Makoto

Traffic spikes should never "corrupt" your database. Increases in load can slow the server down, connections flooding and exceeding your MySQL servers configured max allowed connections can cause the website to "crash" and display an error page when they can't connect to the database, running out of memory can cause your server to resort to swap space and slow your system down to a crawl or get to the point where Linux starts forcefully killing processes to free up memory, but none of these scenarios (excluding possibly the last if the MySQL process is forcefully terminated, which is a case where your server is not properly configured in regards to maximum allowed MySQL conenctions and etc.) should result in database tables becoming corrupted. This is not normal behavior. There is something wrong with your systems configuration if this is a frequent problem. But outside of that, yes, I recommend looking into Cloudflare to help block illegitimate traffic and reduce the load on your website. It's not a solution to whatever is causing your database to become corrupted, but it's a good idea. However, your host putting the blame entirely on the software is just factually wrong. If they're trying to suggest it's normal for this to happen, they are absolutely incorrect.

Search for "bruteforce" in the AdminCP and it will pull up the settings page for this, But too many failed logins shouldn't be corrupting your sessions table or anything of the sort, this sounds like a bandaid for a bigger underlying issue in your server environment, if the brute force attempts are even causing it to begin with.

I am honestly blown away by how good all of this looks. I honestly wasn't expecting such a massive leap forward in design with v5, so this is all quite a wonderful surprise to me. @Ehren and you all have done an amazing job with all of this. Modern desktop resolutions have gotten so large now that we have such a massive amount of wasted real estate on the sides, even with widgets and everything else filling up some of that space. Migrating to a sidebar layout to capitalize on this just makes a ton of sense, and also makes navigating around seamless. The new mobile layout looks wonderful too, along with the new forum layouts and everything else. It has been a long time since I've been this genuinely excited about a new IPS release.

If you give a member group the Bypass automatic moderation permission, they can upload files to a category with the Files must be approved? moderation setting enabled without being moderated. However, they cannot bypass the New versions must be approved? moderation setting (i.e. they still see a notice that their new version submissions need approval, when they should be able to bypass this moderation requirement).

Yes, these services absolutely exist. They are paid fractions of a penny for each completed captcha. The services are so popular there are many Python and PHP libraries just to have your scrapers or other tools hook into these services and bypass captcha pages.

I would be happy to help if you'd like. I have offered numerous upgrade services to clients over the years. You can send me a message here if you'd like to discuss the details. I'm currently on vacation but I will be fully available again Monday.

Is this speaking from personal experience? What kind of volume were you pushing when that happened? I'm already pushing rate limits and I haven't had any issues yet even without bounce management.

I've used Google Suite to handle my domains email for years without issue, it just doesn't scale well and at a point you start getting rate limited so much you need to switch to another provider. You won't have your account closed for doing this. You are absolutely allowed to use your Google Suite account this way. You might not be allowed to with a free Gmail account, but you can with Google Suite. However, as noted, if you are using Google Suite you need to set up an app password. You cannot use your regular login credentials.

This is intentional. The SMTP password field does not actually contain your password, it's only the static number of *'s that you're seeing. This is for security reasons, the actual password is stored in the database and only used when actually sending emails.

I definitely look forward to seeing how it performs. I was planning on just giving one of the paid services a try recently, but if you're able to provide this as part of your included spam defense systems that is a great value for license holders.

Are you able to mention what you're using to filter disposable emails? I have an application that uses kickboxes free disposable email checking tool, but it seems like they've become a bit less reliable lately. I still get a lot of disposable emails that get through the service. It catches some, but not all. They used to have a much stronger catch rate. There are other paid API endpoints out there that do a much better job, but they require a monthly subscription to use. Are you using any singular service, a combination of databases on your infeastructure, or is it a "select your service" type thing (which I'm guessing it's not since it's tied into your spam service) Very cool to see this being added to the core software regardless! People using disposable emails to register accounts for spam or to bypass other limits/restrictions has definitely been a growing problem I've seen.

Please check your server's PHP or web server error logs and paste what is being logged there. If you don't know how to access this information, you will need to contact your hosting provider.

This is a bug in the current release, it can be fixed by rebuilding the search index but should be fixed in an updated release. Regarding converting prefixed to tags, there is a function to convert tags to prefixes but I'm not sure if you can easily convert prefixes to regular tags at the moment. I'll see if that is something I can add.

This update took a bit longer than I anticipated, as I forgot there's a lot of code that needed to be updated to meet the new marketplace policies before an update can be pushed through, but hopefully the new version should be added shortly. The new version will work as a drop-in replacement for the current Account Deletion feature in IPS. All the logic for this will be re-routed to the Account Deactivation application, and a new button in the Security page will be added for standard account deactivation as well. All legacy URL's to the old account deactivation pages will still function, however, just in-case you have these linked anywhere else within your community. This release will just focus on bug fixes and updating to ensure compatibility. I'm planning to still add some feature updates in a future release, such as adding the ability to either restrict or require moderator approval before users with active warnings can request to have their accounts deleted. This way users can't simply delete and re-register an account any time they get in trouble to mitigate any penalties they have received. I might also add an option to simply add the users e-mail to the sites banlist if they request an account deletion with active penalties.