probably switch the default back to 2.2.0, but leave this as an optional style for RAK.