Revitalizing the forum *Please Read*

[martinuzz]

I was suggesting a 'gameplay question' subsection, as this might help in revitalizing the forum.
It accomodates 2 groups of forum visitors:
-Those people who have concrete questions about the game, for example when they are stuck / confused.
-Veteran players, who are very capable of, and willing to answer most questions, but not too keen on browsing through 3-4 subforums to search for questions they can answer in between non-question threads.

A forum that provides a stable community of veteran payers that answer (even n00bish) questions, in my experience, tends to grow, and as a side effect, contribute to the popularity of the game.

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

Meh, why not?

That way, I can probably get some more ideas for the FAQ's that we've got going.

[elcugo]

Only problem I see is that Gameplay questions and Ditl's are very likely to get spoliy, pretty much the same situation with the old Strategies section.

[martinuzz]

Hmm well.. I can see that being somewhat more of a problem on this forum than on bay12.. Unless I am not looking thouroughly enough, I cannot find spoiler tags here..

On the other hand, you could put a "WARNING: THIS SECTION MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS'' at the top of the forum subsection, and leave it up to the reader's own discretion.

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

Aye, no spoiler tags on this forum, but we've always gotten by by just saying "ZOMG THAR BE SPOILERZ AHEAD!!"

I'm really not all that concerned with the Spoilers in the Gameplay section. Honestly, we need another forum to spur activity.

[martinuzz]

I've taken the liberty of doing some small advertising for TOME, and this forum:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=46169.0

[Naxza]

I'm one of the guys from the forum Martinuzz mentioned. Though I have played little ToME but quite a bit more ToMENET, I hope to help bring life back into these forums.

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

Interesting that Lord Bucket is over there... we could really use his help back over here.

[madmonk]

I've taken the liberty of doing some small advertising for TOME, and this forum:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=46169.0

Thanks for advertising us! And for bringing new players and so on back! Xandor's correct, it is interesting seeing Bucketman there, and I for one would welcome him back.

[CoccoBill]

Soo...what's the contingency plan to avoid the forums being eaten again?

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

I've upgraded the forum software to give more control over the various aspects of the board. This version is quite a bit more secure. I also believe that there are certain safeguards in place that will prevent what happened last time. And I've been making periodic backups of the forum.

[CoccoBill]

And I've been making periodic backups of the forum.

This was the main thing I was looking for, excellent.

I'm a security consultant, if you need help related to the field I'd be happy to help.

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

Do you know anything about the phpBB3 mainframe and how it's put together?

[CoccoBill]

Some. Phpbb3 is considered fairly secure, I believe the maintainers have had it audited by a 3rd party. The most vulnerable part is the administration control panel, you might want to secure that with an extra .htaccess password, also make sure everyone who has access to the ACP use strong passwords that are changed regularly. Other than that with of course regular backups and upgrades you should be fine regarding the forum software.

What level of access do you have to the platform, through a hosting control panel or do you have root access?

[Xandor Tik'Roth]

I have access to the ftp server where all of this is stored. Honestly, there's not much that I can't touch around here.