Journals Re-Opened

[viscousmemories]

This thread used to be titled "Journals Deactivated".

The journal system has been deactivated due to some security holes that have been discovered. The author of the hack hopes to find time to resolve the issues over this weekend, but as always with these things there are no guarantees.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Blake]

Words fail me for how unacceptable this is.

[Beth]

Could you define what types of holes there were?

[viscousmemories]

I don't have any reason to believe the data or privacy features were compromised, but unfortunately I don't have any details. All I know is that the moderators of vB.org announced that they found vulnerabilities in the hack and they recommended that it be disabled or removed until the hack author addresses the issues.

Actually, at this time we are leaning toward removing the journal system permanently. It's a large hack that adds considerable complexity to upgrading the forum, and relative to the amount of use it gets we're not sure it's worth keeping. Of course if we decide to get rid of it we'll make sure you all have a chance to get in there and save whatever you want from inside.

[Beth]

Ok, thank you.

[viscousmemories]

Okay, after much deliberation we have decided to take the journal system offline permanently, or at least until a system with better vBulletin integration is available*. Of course we still have a backup of all the posts and comments, so just let us know if you want to have copies of anything and we'll arrange to give you access to the system long enough to copy and paste whatever you want from there.



* Which may be relatively soon; watch for upgrade information.

[viscousmemories]

I know, I know. There's nothing worse than wishy-washy forum admins. Still, for the time being forget what I said earlier and consider the journal system temporarily offline. I'm not sure when we'll have it working again, but we will eventually have it working again. I was just looking for ways to trim things down to prepare for the coming upgrade, but it's really not too much trouble to keep it.

[JoeP]

In the meantime, or if our wishy-washy admin wishes and washes the other way again, remember there are plenty of other free journalling sites - www.blogger.com, www.livejournal.com, ... To get any semblance of integration though you'd have to post links here manually. And/Or use the avatar-custom-link feature.

[viscousmemories]

The author of the journal add-on provided a patch to fix the security issues, so the journal system is re-opened.

There are still some cosmetic glitches that I'm aware of, but in case I miss anything feel free to post about any problems you see. I changed it so the journal index sorts by latest entry by default, but of course you can still use the drop-downs to sort other ways.

[Beth]

Thank you.