Current events/2011
As some of you might have spotted already, we've changed up the game here today and introduced a brand-new look&feel for Shifti. It's been waiting for over a year for browsers to catch-up to some of its tricks and we've finally rolled it out. If you'd prefer the older look, check out your Preferences page and select 'MonoBook' - that's what the old design is called. Now... You might have noticed that the front page has changed and there are pages for content to go in that don't exist yet - sorry, but I'll be getting to those next!
- --ShadowWolf 17:01, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- Premature Announcement... I'm going to leave MonoBook as the default until I talk with the rest of the administrators about possibly blocking the background DNA image out entirely. Too many complaints from beta-users.
- --ShadowWolf 17:06, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- Okay... For those of you who would like to use the new look, it's name in the "Skins" tab of Special:Preferences is 'ShiftiNew'. It's going through trial-by-fire by all of our users and we'd like to be informed of any complaints. If you're using Firefox you can use the Stylish extension to make changes on your end and if they prove useful, let us know and we'll try and incorporate them back.
- -- ShadowWolf 17:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- Okay... For those of you who would like to use the new look, it's name in the "Skins" tab of Special:Preferences is 'ShiftiNew'. It's going through trial-by-fire by all of our users and we'd like to be informed of any complaints. If you're using Firefox you can use the Stylish extension to make changes on your end and if they prove useful, let us know and we'll try and incorporate them back.
- Removed the background image for now - it was causing problems on too many pages. Perhaps sometime in the future, but... Anyway... The new look is now the default once again. Enjoy!
- --ShadowWolf 17:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
- Removed the background image for now - it was causing problems on too many pages. Perhaps sometime in the future, but... Anyway... The new look is now the default once again. Enjoy!
- Looking good here, ShadowWolf. --Buck 06:44, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
After the modem+router combo Shifti had been relying on for its net connection started to fail I went hunting for a good replacement (or replacements). In the end I did find it and today it all went live. Thats what all the downtime was about - I had to get the stuff up and working properly! But with this hardware we should be set to see out at least another year - and hopefully a lot more than that since this stuff runs Linux internally and the hardware is known to be rather hardy. So rejoice and let the flood of stories begin!
- --ShadowWolf 18:30, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
GRUMBLE Okay... Apparently during the period where Verizon had totally fucked up the DSL service for everyone in my area (not just their subscribers, but everyone) the router lost the entire routing table saying which machine was to have which permanent NAT ports. And since nobody told me until last night that Shifti was not accessible to the world, I did not know. Things are working again now and everyone should be happy.
In other news we still need Donations to help meet the big bill. Hopefully this will make the ISP happy and they'll lean on the line provider (Verizon, if you hadn't guessed) to not fuck everything up in the future.
- --ShadowWolf 13:33, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
The recent down-time was not in any way the fault of the machines that host Shifti or the operator of those machines. See... My ISP leases the lines they use for DSL service from Verizon and I seem to have run into a "Line Fault" somewhere between my house and the ISP. When Verizon got around to actually bothering to fix things the service started to return, but it took another reboot of the router to make everything work again. So, I guess, rejoice, Shifti is back again.
In other news... Ye Olde Internet Bill has showed up again. So visit the Donations page and help support the site by helping to pay for its internet connection.
- --ShadowWolf 22:38, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
Alright peoples, there - I've managed to get the <RandomPages> tag functional. Turned out to be a massive error in the code thanks to the way things had changed in the calling parameters. So we've got the random pages showing up on the front page again, though there are some limits in the tag right now. It could be easily solved and made more robust, but there is no chance I'm going to risk screwing up the tag again right after I've gotten it working properly. Anyway... There are now the "Five Random Stories" on the front page again - Enjoy!
- --ShadowWolf 00:00, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
Some enterprising idiot in California (Santa Clara/SF Bay Area) has taken it upon themselves to mirror the entirety of Shifti using a really crappy piece of MacOS software named "SiteSucker". If that person happens to be reading this, then please - F*CK OFF! If you were to actually ASK any admin, we'd be more than happy to point you at backups of the database that we have available. Oh, and F*CK YOU VERY MUCH for being such a douche that you flipped the "ignore robots.txt" switch and also turned the settings so high that you've managed to DoS the site repeatedly.
In similar news, Comcast has been contacted over this matter in an attempt to resolve this without having to involve lawyers. DoS and DDoS attacks are illegal in the US - and since this person is clearly a US Citizen, I can easily file a lawsuit. However... I am loathe to do such, because I would get nothing out of it except for a lawyers bill.
And yes, I am very irritated. There is no reason for me to have to forcibly restart Apache multiple times in one day. Please, forgive the language, but I learned a long time ago that some idiots only respond to strong language.
- --ShadowWolf 05:49, 19 February 2011 (UTC)