Our first site is up at http://forum.linux.co.uk, take a look and tell us what you think!

Here’s a summary of SMF’s features;

• Uses PHP and MySQL.
• Comprehensive template system.
• Advanced permission and user management.
• Supports multiple languages at once.
• Open and well-documented source code.
• Tracking of new and old unread topics, not just from your last visit.
• Designed for optimal performance and scalability.
• Multi-media output. (XHTML, XML, RSS, WAP)
• Multi-language support from a large community.
• Package manager that automatically installs or uninstalls mods (also known as hacks.)
• Search:
  • Search the entire forum, a category/board or within a topic.
  • Search within your personal messages.

• All actions seamlessly require a session based authorization code.
• Administrative actions require the user’s password (and do not rely solely on cookies.)
• Major actions are time and IP locked, preventing ‘hammering’.
• The number of login attempts from a certain IP can be limited and time locked.

• Ability to display page creation time and query count per page.
• Put a board into maintenance mode, allowing only admins to login.
• Word censoring, either full word or partial.
• Ability to break up long words.
• Group boards into collapsible categories.
• Set categories as non-collapsible.
• Reorder boards within categories, or reorder categories.
• Create child boards under other boards. (sub boards)
• Assign moderators to boards.
• Allow certain membergroups to access a board, including guests only.
• Configure permissions for each membergroup on the board level.
• Ability to indicate new posts to child boards but nothing new in parent.
• Require registration before forum entrance.
• Require a user to agree to terms before they register.
• Disable member registration completely (allowing only moderators to register people).
• Require email authentication by sending an authentication link.
• Require a moderator to approve registration.
• Register new members from the admin center.
• Several security checks during navigation.
• Password reminder option, by email with confirmation. (doesn’t automatically reset your password.)
• Both cookie and session based authentication (works without cookies.)
• Cookies can be set local to a path, global to all subdomains, or normally.
• Adjustable expiration time for authentication cookies.
• Sortable and searchable public memberlist (accessible by a permission.)
• Powerful sortable and searchable admin memberlist.
• Show all (error) messages and IPs made by a member. (track user)
• Show all (error) messages from an IP address or range. (track IP)
• See who’s doing what (accessible by permission.)
• Several board statistics (accessible by permission.)
• Tracking of member’s online time in seconds.
• Tracking of topics, messages, new members, and hits per day.
• Individual member statistics accessible from their profile.
• Ability to create announcement boards (members receive a notification of topics automatically.)
• Member option to disable receiving announcements.
• Email or private message your members by membergroup.
• Show a news ticker or news fader.
• Ability to choose sendmail or SMTP (with or without authentication.)
• Ability to send a topic to a friend.
• Ability to view a “printer friendly” version of topics.
• Create membergroups to group members on permissions, access rights, and/or appearance.
• Assign several membergroups to a single member, with one membergroup as the primary group.
• Define membergroups that are auto-assigned based on the amount of posts a user has.
• Determine the maximum number of personal messages a membergroup is allowed to have by group.
• Assign graphical symbol(s) to a membergroup – by primary group.
• Determine which membergroups are allowed to access a board.
• Ban members based on their username, email address, IP address or hostname.
• Support of wildcards for email address, IP address, and hostname.
• Include a ban reason (viewable for the banned user).
• Include a ban note (only viewable by the admins).
• Chose between full ban, ‘no post’ ban, or registration ban.
• Include an expiration time for bans.

• Integrate parts of forum software into existing website using SSI or PHP.
  • Recent topics or posts.
  • Recent news posts in a board.
  • Recent polls.
  • Several forum statistics.
  • List of users online.
  • The menu bar.
  • News.
  • Search.
  • Login/logout.
  • Today’s events/birthdays/holidays.
• Export forum data using XML/RSS
  • Latest members.
  • News.
  • Recent posts.

• Support for WAP, WAP2 and I-mode protocols.
• Browse through boards/topics/messages with reduced page size.
• Ability to login and logout (not with WAP 1.)
• Ability to see new topics/boards with new replies.
• Ability to jump to first unread reply.
• Ability to post new messages (not with WAP 1.)

• Ability to allow or disallow your users to select their own theme.
• Ability to reset all of your members to a certain theme.
• Ability to install a new theme via your administration center.
• Default templates are XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.0 compliant.
• Admin can add smileys and smiley sets.
• Members can choose which smiley set they wish to use (or none.)
• Themes can be installed by way of the “latest and greatest themes” panel.
• SSI can have and show layers and the like from the template system.

• Spell Check.
• Quick Reply
  • Members can disable it or collapse it.
  • Can be used with “Quote”.
  • Also contains “Spell Check”.
• Vast number of “bulletin board codes” to use (including rtl, acronym, and others.)
• Optional editing grace period before a post is shown as modified.
• ‘Insert Quote’ feature on posting screen to quickly quote previous replies.

