Iron_Fin
Joined: Dec 12, 2014
Posts: 5
San Luis Obispo, CA.
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Posted on Dec 23 2014 11:10 AM
Hey all,
I’m new to the site and I’ve briefly read through this thread and wanted to give some feedback regarding my experience with this site so far. First of all, I really love this site. I’ve only been a member for a couple weeks but it seems to function wonderfully for its intended purposes. I see fans and musicians alike conversing and sharing all sorts of information, stories, experiences and upcoming releases and shows. As for the sign up process I went through earlier this month, it went really smooth for me and I love the fact that you had to jump through loops to prove that you’re not a spammer(in my eyes this shows care and respect for the site and its users). I love the fact that you take users ideas and do your best to implement them if it seems to be a win-win for all. Congratulations on your new job as well, I know how much of an undertaking it can be to start a new job a little further away with a family and try to keep this site all in balance. That is no easy task and I commend you for that. I did read that you wanted to make this site a little friendlier on other devices such as tablets and phones. I do have a little bit of experience with this and would be happy to help. Just to clarify I’m not looking for anything other than to help keep this awesome site going and would be honored to help, feel free to PM me if you’re interested as I do have a full time job and a family myself. Other than what I’ve stated above, no matter what keep doing what you’re doing this is a fantastic place to visit on my breaks at work and read up on the forums.
Cheers
— The only time incorrectly is spelled incorrectly is when it's not spelled incorrectly. 
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Dec 23 2014 12:42 PM
Thanks for the feedback and welcome to the site Iron_Fin. It's good to hear what a new member thinks of the sign up process. I still think it might be a bit over the top, especially for non-English speakers.
— 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
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Noel
Joined: Mar 15, 2011
Posts: 8528
Back in Piitsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I grew up.
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Posted on Dec 23 2014 12:47 PM
Welcome to sg101, Iron_Fin! Very glad you're here. And yeah, Brian does amazing things.
— This is Noel. Reverb's at maximum an' I'm givin' 'er all she's got.
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Iron_Fin
Joined: Dec 12, 2014
Posts: 5
San Luis Obispo, CA.
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Posted on Dec 23 2014 03:41 PM
Awesome guys, I feel very welcome. I can tell Brian has put a lot of heart and soul into this site, it keeps me coming back. 
— The only time incorrectly is spelled incorrectly is when it's not spelled incorrectly.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Jan 04 2015 08:59 PM
This weekend I made some changes which will hopefully improve site performance a bit. As usual, I may have introduced some "unintended consequences", so let me know if you see anything strange.
Work is progressing behind the scenes on moving all the non-SSL hot linked forum images to "the cloud". This will enable us to have the site on https sometime early this year (hopefully).
— 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
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Badger
Joined: Nov 16, 2013
Posts: 4536
Wisconsin
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Posted on Jan 04 2015 09:15 PM
Brian wrote:
Work is progressing behind the scenes on moving all the non-SSL hot linked forum images to "the cloud". This will enable us to have the site on https sometime early this year (hopefully).
Rockin'! and THANK YOU!
— Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel
DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Jan 18 2015 04:34 PM
I'm getting close on the script to save all the hot-linked images to a secure bucket in the cloud. But going forward we can't have people hot-linking to images on non-https: sites, or all the major modern browsers will throw scary warning messages in their users' faces. So I'm thinking that if someone tries to hot-link to an image using http: instead of https:, I'll change it into a link instead of embedding the non-secure image. This will probably confuse a lot of people. I guess I could use some special text in the link...
There are a lot of posts for this script to run through and I don't know how long its going to take. I'll finish the script and then do some test runs.
A side benefit of this is that we'll lose less images to "bit rot". I always get sad when I revisit a several year old thread and see most of the images gone because the external host is gone or the image moved.
— 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
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CrazyAces
Joined: Jul 31, 2012
Posts: 4052
Nashville, TN.
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Posted on Jan 18 2015 04:42 PM
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bigtikidude
Joined: Feb 27, 2006
Posts: 25309
Anaheim(So.Cal.)U.S.A.
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Posted on Jan 19 2015 11:00 AM
Ha! That's funny,
I just own a guitar.
Thanks Brian
— Jeff(bigtikidude)
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Jan 19 2015 05:59 PM
Thanks Jeff and Jeff!
So Wes discovered one of my "unintended consequences" that I mentioned a few posts above. I accidentally broke the bridge between the wiki and SG101, so no one could edit the wiki. This is fixed now. You may have to logout of SG101 and then login again before you'll get the cookie that allows you to edit the wiki.
Thanks Wes for letting me know.
— 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
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Badger
Joined: Nov 16, 2013
Posts: 4536
Wisconsin
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Posted on Jan 19 2015 10:28 PM
No sweat, thank YOU sir! 
Got 'er done.
— Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel
DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Feb 16 2015 08:53 PM
Fixed a bug preventing uploading of certain iPhone images.
Fixed a bug with the contact form not sending email to me under certain circumstances.
Work is progressing on converting the site to SSL.
I changed how the site sends emails, so if you see anything wrong / strange about this, please let me know.
