Hello Monash South Africa

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Mr V
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue Feb 09, 2016 2:02 pm
Country: South Africa
Firstname: Steve

Hello Monash South Africa

Postby Mr V » Tue Feb 09, 2016 3:13 pm

I would like to give a warm welcome to all the new members who have decided to MITS.

Please feel free to say hello here and give suggestions as to what you would like us to do within the society if you have any ideas to improve it.

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ZeroOne
Site Admin
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:27 pm
Country: Earth
Firstname: Zero

Re: Hello World

Postby ZeroOne » Tue Feb 09, 2016 3:15 pm

Hello Mr V.

Thanks for the help.

I recommend we have a LAN Party's, Drone Racing, Hackerspace and Gaming Competitions.
:D

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Megafisshy
MITS Leader
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 5:54 pm
Country: South Africa
Firstname: Grant

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby Megafisshy » Fri Mar 04, 2016 11:25 pm

Hello right back!

I had an issue when registering for the forums, that I had to select to have the activation email sent to me again before I received any activation email. Might be an isolated incident on my side, But it's worth looking into if pageviews != conversions.

    We Could:
  • Start a community Git repo?
  • Caption this picture contests?
  • Post your application section?
  • Shopping reviews and cool deals?
  • Reddit style AMA (Ask Me Anything) threads?
  • MITSociety Backgrounds/stickers/lanyards? (I'd buy one)
  • Gym Buddy/Lifestyle section?
  • Registered MSSA Team
  • Weekly Poll?
  • Music Thread?
  • Software Gore section? For garbled outputs and weird behaviour.

I like the fact that the users real name is visible. Adds an accountability to the user. Anonymity, unfortunately, usually means poor behaviour from users.
Please make sure that user passwords and email addresses are properly salted and encrypted in your DB. Maybe look at some form of bot protection for the account creation page. Re-captcha has come a really long way. Another idea is to put a checkbox or another text input, set visibility to false and validate against it. If the checkbox is checked or the input populated, redirect the bot to a tracking page, to block the IP. Google Analytics and Google Ads might be able to help offset hosting costs too, I'd disable my ad-blocker.

I know implementing HTTPS is a pain, but maybe as a long term goal?

You probably also want to define a code of conduct, i.e no links to torrents or shady file sharing sites, no posting of solutions to assignments, no gore or NSFW posts etc. I've seen a couple communities being taken down by DCMA requests and site owners being sued, it isn't pretty.

Let me know if you need a moderator when you start to get more users around, I was a moderator over at www.kitguru.net for a while (when we were using earlier versions of vBulletin) and have been a contributor over at the Tom's Hardware forums for a REALLY long time.

Cheers guys, good job so far!
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Ben
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun Feb 28, 2016 11:32 am
Country: South Africa
Firstname: Rupert

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby Ben » Sat Mar 05, 2016 9:09 am

They're using a forum system Grant :P it will have inbuilt security such as hashing passwords. SSL is hella expensive and not needed for a club website as all the info we post should be public anyway.

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ZeroOne
Site Admin
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:27 pm
Country: Earth
Firstname: Zero

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby ZeroOne » Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:16 pm

Megafisshy wrote:Hello right back!

I had an issue when registering for the forums, that I had to select to have the activation email sent to me again before I received any activation email. Might be an isolated incident on my side, But it's worth looking into if pageviews != conversions.

    We Could:
  • Start a community Git repo?
  • Caption this picture contests?
  • Post your application section?
  • Shopping reviews and cool deals?
  • Reddit style AMA (Ask Me Anything) threads?
  • MITSociety Backgrounds/stickers/lanyards? (I'd buy one)
  • Gym Buddy/Lifestyle section?
  • Registered MSSA Team
  • Weekly Poll?
  • Music Thread?
  • Software Gore section? For garbled outputs and weird behaviour.

I like the fact that the users real name is visible. Adds an accountability to the user. Anonymity, unfortunately, usually means poor behaviour from users.
Please make sure that user passwords and email addresses are properly salted and encrypted in your DB. Maybe look at some form of bot protection for the account creation page. Re-captcha has come a really long way. Another idea is to put a checkbox or another text input, set visibility to false and validate against it. If the checkbox is checked or the input populated, redirect the bot to a tracking page, to block the IP. Google Analytics and Google Ads might be able to help offset hosting costs too, I'd disable my ad-blocker.

I know implementing HTTPS is a pain, but maybe as a long term goal?

You probably also want to define a code of conduct, i.e no links to torrents or shady file sharing sites, no posting of solutions to assignments, no gore or NSFW posts etc. I've seen a couple communities being taken down by DCMA requests and site owners being sued, it isn't pretty.

