Alpha Centauri 2

Community => Council Room => Topic started by: MysticWind on June 28, 2025, 01:54:53 am

Title: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: MysticWind on June 28, 2025, 01:54:53 am

I have heard that new user signup is not working because activation emails are not getting sent. Can anyone confirm and if so, fix this?

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 02:18:52 am

Omg - I knew email notifications was broke, but didn't think of this.  Draz had just fixed email after long labor --- beginning of 2022, maybe.

I haven't been able, obviously, to get anyone to do ANYthing about anything for a long time, and everything I have the tech to even THINK of fixing is fixed.  Trenacker wants to hire a tech d00d to do a server migration to one that doesn't suck, and I'm resigned to letting him.  I've been counting on that for a chance to get some obvious things fixed - the junk showing at the bottom of all pages, the lines of code showing over every embedded video and on every page of the Wiki - probably a few things I haven't noticed or had reported.  Migrations and upgrades always break lots; fixing things back is just a natural part of that while everyone has AT LEAST a crappy few days on the boards.  That can't be avoided.

Tell your guy something's in the works, but not happening over the weekend, sorry.  If we were able to get in touch directly, I could probably admin-activate him or something...

I need to go do a ping somewhere tonight and see if we can expedite matters on that migration and all the fixing...

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 02:39:55 am

Ping pinged.

-To be clear, I've no way of calling up an attempted signup log and tell a human from 999,999,999 bot attempts.  That would be nice if I could.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Green1 on June 28, 2025, 01:13:09 pm

Yeah, people can't sign up you are going to be slow. You should have gotten around 20-40 from a niche subreddit like r/alphacentauri with probably a hundred or more lurkers.

As far as patch makers, you can just mirror or link to a github if you want to.

Comes off desperate and in online communities and getting the girl, that was never good.

When I restarted my gaming groups around 2021 or so after pandemic, I originally hunted down and located players who had played with me for years in my public sessions in New Orleans around 1999 to 2004-ish. In game group in Baton Rouge had run it's course and pandemic killed it. Wanted to do this online. Get back people I had not seen in 15 years at that time. Thought it would be cool. But all of them had moved on and I had a bunch of people turn out to be little beech flakes.

It would have been a disaster in the Old Days. But a quick trip to r/lfg, I had more nerds to herd than I knew what to deal with. But that epic drama is another story for another day. My Discord games have been going 5 years now between several long running campaigns. And I am -really- good with maps and make all my own nowadays.

I have my first in person game in probably 6 years tomorrow and some people are riding across state to come here. Unfortunately, I accidentally erased final map for my one shot. But, that's actually a blessing a I messed up some hallways because of limitations in my software dealing with diagonals and circular walls (or more me not using my degree in Drafting and being stupid). I know a way to fix it using a geometry technique and construction lines. Not that the players care. But I care.

That and Mrs. Green is both excited we will be entertaining and dreading the cleaning we need to do today.

Let me get through this and I will see what I can do. There's also tech stuff with Alpha Centauri itself. I have much better and more powerful equipment than I did back in the day and also I have to configure and actually install the patch so it will not crash. I also would kind of like to fix a bug with some custom alien factions where it will auto Treaty of Friendship in some instances I believe has to do with some modder 20+ years ago copy pasting stuff in that everyone used but is missing .txt entries.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 03:10:15 pm

Additionally, I just now fired off a longish email ping to co-owner sisko - I had to try, and it might even work.  He could totally fix this.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Green1 on June 28, 2025, 06:04:15 pm

That means you must go to the emissary himself who has not been seen in the alpha quadrant since he merged with the Bjoran wormhole....

Either that or you are stuck at impulse...

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 06:21:25 pm

Yes, but not even impulse - can't even reach Bajor from here.

We need us a major visitation from the Celestial Temple - or at least draft a replacement for Miles...

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 06:59:34 pm

FWIW, I'm right now kicking it around w/ Solver. picking his brain on the Skype successor, MSTeams.

He should have good advice - I'm not going to ask him to actually help, but he could if he wanted to - did once before.  But he's being very helpful about what has worked in the past.  Still talking minutes later...

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 07:32:47 pm

Solver sez there's been tech d00dz in the past of the community who got a little lunch money to seal the deal.

