So in summary;

Photos only counts the posts in the media gallery section which include photos
Videos only counts the posts in the media gallery section which include videos

I can re-word this on the rank table if it is causing confusion.

Stephen

Hi Peter,

Do you mean that not all photos and videos appear on the pointing system?

Photos is what used to be called "Photo Gallery" posts, so not all photos from all post types are included, just Media Gallery ones. Similar with Videos, these are only videos within the Media Gallery.

To include all photos and videos from all posts it would mean a surge in promotions across the board. Last time any mass rank changes were made there was upset for months! But it's up to everyone here if they think it's right or not, or whether it should just be clearer as to what "Photos" and what "Videos" are counted.

Thanks for the kind words and contributions to the website, I'm very happy to make changes if everyone agrees.

Stephen

Hi All,

This is now fixed. You should be able to reply as normal. Sorry about the bug!

Stephen

Fixed! Although anyone who has the fish photo currently will need to upload their proper avatar again.

Seems the scripts weren't checking the upload user and took the first upload it found in the database which seemed to be the fish one!

Thanks for reporting!

Stephen

Very odd! I don't know either! It must be a cached picture somewhere that keeps getting re-surfaced. I guess it's somebody's avatar......

I will have a look asap, although it may be a little later today before a fix is released.

Sorry everyone.

Stephen

Cash injection wouldn't really help, unless I move us all to a virtual private server and away from the shared hosting environment. It's the shared hosting which limits files...

The website has previously been on virtual servers when GoDaddy hosted everything (about 3 years ago), it does have its own problems though, you get limited support from the hosting companies doing this, as they assume less responsibility for up-time and don't do their own backups. Essentially they provide a server and say "here you go"...

I'm still attempting to backup the old website up (pre March), which, once done, I can delete and it'll clear some more space.

Now at 81% used disk space with just cache file removal. Maybe 50% after the old website copy is removed.

Apologies for the down time again ☹️

Stephen

Don't worry everyone, this is an oops my side with clearing cache files (which I did to fix the last website issue). I'll run some fix scripts later to restore the missing profile pictures. No need to do anything, just be patient 😊 likely it'll be fixed before the end of the day.

Apologies,
Stephen

The website hit its "number of files" limit. I've temporarily removed some cache files, but may need to think of something smarter for the longer term 🤔

Stephen

It’s ours. Well, kinda Google’s. Auto detection means the Google natural language API picked up negative sentiment in the post content. It’s nothing to do with 1&1.

Fireboat2 is a testing account I use.

Stephen

1&1's feedback upon requesting more detail:

-----
Your database was locked due to a spammed table. You'll need to verify the content of the table and clean up the spammed content or it will get locked again. You should also enable security features like a captcha to protect your website from spambot attacks. Cleaning up the tables improves the performance of the database.

For example: SELECT * from db.Table ORDER BY 1 DESC LIMIT 10;

Reviewing the table its possible this a false positive. Please review.

Best Regards,
Security Team
1&1 IONOS
-----

So all in all, no detail I can work off. Anyone know what a spammed table means? What does spammed content look like? The website already has a captcha system in place, plus bot attack detection. "Reviewing the table it's possible it's a false positive" means 1&1 are admitting their spam detections may have got it wrong?

Hopefully we've members out there who can help me decode this!

Thanks,
Stephen

I have requested further information, although not holding my breath that they'll get back with anything useful. A few things have crossed my mind, there are data rows with special characters in them, although this is harmless, lots of emoji's of course, but that's acceptable within the utf8mb4 character set. There are a few blob data types, where json data is stored, none contain anything harmful though.

More concerning is that they are even scanning the databases... that does mean they're checking through all user data. Not that there's anything overly sensitive in there (I always treat it as public anyway in case it's ever hacked, so no passwords are stored there, no bank details or anything), but there are websites which do store such things. I personally think it's wrong that they do this. Albeit a robot that does it...

If spam is in the database, it's pretty harmless unless it's executed on the website and there are measures in place to prevent code from being surfaced.

All web hosts are as bad as each other. They do do some things right, the files are daily backed up, the database will now be daily backed up with the files. Generally the support is quite good, not hours on the phone, more minutes. It's just they generally blame the customer for websites going down before they check if it's them.

