Warning - UBB.Developers

UBB.Dev

There have been a lot of hacks lately that take no thought into various other functions of the UBB and break them utterly.

Warning one. The vote hack and the hit hack will break your search.

Warning two. If you install those hacks and break your search don't bother to fill out a support ticket. We're just going to tell you to go see the person that wrote the hack.

We've recieved almost a dozen support tickets in the last two days about those two hacks and the search returning hack messages. Don't fill out an Infopop trouble ticket if your hack breaks your board.

Notice to the two or more people that wrote these hacks: subdirectories, use them. Make a subdirectory inside the Forum# directories for your data and you will not break everyone's searches.

[ August 16, 2001: Message edited by: navaho ]

danke for the notice nav... I am guessing we need to institute a better set of testing procedures.

It's not the testing procedures that bother me. If someone uses a hack that breaks a UBB feature it doesn't bother me at all. It's when they all start flocking to our trouble ticket area because of that hack that I begin to get incredibly bothered.

[ August 16, 2001: Message edited by: navaho ]

ummm... the testing procedures/guidelines would be to tell if it breaks a ubb feature

We wouldn't know if it does that unless we test for it.

It would become part of the beta process and be required before going on to "finished" status. It would also give us a "status report" on whether or not it breaks a ubb feature so that people who install it won't fill out trouble tickets when it breaks that feature.

Oh goodness... thanks nav.

1) broken? care to explain? search works fine here, on my test board, and on every board ive checked that has polls installed, including 6.05 and 6.1.0pb 1.1 and 1.2. same goes for sticky threads which creates a file in the forums dir...

2) you cant open a support ticket if your board is hacked, so whats your point?

i see nothing in the search routines that would cause a problem.

maybe he meant olson's then ???

quote:
Originally posted by AllenAyres:
maybe he meant olson's then ???

olsens are in the thread file, read navaho's last line again.

Thanks for the information navaho, you maybe just saved my board for when I upgrade.

I checked the polls coding and dont see a problem. Can you elaborate nav?

Jordo to your "can't open a ticket if it is hacked" point.

Do a ticket walk-through. Do you see a check this box if you are hacked" checkbox? Do you think anyone would pay attention if there was? Of course not, it is neeeeeever the hacks.

[ August 16, 2001: Message edited by: navaho ]

Edited above 'cause it looked like I was trying to be rough on Jordo but really I'm not.

I've never opened a support ticket cuz I always think it's the hacks

heheh

hmm, just rebuilt the search index for a 3k member forum, no problems whatsoever. it has hit hack, sticky threads, and polls - the three hacks that do this. the reason im harping on this is because the files for polls and for sticky threads do not end in .cgi, and the rebuild index only grabs the .cgi files from the directories. there are a number of non thread files that ubb puts in the dirs as well, and they dont end in .cgi either. i dont really feel like taking the blame for what very well could be user error, or even a ubb bug, as i have taken the time to read over the code, and since i have never seen a post on this in these forums, nor been contacted about it, nor had problems on multi-thousand member forums, it all sounds a little off to me.

So the fact that they're only getting support tickets for this issue when the boards have those particular hacks installed is mere coincidence, I assume?

Thanks Nav for the warnings.

No, but it would be nice to get a little "reverse" support in return. It isn't like the UBB Hackers have hurt UBB sales...

/me notes IP back scratching...
/me doesn't see it happen'n here in return.

And it isn't like IP can even BEGIN to troubleshoot a problem with a board when the code has been modified to include hacks.

They bare;y have enough time in the day to support stock boards. They cannot add on the layer of digging through modified code to see what somebody messed up.

quote:
Originally posted by Mark Badolato:
So the fact that they're only getting support tickets for this issue when the boards have those particular hacks installed is mere coincidence, I assume?

yes in my opinion it is. there doesnt appear to be any place where the files could cause a problem in the code for search index rebuilding. like i said before it only reads the files ending in .cgi, the files for all of the mentioned hacks do not end in .cgi, nor do a number of other files that are in that directory in a stock installation.

quote:
Originally posted by Troy:
No, but it would be nice to get a little "reverse" support in return. It isn't like the UBB Hackers have hurt UBB sales...