Well.  We can't pay a sysop what his skill is worth, but we could manage even better once in a while.  This is good news.

Still talking...

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 07:54:21 pm

BTW Green?  You slandered Apolyton; that PM happened at CGN.  Just sayin'.

Everyone else Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain. ;)

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 09:42:58 pm

MysticWind?  I did get around to mentioning fixing WPC to Solver.  That's a LOT of good content missing until he works up the energy.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 03:26:40 am

Quote from: Green1 on June 28, 2025, 01:13:09 pm

Let me get through this and I will see what I can do. There's also tech stuff with Alpha Centauri itself. I have much better and more powerful equipment than I did back in the day and also I have to configure and actually install the patch so it will not crash. I also would kind of like to fix a bug with some custom alien factions where it will auto Treaty of Friendship in some instances I believe has to do with some modder 20+ years ago copy pasting stuff in that everyone used but is missing .txt entries.

Wait. Point of clarification - are you saying you might could help with the forum tech, or are you thinking about something to do with an AAR or something, and left out a transition?

If the former, I do trust you, but am surprised if you've leveled up that much...

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Green1 on June 29, 2025, 10:50:38 am

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 03:26:40 am

Quote from: Green1 on June 28, 2025, 01:13:09 pm

Let me get through this and I will see what I can do. There's also tech stuff with Alpha Centauri itself. I have much better and more powerful equipment than I did back in the day and also I have to configure and actually install the patch so it will not crash. I also would kind of like to fix a bug with some custom alien factions where it will auto Treaty of Friendship in some instances I believe has to do with some modder 20+ years ago copy pasting stuff in that everyone used but is missing .txt entries.

Wait. Point of clarification - are you saying you might could help with the forum tech, or are you thinking about something to do with an AAR or something, and left out a transition?

If the former, I do trust you, but am surprised if you've leveled up that much...

Sorry. I do not know PhPbb. I moderated a medium sized gaming forum about 20 years ago, but the guild eventually paid someone to keep it working. The guild I was in back in the day had some well off people in there. So my knowledge is probably limited to below your level. And yeah, occasionally they had issues and it bit them in the arse because their entire out of game presence, they had to depend on people they sometimes did not even like. One time GM peed off the forum fixer and they were running around for a week or two when dude erased it and put homoerotic pics up on front page. Told them they should have just paid a subdomain and had others work the innards, but they wanted their own stuff. I mean, what if someone "helps" you then your front page is Kilk's pokemon "art".

If it was my decision, I'd move to a format that I controlled and not be depending on other people's generosity/interest. But you probably know more nerds than I do.

I was talking an AAR is going to use some ancient alien custom faction but two of them to my knowledge had Friendship Treaty bugs that I believe there is a way to solve. Also some TMI about stuff I got going on later tonight.

But right now, you are limited to people that remember a password and people that still have replies in emails back from when your subscribe function last worked years back that logs you in without password. No one else can get in.  Only reason I am in is I am lazy about erasing emails.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 02:24:06 pm

I should throw it out there, as it's likely no one has caught it nearly as many times, seeing as how I live here - we are getting brief downages that appear to be server failures, none this since the forum came back up longer than a half hour -once, and another about 20 minutes- most lasting under a minute.  We truly do urgently need to migrate to a better host.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Green1 on June 29, 2025, 04:14:01 pm

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 02:24:06 pm

I should throw it out there, as it's likely no one has caught it nearly as many times, seeing as how I live here - we are getting brief downages that appear to be server failures, none this since the forum came back up longer than a half hour -once, and another about 20 minutes- most lasting under a minute.  We truly do urgently need to migrate to a better host.

You also need to 86 your partners if they ain't going to be around for you.

My advice (and this is going to suck and cost beer money) is to leave this hosting up for now with large stickies saying something like "SIGN UPS ARE NOT WORKING UNLESS YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT, KNOW PASSWORD, or CLICK ON AN EMAIL YOU GOT FROM SERVER FROM A TOPIC YOU SUBSCRIBED TO."

The site has limited historical relevance and more importantly, you can get stuff from it.