---

Hi All,

Apologies for the recent down time.

The hosting company say the database was locked by the security team as SPAM content was detected in the forum table. Getting it unlocked proved slow and now it is unlocked, I can't see any issue with it. So I'm a little worried they'll lock it again...

Let's hope not.

Stephen

I think mostly don't expect too much. I only put my spare time into this website, of which is very limited. There's no team of developers.

The forum categories are now available to select on the main forum page. See attached!

Thanks,
Stephen

You can now select the For Sale/Wanted forum category when you create a new post. The missing piece is possibly seeing all forum threads of the same category in one page, but it's not preventing buy/sell posts from being created.

Stephen

Here’s a sample, the nozzle certainly won’t work. It’s as I suspected really, some detail is lost, the flanges will need filing or drilling a little larger to slide on the main post. If it’s going on a display model, it may be adequate.

---

I could probably do them 1:32, but I doubt they would operate at that size. Some of the detail will be lost and they’d be more fragile. I’ll try it out and report back 👍

Hi Peter,

I am looking to add a reordering function for the uploads. I can't say yet when this will be mind.... I need a spare couple of hours to add and test it 😊 maybe in the next week or two.

I think photos go currently in the order of upload, so I can only suggest bearing that in mind if the sequence is important. I agree with you though, so the feature will be coming 👍

Stephen

To all water cannon enthusiasts:-

The shop is now selling working fire monitors. These can be attached to a pipe at the base. The design is based around the crash tender, but any boat or tug of the same scale would be able to use these.

Currently 1:16, if there's any interest for 1:12 I'll look to add this scale too.

Separately... any parts not available which people would be interested in?

Stephen

https://model-boats.com/shop/52678

🔗

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This could be an iPad thing. There is an onclick action but also a css action which changes the colour when you hover. I guess with touch screens the first touch it only does the hover action, then the second touch it performs the click action.

I’m sure it could be fixed with a tweak. Do you have to click again with the other menu items or is it only the logout button?

Stephen

---

Is it worth creating a hints and tips wiki page?

https://model-boats.com/wiki

Stephen

https://model-boats.com/wiki

🔗

Designed for the crash tender, but suitable for any boat or tug of the same scale. This cannon will operate by attaching a pipe at the base. The angle can be set during assembly. Comes in red, but can be painted as required.

Brand new to the shop!

---

What browser are you using and what device?

Is anyone else getting the same?

Stephen

---

Not entirely making sense still, but I'll dig into it more later. I do see the post in the database, but it isn't linking it against your profile, that aligns with the fact you saw the login button. It's as if posting caused some kind of temporary logout. I'll manually fix this one for now and check later when I've more time what may be the reason.

Haha! Does that make me Gru? 😁 Or perhaps Dr Nefario? 🤣

Haha! I’m so used to Ed letting me know about glitches it was automatic! Sorry Doug! 🤣

Hi Ed,

I don't see anything obvious which would cause that. I guess this was in the forum thread page along side your post?

It feels like it didn't return your member data, that would usually result in a 50 years figure. Everything is unix timestamped from the 1st Jan 1970. But why it wouldn't return your data I don't know. It's rare, but maybe there was some kind of table lock in place and another query running which caused it. There are optimisation functions which run on the database, they probably rebuild the tables, so it could be that. They could be running too frequently in fact, so I'll perhaps change that. Guessing a bit to the issue. If it happens again, can you screenshot it and PM me?

Thanks,
Stephen

Just to follow up on this one. The bug mentioned below is now fixed. If a youtube link on its own is posted, it'll accept it.

Thanks,
Stephen

In your My Account page you can turn off all notifications. If you want to close your account completely, please use the support page. Thanks

Hi Doug,

This is fixed now. It was the way the code was handling the page layout and how much recent activity to show.

Thanks,
Stephen

I’ll take a look at the error on the profile page, but it’ll be tomorrow 😉 I’m too busy enjoying the bank holiday today 😁

The errors in the emails were fixed recently, so that part should be ok now 👍

Stephen