/me notes IP back scratching...
/me doesn't see it happen'n here in return.

completely the reason im being hard-headed about this. navaho certainly seems to have very low confidence in our coding abilities. i take offense when he says "these hacks will break all your boards" when that simply isnt true. i dont post on the IP board saying "this program will break all your servers." considering the competition has more features built in than you can shake a stick at, i would think that the IP people would actually appreciate having a huge community of people that are willing to make these features and more as addons - for free.

quote:
Originally posted by Mark Badolato:
And it isn't like IP can even BEGIN to troubleshoot a problem with a board when the code has been modified to include hacks.

They bare;y have enough time in the day to support stock boards. They cannot add on the layer of digging through modified code to see what somebody messed up.

i have no problem with them sending all of these people to me. i have a full time job in addition to going to scool full time. hell just post the error msg that these people are getting, and ill troubleshoot it from there. im not asking for navaho to look into it, i just want to find the actual problem, because putting the files in a subdiretory isnt gonna change anything as far as the rebuild search index code is concerned. hence the reason i have a hard time believing that any of these hacks are causing the problem.

hmmmm.. Olson's version added .cgi files to the thread folders... I still think it might be his that caused this. I had a good number of corrupt threads when I upgraded this site to 6.1 and most of them were centered around threads with the vote files.

[edit: olson's version added threadnumber-vote.cgi and threadnumber-data.cgi to each threadnumber.cgi (that had a poll associated with it) file... it could very well have been a bug in his version. It was installed by a lot of sites even tho it was never finished.

[ August 17, 2001: Message edited by: AllenAyres ]

you mean we're arguing over nothing then??

not really... we need to remove his from the forums and do a little more testing on modifications before they reach "wide beta" status. Disclaimers about modifying forums and voiding support should be more fully developed as well...

quote:
completely the reason im being hard-headed about this. navaho certainly seems to have very low confidence in our coding abilities. i take offense when he says "these hacks will break all your boards" when that simply isnt true. i dont post on the IP board saying "this program will break all your servers." considering the competition has more features built in than you can shake a stick at, i would think that the IP people would actually appreciate having a huge community of people that are willing to make these features and more as addons - for free.

You can be a better program than all of Infopop put together, and they STILL would be in the right to point the finger at installed hacks - they're a professional corporation with obligations and standards, we're a random, unofficial volunteer service. When you pay for a support ticket, you're paying for the UBB integrity and service. When you install a hack, you're getting what you paid for. We don't have the obligations to quality+service they do, hence we can't offer the guarantee they can.

Known, stable product with paid-for quality control, vs potentially undisciplined code from Mr unknown. I know where I'd expect the problem to be.

To surmise: Caveat hax0r

We're not random...

I'm not, you are.

Since IP is the one that doesn't support hacked UBBs(and that makes sense for the most part). If THEIR, and I stress THEIR users since UBB is IP's, shouldn't IP possibly do something more to make it known that they do not support hacked UBBs?

Statements like:

Quote

quote:

While partially true, doesn't speak much for IPs rating of the average users intelligence. So basically you can't blame anyone but the end users. If they aren't going to read a disclaimer or whatever at IP and IP seems to think they have done all they can do, what else can a hack author do?

Their hacks are posted in BETA areas(Just like IP has BETA UBB versions). If an IP customer files a ticket and either doesn't see(or it isn't there, I wouldn't know) a disclaimer or whatever about hacked boards, why is it the hack authors fault? Everyone makes mistakes, UBB has never been bug free either.

Supporting those that create what IP has not for the UBB, even if all that that support amounts to is a bit of respect for hack authors should be given.

I agree with most of what you have stated troy, but it is plainly stated in the IP forums and in the license agreement that modified files are unsupported... Another good reason to make sure you have a good set of backups if you plan to modify your files.

I agree Allen. My point is just that the UBB hack authors & UBBDev do just as much as IP when it comes to Beta and warnings. To jump on them for something that is beyond their control just doesn't show very much consideration towards hack authors.

Quote

quote:

I see..

Infopop????? Support????? what's that !!!

In my book all they did is take their money and run... they have never help me or my board in any way shape or form... IT IS THIS BOARD AND USERS AT THE INFOPOP board who had always gotten me out of trouble.... SUPPORT... RIGHT!!

STOP CRYING NAVAHO... PUT YOUR TIME INTO GETTING ALL OF THIS GREAT HACKS TO WORK INSTEAD.... SINCE YOU ARE THE EXPERT !!

Bitter?

Try opening a support ticket , ask for Kristi or Jacob, they'll be glad to help.

And no, you don't need to pay for anything, unless it's going to take hours upon hours upon hours to fix.

I'm gonna close this topic, too old, etc...