Let me know if you need a moderator when you start to get more users around, I was a moderator over at http://www.kitguru.net for a while (when we were using earlier versions of vBulletin) and have been a contributor over at the Tom's Hardware forums for a REALLY long time.

Cheers guys, good job so far!


Hello Grant

Thank you very much for your input, all the suggestions you made are great and we will look into implementing some of them.

I think the activation email might be just on your side as nobody else has had problems, however I will investigate further.
Can I ask anybody else who has had activation email problems to please state so here in this thread if they had the same or similar issue.

  • A Git Repo sounds good and can be useful for future Student Software Developers. I was also looking into implementing some file sharing system/Database where we could then have a repository of all the Monash IT subject content for the students.
  • Caption this picture contests should be fun and funny. Will look into doing this soon.
  • Posting Applications sounds like a good Idea as the community members can give constructive feedback and provide free testing if they wish.
  • You are always welcome to post reviews about any relevant purchases you might have made, in terms of sharing deals you are more than welcome to do so, however please remember we would like to expand this site to apply to all the Monash Campuses around the world so it might not be relevant for all users.
  • AMA's can defiantly be implemented, whoever wishes to volunteer can send me a PM and we will organize it. Hopefully we can get some interesting personalities in the future to participate.
  • I'm currently in the process of finalizing branding and then getting merchandise and gifts made for the club which should be available when we have our first launch party.
  • I see no reason why not to talk about Health and Fitness. It's a very important topic for general well being. I will create a sub forum for that. I have a long history within the actual Fitness Industry and have the qualifications and experience to prove it. I'm more than willing to help people out in this field.
  • It would be great If we can get a Monash South Africa mind sports team. First we need to find players and establish what games the team will play.This is why I ask anybody who is interested to please post what games they would like to play at the Launch party LAN so we can establish a team and a gaming community. Post your games suggestions in this thread MSA Competitive Gaming Competition
  • Weekly Polls sounds good and will also be implemented easily.
  • Music thread can also be made. Nothing better than finding awesome new songs.
  • Software gore section also sounds like a fun idea.

Yes, names were added to add accountability.
We are hoping to provide a place where people can make a Name for themselves in the academic and IT world.

Passwords and email address are encrypted so no need to worry about that.
There is a Captcha already for the Forum registration however I'm aware there isn't for the other registration page. I will look into implementing that when I have the time.

We pay nothing for Hosting as we have been Sponsored by Elitehost.co.za so there is no need to add advertisements to the website and slow it down.
I do however need to implement SEO to get the website indexed and ranked on google and other search engines.

HTTPS will be implemented in the future once we have a solid member base and traffic for everybody's protection.

Yes, defiantly a Code of Conduct needs to be drafted to establish proper rules and procedures and to promote healthy ethical behavior.
We will work on this as the forum grows.

I hope I have addressed most of your suggestions.
I'm actively seeking active and responsible people to help out and grow this community. You seem like a prime candidate and I've sent you a pm to discuss this further.
:D

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Megafisshy
MITS Leader
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 5:54 pm
Country: South Africa
Firstname: Grant

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby Megafisshy » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:17 pm

Hi, Zero

I can't seem to PM you back. Error Message: "We are sorry, but you are not authorised to use this feature. You may have just registered here and may need to participate more to be able to use this feature."

Cheers for addressing my suggestions! Looking forward to doing some cool stuff with the forum!!
Image

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ZeroOne
Site Admin
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:27 pm
Country: Earth
Firstname: Zero

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby ZeroOne » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:40 pm

Megafisshy wrote:Hi, Zero

I can't seem to PM you back. Error Message: "We are sorry, but you are not authorised to use this feature. You may have just registered here and may need to participate more to be able to use this feature."

Cheers for addressing my suggestions! Looking forward to doing some cool stuff with the forum!!


Try now. I had the private messaging enabled for all users however I saw that general permissions weren't being assigned to users correctly.
:D

User avatar
Megafisshy
MITS Leader
Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2016 5:54 pm
Country: South Africa
Firstname: Grant

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby Megafisshy » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:50 pm

Still no luck.Tried logging out and logging back in to assign permissions.

Here's a thread debugging this issue: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2099401
Image

User avatar
ZeroOne
Site Admin
Posts: 32
Joined: Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:27 pm
Country: Earth
Firstname: Zero

Re: Hello Monash South Africa

Postby ZeroOne » Wed Mar 09, 2016 9:12 am

Megafisshy wrote:Still no luck.Tried logging out and logging back in to assign permissions.

Here's a thread debugging this issue: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2099401


Will look into it further. There are so many settings where it can be overwritten.
:D


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