Dave’s Ramblings

Thanks to a brand new deal by my current web host I’ve been afforded the opportunity to setup a special promotional offer for folks looking for a new host, or looking for their first host.

Here are some of the details of the plan $7.95 a month gets you;
1 FREE domain registration (with free renewals)
unlimited full domains, unlimited subdomains
custom DNS
16G Disk space (completely unheard of!)
120 GB Transfer
600 Mailboxes
75 Shell/FTP Users
Unlimited MySQL databases
PHP4&5
SSH shell
Ruby on Rails
Fontpage extensions (if you want them)
One click auto install of many applications like phpBB, WordPress, and so much more.

Now the sweetest part of the whole deal, sign up for a year and all setup fees are waived, then use my special promotional code CAPTIVEREEFING, and you will get a 50% discount for the year! Discount will appear after entering the promo code. Works out to about $50 for your first full year including a free domain registration!

Take a look around and compare, if you can find a better deal please let me know (I may move too!), But these folks have been excellent to work with and in the first year I’ve ZERO downtime of any of my sites!

Check them out (and don’t forget to use the promotional code mentioned above)

Tell your friends!

phpBB released new version 2.0.17 this afternoon;

This release addresses several bugfixes and some low security issues as well as the recently seemingly wide-spread XSS issue (only affecting Internet Explorer).

Patch files and documention available from phpbb’s website

All the cool enhancements that were made all week to my main Forums had to be backed off and re-applied after finding out that I broke the main language file and subsequently breaking the registration page… Just glad I make frequent backups. Too many I think, there are backups of files that are over 6 months old and dozens of versions behind.

One of these days I’ll remember that PICO has a finite limit on line lengths and truncates ‘long lines’ for you, not that you want this to happen. What a mess. Hopefully someone else will remember this next time they are hacking on their phpBB files…. pull them into something like gEdit to make your mods. Need to see if EMACS or another CLI type editor avoids the same annoying ‘feature’ of truncating long lines. Seems silly to have to jump into Xwindows just edit a PHP file.

While I was at it I did shorten the initial registration page for the forums down to 4 entries, username, email addy, and password/password verification. Folks can go back into their profile and update the rest of the info as they see fit. Just speeds up the registration process a bit, 4 fields is less daunting than the 30ish editable fields. :sigh:

This should prove some interesting results…. I guess each new ‘technology’ out there today is going to go through some legal validation process to ensure people aren’t getting ripped off, click fraud has been pretty tightly controlled by Google in their AdSense program. I’ve heard time and again how people’s AS accounts were just disabled (thus any revenue generated was in forfeit).

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A seller of online marketing tools said on Wednesday it sued Google Inc., charging that the Web search giant has failed to protect users of its advertising program from “click fraud,” costing them at least $5 million.
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Click Defense Inc. filed its lawsuit, which also seeks class action status, on June 24 in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California.

Click fraud is not “fraud” as defined under the law. Rather, it is an industry term used to describe the deliberate clicking on Web search ads by users with no plans to do business with the advertiser. Rival companies might employ people or machines to do this because the advertiser has to pay the Web search provider for each click.

version 2.0.16 was released earlier today. pretty clean install… a couple of bugfixes and one security patch.

Official announcement is here