— 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
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Badger
Joined: Nov 16, 2013
Posts: 4536
Wisconsin
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Posted on Feb 16 2015 08:58 PM
Did the wiki bridge get broke again?
— Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel
DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Feb 16 2015 09:02 PM
This has been an issue for a while, it has to do with the Wiki cookie expiring before your SG101 cookie (I think). To work around it, log out of SG101, then log back in again. You should now be able to edit the wiki.
I'll put it on the to-do list.
— 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
Last edited: Feb 16, 2015 21:02:51
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Badger
Joined: Nov 16, 2013
Posts: 4536
Wisconsin
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Posted on Feb 16 2015 09:11 PM
Brian wrote:
To work around it, log out of SG101, then log back in again. You should now be able to edit the wiki.
Works slick, thanks! 
No need, you have alot on your plate. I can remember to do that.
— Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel
DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Feb 28 2015 04:29 PM
My webhost needs to shut us down and perform some critical security updates on this date/time:
2015-03-02 3:00:00 PM UTC
The maintenance has a 2 hour window, although it may take considerably less time than that.
If my math is right, that is 7:00am California time, 8:00am Mountain, 9:00am Central, and 10:00am Eastern.
Thanks for your patience.
— 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
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Badger
Joined: Nov 16, 2013
Posts: 4536
Wisconsin
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Posted on Feb 28 2015 04:59 PM
Cool, good for them (and us).
That's the way we used to do it; 10 minutes to do whatever, 1h:50m in case something went south.
— Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel
DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Mar 01 2015 03:43 PM
Here is an update on our move to SSL. As you may remember, the big roadblock to doing this is once we start using https, we cannot embed images from non-SSL (plain old http) websites.
I am in the final stages of testing a script to convert all the thousands (?) of images forum uses have hot-linked over 9 freaking years to Amazon S3 storage. The side benefit of doing this is preserving the images. In my initial testing, about 50% of the images from the first few months of SG101 in 2006 are now gone forever.
Anyway, going forward, it will be impossible to hot link images from sites not using SSL, otherwise the security of our SSL will be for nothing. So I've been thinking about how to handle the case where a user tries to do hot-link to an image served by http:. Two solutions come to mind:
1) Silently convert the users image to a link. This may confuse the user who wanted to embed an image.
2) Reject the forum post with an error message, perhaps pointing out that they should find a https: source for the image, or use our newer image upload feature.
Does anyone have strong feelings about how to handle this?
— 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
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Badger
Joined: Nov 16, 2013
Posts: 4536
Wisconsin
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Posted on Mar 01 2015 05:31 PM
Brian wrote:
Anyway, going forward, it will be impossible to hot link images from sites not using SSL, otherwise the security of our SSL will be for nothing. So I've been thinking about how to handle the case where a user tries to do hot-link to an image served by http:. Two solutions come to mind:
1) Silently convert the users image to a link. This may confuse the user who wanted to embed an image.
2) Reject the forum post with an error message, perhaps pointing out that they should find a https: source for the image, or use our newer image upload feature.
Does anyone have strong feelings about how to handle this?
Not strong feelings per se but, other than you're the Site Administrator & doing what's needed for the safety of the Site, it seems like Option 2 would yield a better end-result long-term.
Rationale: First, either way the server has to do some action to react to the incorrect method, so the payload there would be (maybe) a wash. Second, if someone uses Option 1 they will not get the desired result and, if they wanted an embedded image, they still have to resort to the proper course of action(s) under Option 2, as well as ask you why their link didn't embed (again) and be reminded (again) of why it didn't work and get the suggestion (again) to read the now-stickied thing about embedding images.
I'd just see doing the education up front with an error-message as better long-term. But then I've been accused of sitting to the right of Attila the Hun, so...
Out of curiosity, are the most commonly-used image-hosting sites running SSL?
— Wes
SoCal ex-pat with a snow shovel
DISCLAIMER: The above is opinion/suggestion only & should not be used for mission planning/navigation, tweaking of instruments, beverage selection, or wardrobe choices.
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Brian
Joined: Feb 25, 2006
Posts: 19194
Des Moines, Iowa, USA
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Posted on Mar 04 2015 06:34 PM
So while I was testing my script, I realized there is another dimension to going secure. I was going to allow anyone to hot-link to any other image as long as it was hosted via https:. But while I was testing my script on some of the early posts in 2006, I noticed someone had linked to some photos on myspace. The photos were being served over https, but the clowns at myspace had let their SSL certificate lapse. As a result, no modern browser would display those images without throwing up the big scary warning banner I am trying to avoid.
My only conclusion I can draw from this is if we are going to allow people to embed images, they have to come from a site we control. Currently if someone links to an image, and the site goes down, oh well, a broken image is displayed. But if a site hosted on https has a problem with their certificate, this will adversely impact SG101 and cause people to stop browsing here.
So either we stop hot-linking altogether, or the site automatically downloads non-secure images and uploads them to our Amazon S3 bucket.
Keep in mind we will still allow people to upload their own images (these will go into our Amazon S3 bucket).
— 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
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