• Can be added or removed to existing topics.
• Ability to set expiration date.
• Ability to hide results till expiration of poll.
• Ability to hide results until after people have voted.
• Ability to determine how many votes a user may cast.
• Polls can have up to 256 options.

• Allowed on a per member group or board basis.
• The filename can be encrypted to increase the security (so you can upload .php files, etc.)
• Optional restriction on what filetypes may be uploaded.
• Ability to restrict such that only registered members can view them (disables hotlinking, mostly.)
• Images can be embedded into posts.

• Shows Birthdays, Events and Holidays.
• Display calendar information on board index.
• Link an existing topic to the calendar.
• Allow only certain members/groups post events.
• Event poster can edit event.
• Events can span multiple days.

• Ability to lock and unlock a topic.
  • Topics which are locked by an administrator can not unlocked by anyone else.
• Ability to allow members to use moderation on just topics they posted.
• “Report to moderator” link.
• Delete or modify posts.
• Ability to Merge/Split topics.
• Move or delete topics.
• Sticky or unsticky topics.
• Recycle bin/board for all deleted topics and posts.
• Moderation log which shows moderation activity and disallows log removal outside of 1 day.
• AJAX editing:
  • Edit a post without page reloads.
  • Double click to edit topic subjects on message index.

• Ability to hide your email address from the public.
• Select their favorite theme among the activated forum themes.
• Select their smiley set from the ones available.
• Email notification
  • New topics per board.
  • Single topics.
  • Private messages.
• Login with ‘invisible’ mode.
• Options to hide other members’ avatars and signatures.
• Ability to download and resize uploaded avatars.
• Personal text, avatar, signature, and all the niceties of forums can be used and are kept up to date in all your posts.

• Icons for topics you’ve posted to.
• Show new replies to your posts.
• Collapsible ‘Additional Options’ on post screen.
• Ability to view most recent messages.
• List all topics that have new replies since your last visit.
• See who is browsing the same boards or topics as you.
• Topics that span multiple pages have the page numbers listed as well as an “all” link.

The Timeline widget itself is fairly ‘raw’ so we’ve coded it up to automatically build the timeline from an SQL table, then written a native program to edit the data. It’s relatively trivial, however it does run over the net so it means that a number of people can update the timeline simultaneously fro a number of remote locations.

Changes to the database trigger a script which automatically builds a new static XML file for optimal online viewing performance.

Logging in ...

Browsing / Editing the timeline ...

One of the main features of the new site (apart from it being based on Wordpress rather than Plone) is it’s ability to run blogs and integrate with to external systems like Twitter. So, with any luck news updates should be far more frequent and comprehensive than on the old system and you have the option to comment on news items if you so wish.

We have a new website that will be coming on-line in the new year with a  bundle of new products and support options. Thus far the new platform is coping very well with current loads which will leave us with a lot of spare capacity .. if anyone has any ideas or special projects that need a lot of kit or bandwidth, let us know.

Additional equipment now in play;

Storage..........15Tb
Processor cores. 16 (64-bit @ 3.2GHz)
Memory.......... 32Gb
Network port.... 1GB (upgrade from 100Mb)
Infrastructure.. KVM (upgraded from XEN)

Monitoring

This is what the new service looks like from a monitoring point of view. We have 4 physical servers each with 4 CPU cores. Each server has either 3 or 5 1Tb hard drives in a RAID5 configuration. We then have a local ethernet port (br0) attached to a private switch for inter-server communication / network RAID, an external / public ethernet port (br1) for Internet access .. and a private VPN port  (tun0) for network management. In an attempt to be a little ‘green’ the CPU’s run frequency scaling, so this picture is of the cluster with CPU’s set to 800MHz. (i.e. 1/4 speed)

We’ve been using and recommending Plusnet to people for may years (six+) however more recently their quality of service [from our perspective] has been on the decline. Specifically with regards to our main ADSL line, we’ve had problems that they have been unable to address.

After the performance of our line took a ‘nose dive’ [apparently as the result of changing the interleaving on the line] we requested they ‘undo’ their changes to our service. After three weeks of drop outs and performance that almost made the line unusable we decided we had no choice but to look elsewhere.

Another week went by of “we’ve done it” (when they’d not) and “we’ve done it but it won’t take effect yet” and a migration order went through requesting the service be transferred to “Zen Internet”.

Zen were very helpful and estimated no more than an hour’s downtime based on a normal migration. Effectively they set up their service immediately, then when BT threw the switch their service would be live and waiting.

Plusnet were not terribly happy about the decision and billed for an additional month’s worth of service telling me that I needed to give a month’s notice prior to cancellation.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when three days prior to the migration completing, the ADSL line suddenly ceased to function!

My reaction was to log into my Plusnet account in order to log a ticket (using a mobile connection) but no, that too refused my connection!

So I called Plusnet support (not something I’d generally recommend unless you have time on your hands) to query the issue.

“Sorry sir, your line is no longer with us, we’ve closed the account”.

