Tuck wrote:

Exporting messages would be useful.

Agree!

• Jamie
  SSS Agent #181
  Cartoons drenched in reverb!
  The Mystery Men?
  El Capitan & The Reluctant Sadists

JakeDobner wrote:

Get rid of PMs and encourage e-mail.

I think the PM system as is does already encourage e-mail. I'm happy with the system now I understand how it works. I've been given my own personal SG101 space and it's totally up to me to look after it. Simple and secure.

Badger wrote:

JakeDobner wrote:

Get rid of PMs and encourage e-mail.

Respectfully disagree. For a quick note or an intro or question with someone I notice a SG101 PM works & gets my attention better than an email. Folks just have to manage it (or live with some draconian threshold that maintains server health) and not get into long extended back & forth (which should then be moved to email).

Not to mention that without a PM system members would have no other option than publish their email address to be able to communicate, and therefore would be exposed to address harvesting and spamming.

Brian, the new PM system looks and works perfect. I would be interested in a system allowing to export messages too.

Old punks never die... They just become surf rockers.

Last edited: Sep 13, 2014 14:09:34

You can now email multiple PM's to yourself. Just check the messages you want then click the "Email Checked Messages" button. Works from both the inbox and outbox.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

this one time, on band map.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

A beta test version of the surf band map is coming soon, probably tomorrow. Hope you all enjoy it, it was fun to make.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

Please discuss the new surf band map in this forum thread.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

thanks Brian.
I'll take some pics with the phone sideways and upright tomorrow at the pier, and then post to this thread tomorrow when I get home to see how they come out.

Jeff(bigtikidude)

So I think the next big project for SG101 is to get us on https:, i.e. put the site on SSL technology (secure socket layer -- the green padlock in your browser). In other words, encrypt the connection between you and SG101. I'm actually quite embarrassed that we don't do this already, especially given all that we know about various governments spying on us. It will also protect users from man-in-the-middle attacks and people sniffing your password out of the air if you use SG101 on an open Wi-Fi connection.

It isn't too hard to purchase a SSL certificate and get the site served on an https connection. However a forum site like this one has a number of challenges. The most important one is that all modern browsers will warn you if a web page contains "mixed content" (some stuff secure, and some not). Now we have over 300,000 (!!!) forum posts where people have linked to images, the majority of which are probably not coming from a secure connection.

So what I am going to look into is writing a script to go through all the posts, starting at post #1, and look for images. If the link is still good, I'll download the image and upload it into our Amazon S3 cloud. I'll then rewrite the forum post to use the new secure link. This could take some time to both write and execute. It will also increase our monthly Amazon S3 bill (which is currently pennies a month). So it might go up to say a dime or quarter a month.

But going forward how should the site behave? If a user tries to hot link to an image that isn't served by https, what should the site do? I'm thinking I could just change it into a link. Or the site could try to grab the image and upload to our cloud space (which can take some time, slowing down the site). Or ...?

Note I'm just talking about the hot-linking of images, not the relatively new feature we have for uploading and embedding images from your computer / device.

I also need to look into all those video embeds. I need to change those to https links. I know YouTube supports this now, but not sure about Vimeo. I'm sure there are a ton of other little details to be attended to.

So bottom line: this will be a real headache with some potential downtime and also some annoying browser warnings about mixed content until we can get it all fixed. In the end I think I'll sleep better though and your privacy will be greatly improved.

I'm in the middle of changing jobs so this is going to be a multi-month work in progress.

Site dude - S3 Agent #202
Need help with the site? SG101 FAQ - Send me a private message - Email me

"It starts... when it begins" -- Ralf Kilauea

That looks like a LOT of work, Brian. All the best with everything involved.

This is Noel. Reverb's at maximum an' I'm givin' 'er all she's got.