Make a darn Discord, hang in it and let people help you. You already (from others I talked to) use Microsoft Teams but MS Teams is more a corporate program. 90 percent of people on MS Teams use it for work with a work domain email and use it for nothing else because who knows what these corporate domains are tracking and in some circles, games that are not physical sports or gambling is considered irresponsible.

Actually hang on Reddit. Drive stuff to your world. You'd have A LOT more help since Reddit on some corners of it has severe mod problems. Where the top thousand or so subs are all run by the same 10 or so power mods who are INSANE and they use bots and data scrapers to push agendas and anyone not with that agenda is banned and silenced even if it is not against TOS. Even if it would further discussions. (Not as much an issue with smaller hobby subs, but the big gaming subs, it's a circle jerk echo chamber.)

Then go with hosting that is yours and yours alone and mirrored. No long forgotten emissaries, no frenemies from the Nerd Wars, no frantic calls to the few remaining PHPbb vets. Maybe even use software that does not require a 2 to 4 year degree darn near in IT Networking and database management (and would even stump many of them). One that is just set up and go.

You don't have to save everything, just rehost it in a place where you are master of your own destinies.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 04:44:01 pm

A purely personal demand: I'm putting my foot down; NObody ever try to tell me to involve myself w/ reddit and/or Discord ever again.  I've said no a million times.  No means NO.

ENGLISH-DO YOU SPEAK IT?!

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Green1 on June 29, 2025, 04:55:35 pm

Just curious...(and after this, no more. I do have some cooth.)

Why?

You once said forums are not girlfriends...lol.

And you might get folks that feel the way you do.

Unless you are hiding from the lizard people that run the big places. But sometimes if you want to nerd herd, you have to go where nerds are. LOL!

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 05:04:34 pm

[ninja'd]

As for the other point of interest in all that - sisko has been paying the monthly bill for quite a few years.  We were trading off 50-50 for a long time, but he set up an auto-pay w/ the host, and I wasn't strongly motivated to complain I wasn't getting my turn more than twice before he mysteriously went radio silence.  I HAVE paid the annual domain fee since.  It suddenly doubled last year, after two years running they let it lapse AFTER I paid on time.  This year I told them they'd lost my business forever after that and doubling.  As god is my witness, we're going down forever if we aren't off iFast by October.

Also, there's an ethical issue; the Founder really DID found this site all by himself in late 2010, I didn't sign up at his little side project for nearly a year, did take on half the running, but didn't volunteer to assume half-ownership -pay bills- responsibility for about another.  I've more-or-less considered myself THE owner for a while now, but this is a bridge too far, kicking him to the curb.  I can't, ethically.  One of the things I'm pursuing is trying to re-establish contact, for help, or at least consent and a passing the torch.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 05:06:35 pm

Quote from: Green1 on June 29, 2025, 04:55:35 pm

Just curious...(and after this, no more. I do have some cooth.)

Why?

You once said forums are not girlfriends...lol.

And you might get folks that feel the way you do.

Unless you are hiding from the lizard people that run the big places. But sometimes if you want to nerd herd, you have to go where nerds are. LOL!

Nossir.  I done tried to tell you why -ten years ago and just this week- too many times, and we're not wasting my time that way any more.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Trenacker on June 29, 2025, 05:39:17 pm

Ethically, it's one thing to search in good faith for somebody long ago disappeared and then move on after a very long period of time has passed, and another to just shove them out the door of an open train.

There is such a thing as spousal abandonment, and the same principle probably works here if nothing legal is at stake--especially because I'm sure you're open to acknowledging "the Founder" on the site in perpetuity.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 29, 2025, 05:42:21 pm

Heck yeah.

I feel burned, but I still love that guy - we all owe him, always.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 30, 2025, 12:10:03 am

There's no ethical problem with sharing strictly my end of a private message.  Below, the follow-up email I sent sisko this morning, and what I relate therein is 100% true, though censored here.  -I fancied that subject line bolded might get his attention and brevity can be a virtue.



I dreamed iFast went out of business suddenly...

...Not a week before AC2 reappeared.  -And our database was gone.  Forever.

Holy [censored]!

There are what appear to be very brief server failures several times a week ever since.