Wow! A complete migration to another ISP within 48 hours of order, a record! .. off I went to plug Zen’s authentication details into the office router. But, hang on .. that too is giving “authentication failure” when trying to connect to the Internet.

Now .. “authentication failure” is pretty specific. The router is trying to authenticate against an ISP, and the ISP is actively returning an “authentication failure” error code.

I do know a thing or two about ADSL authentication, it uses a protocol called RADIUS. In a previous life I used to work for an ISP and coded their RADIUS server. This experience tells me that the initial reason I’m not getting connected is purely because the ISP to whom the ADSL line is connecting is refusing my login details.

Next, a call to Zen support.

Very pleasant experience, zero wait time (10:00am Sunday) and a very knowledgeable chap on the other end of the phone who was able to query the BT RADIUS logs and confirm what was happening at the far end.

On trying the Zen credentials, nothing at all appearing in the logs.

On trying the Plusnet credentials, login failure appearing in the logs.

Now I might be a little out of date and indeed I might be wrong, but this tells me categorically that I’m trying to authenticate against Plusnet, and as they’ve told me the account is disabled, I’m getting the response I now expect.

On examining the BT work log, he was also able to confirm that BT had not completed the work required to switch the line from Plusnet to Zen.

So, the line was still with Plusnet, they’d just turned it off!

Ok, mistakes happen .. more often than not with Plusnet, but still .. another call to Plusnet. After 15 mins I finally got through to someone in customer services – I won’t quote his name here, let’s just call him “SL” for now.

Simple request, you’ve turned off my account prior to the migration completing, please could you turn it on again until the migration is complete – after all, I’m paying for the service for another month!

- I’m sorry, it’s not with us any more.

Urm, yes it is (I explain what as above) ..

- I’m sorry, it’s not with us any more.

Urm, I’ve just explained that it is .. it’s not going to cost Plusnet anything to turn the login/password back on [because I am still paying for the service!] so could you just turn it on then you can say “told you so” when it still doesn’t work. (but of course it will work!)

- I’m sorry, it’s not with us any more, there’s nothing we can do.

Urm, the RADIUS authentication is Plusnet’s, nothing to do with BT, you can do it.

- Look, we’re going round in circles, I’m sure we’ve both got better things to do, we’re not turning it on.

Urm, no wonder you’re losing business!

As of this morning (3 days downtime) the line migration completed and once again I seem to have a relatively stable line that’s not dropping every 10 minutes. [but now with Zen] I’ve had a little back-pedalling from Plusnet, a refund of the cancellation notice period and an apology for their “uncharacteristically poor service”, but no reason for (a) cutting off the service prematurely or (b) refusing point blank and outright rudely to reconnect it.

A busy few months coming up .. lots of lines to move!

In addition, we’ve just switched from “Apache” across to “HAProxy” with regards to load balancing and fail-over. Apache still sits on the front-end, but back-end connection sharing is all down to HAProxy which seems to handle the load pretty well.

If you see any strange behavior (with regards to websites hosted here) over the next few days, please let us know – there’s always the chance that “something” is unhappy with HAProxy.

In additional to actually working properly (!) HAProxy has a rather nice status screen so you can see what’s going on .. might sound trivial but it’s great for spotting configuration problems and down servers.

After twigging this was the case, downloading the new software and trying to reconnect, with the help of three’s technical support I’m now (six weeks on) on-line again.

This is likely to effect anyone using Zimbra as a mail server, but it’s certainly going to be an issue for anyone using Encryptec’s email service – so here’s what you need to do to get it working.

1. Make sure you doanload the new “Three EMail” software to your phone
2. Goto the installation folder and start three Mail
3. Add an account
4. Select “Other IMAP providers”
5. Enter your email address (for example; fred@encryptec.net)
6. Enter your password
7. Enter your login id (for example; fred)
8. Click Sign In
   (this will think for a little while before telling you it’s failed)
9. Click “Details”
10. Incoming mail server: mail.encryptec.co.uk
11. Select ‘Use SSL’ (Yes) – this will change “Port” to 993
12. Select ‘Use NTML Authentication’ (Yes)
13. Click “Next”
14. Outgoing SMTP server: mail.encryptec.co.uk
15. Select ‘Use SSL’ (Yes) – this will change “Port” to 465 (this is critical)
16. Select ‘Requires Authentication’ (Yes)
17. Click “Next”
18. Leave the only option as “Use incoming settings” and click “Next”
    (this will show you a summary of what you’ve entered)
19. Click “Sign in”
    (it should now say that you’ve successfully signed in, after 10 seconds or so …)

I’ve now done this on two phones and it seems to work Ok, but just be sure you select SMTP/SSL as it fails “silently” without this option. When connecting to such services for the first time I tend to select the least secure / least authenticated methods possible to maximise the chances of a connection, then tighten the security once everything looks ok.

In this instance .. bad policy.