Can offer help with phpbb board / Invision / whatever.

[brett]

Hi Herb,
I see you've given phpBB a try, looking good. I think I should tell you a few things about phpBB since I run my own Web Hosting business iin Australia (www.deasoft.com). We have hundreds of clients with phpBB installations and I would like to stress to you the importance of keeping phpBB updated to the latest version. We recently had a server compromised (hacked into) as a result of an older version of phpBB being exploted - 900 websites were taken down for 10 hours. It really is important to keep your phpBB up to date as new security holes get discovered every month with phpBB. There is a particularly nasty group of hackers that attack phpBB's that mainly come from Iran - we believe this was the source of our own troubles. But since you only have one phpBB to keep up to date I'm sure it'll be fine as long as its updated regularly.

Also there are plently of free skins available for phpBB, you might want to take a look at some of them. If you do give this board a cusotm skin then you'd best upgrade via the patch method. Info on how to upgrade is on the phpbb.com website. I'm more than happy to offer help / advise if you need it.

[Be still]

Moving to Club Confuzzled.

[Abiding in His Word]

There is a particularly nasty group of hackers that attack phpBB's that mainly come from Iran

[thevibesguy]

Thanks for the warning. The best way to combat board defacement is for me to keep the software up to date (which it is), and to add some modifications to the board.

One way is to constantly change passwords to ones that are difficult to guess. I highly recommend that everyone change passwords often, and change them to passwords that use letters, numbers, and a mixture of upper and lower case.

[Bob the Quiet]

If you have an msn or gmail email account, their password change page includes a 'password strentgh' bar that tells you how secure your password is.

[brett]

If you want a place to store backups of FP website we can give you a free account for that purpose. I could also setup an automated script so such backups would be done automatically on a daily basis. But you may not need / want this? You might have sensitive material you don't want on another server? Just option if you need.

[Herb]

Brett

I don't know if we have sensitive material or not. A backup like you are offering my not be a bad idea. Give me time to think about it.

Thanks Brett!

Herb

[brett]

I'm just following up letting you know I am available to Upgrade this phpBB for you if and when you need. I sent you a PM.