We really need to migrate to a better host and upgrade the SMF version and otherwise get right with the tech.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Geo on July 01, 2025, 11:32:42 am

The ;domai; need you, they'll look up at you.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 05, 2025, 04:32:39 pm

I found a log w/ 200 unactivated users and just approved the lot -I'll deal w/ bots if they manage to post- spread the word, please, to anyone you know who's tried.

There's also a signup setting I can turn off for email activation, and I'm still looking for it.  Today, for sure.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 05, 2025, 10:02:30 pm

Oh, I got that took care of hours ago.  Have since promptly approved the signup of our new tech guy, wilkesreid; he and t-ras have been on the server working today.  Nothing's going to happen today that you'll notice, but we're suddenly on the right track again

A user from reddit who was in the mass approval has posted in Post if You're Not A Bot! thread since.

Signups are working now, y'all!  Spread the word!

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Green1 on July 06, 2025, 05:44:14 am

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on July 05, 2025, 10:02:30 pm

Oh, I got that took care of hours ago.  Have since promptly approved the signup of our new tech guy, wilkesreid; he and t-ras have been on the server working today.  Nothing's going to happen today that you'll notice, but we're suddenly on the right track again

A user from reddit who was in the mass approval has posted in Post if You're Not A Bot! thread since.

Signups are working now, y'all!  Spread the word!

This is good.

I was almost fixing to suggest if you could not get it resolved to archive it, put it up on some place you control and go with a more user friendly forum solution (if one exists). Just for your sanity.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2025, 01:53:25 pm

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on June 28, 2025, 02:18:52 am

Omg - I knew email notifications was broke, but didn't think of this.  Draz had just fixed email after long labor --- beginning of 2022, maybe.

Thank you for confirming, I think, that email notification about forum threads I'm subscribed to, is also broken.  It's why I didn't get any kind of heads up when this forum suddenly reanimated itself about a month ago.  I had no idea, and that's going to be true of most of your existing user accounts.

At first I thought, hey!  I could finally kick version 1.59 of my SMACX AI Growth mod out the door, put an announcement on r/4Xgaming, and drive some new users here.  But then I thought, hm.  They won't be able to sign up, which means lost / put off users for the effort spent.  It also means that if they suddenly want to ask me about my mod, I won't know that they're asking the questions.  I'm not currently in the habit of manually checking this forum every day, nor would I likely be.

I already see the impact of not getting notifications in this r/GamedesignLounge thing I run, as Reddit doesn't notify me of anything in the moderation queue.  I can go days or even weeks without responding, and that's embarrassing.  The answer would be to learn rudimentary Reddit scripting and cobble together an automated solution to the notification problem.  Why Reddit won't give me that out of the box is highly annoying.  Such issues have something to do with the moderator revolt of a couple years back, over their sidelining of third party moderation tools.

Complaining about the various misfeatures and capitalist pig strategies of Reddit is a 'nuther long post.  The short version is, Reddit has its uses as a recruiting tool.  But it cannot replace a proper forum based community.  Reddit's goal is to propel your community towards millions of members so that they can advertize to the biggest bucket of eyeballs.  In this process of growth, they destroy communities.  At scale, any moral values of the community founders will be effaced.  I've seen it happen in r/simpleliving and r/vanlife, both places I finally had to let go of.  The pandemic especially accelerated the process, with all the time people were spending at home and online.

The problem with Discord is it's bad as an archival medium.  There's the inherent lousiness of the ephemeral verbal diarrhea format, commonly known as "chat".  This can be overcome at small scales: the Emperor of the Fading Suns community, the Galactic Civilizations community, and the Will To Power community, are all reasonably navigable.  But I seriously doubt that anyone's content is being tracked by internet search, archiving, and backup stuff.  For someone wishing to protect their investment in content production, that's a disaster.  I'm certainly not going to pull out all the stops to "aggrandize Discord", that's just the bet of a complete sucker.

Anyways... can't seriously turn on a pipe of new users, until there's somewhere to receive them, and notify them that they're valued.

Title: Re: Activation emails for new user registration not working?
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 08, 2025, 02:06:31 pm

Yes.  There's some other things broke -all the code lines showing type-stuff- but the only -short term- priority -besides getting competent hosting- is the email not working.