Cutey Zone

General Category => Cute Discussion => Topic started by: hubol on August 23, 2023, 07:40:37 PM

Title: Admins
Post by: hubol on August 23, 2023, 07:40:37 PM
Can the default theme for the forums be Curve Multi Color;vrt=pink
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on August 23, 2023, 11:52:05 PM
Sure why not
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on May 17, 2026, 08:31:29 PM
QQ what's a good hosting provider these days?
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on May 18, 2026, 01:08:54 PM
Whatchya trying to host?  Looking for a VPS, dedicated server, shared web hosting?

I'm currently using NameCrane for low-end stuff.  Then I have an Oracle cloud instance for ARM gaming servers.  I have a dedicated box through Namecheap of all places for some professional hosting.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on May 18, 2026, 04:01:14 PM
A whole box?  What's on it?
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on May 19, 2026, 11:02:00 AM
Client sites for work.  I handle the dev side of things, and fell into the role of occasional sysadmin, too.  Not that I mind; WHM takes care of most tasks for me.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on May 20, 2026, 02:57:15 AM
Is that the name of an LLM?
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on May 20, 2026, 11:50:45 AM
Nope, it stands for WebHost Manager.  Think of it as the root-level version of cPanel.  You can manage accounts and administrative tasks, configure PHP installs, monitor services, edit DNS zones, etc.

You can see https://trywhm.net/ for a demo.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: dcco on June 23, 2026, 08:43:07 AM
oh yo waddup tinister

i was just thinking about how ive only seen like 2 or 3 members of the og helixc friends in the last like couple of years
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:06:00 AM
3056 guests, huh. crawlin' in its skin, this website's wounds won't heal
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:07:27 AM
putting the ddos aside for a second, hey, it's quakster here, again

anyone interested in disclosure? too bad, you're gettin' it anyway
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:11:23 AM
The website, "Jumper Community Forums" began in 2004 as the Jumper Game Maker Community thread's moderators refused the posting of Jumper levels in the thread, as they were not excercises in Game Maker, but a bunch of almost interchangeable files made to inflate Thorson's ego.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:16:13 AM
A few hundred Jumper levels and Jumper 2 sectors were posted across grdgamers (Thorson's prior base of operations), GMC and JCF.

I came across the website GamingW (https://gamingw.net/forums/) in 2003 while looking for RPG Maker related files and in 2004, someone there linked to the Jumper thread on GMC, pretending to be Thorson for some reason. I read the thread and started collecting levels and fanart as nobody else seemed to be doing it.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:25:41 AM
Almost immediately JCF was raided by furries as part of the same pedophiliac wave that created 4chan. You can follow the chronicled endeavors of said pedophiliacs by reading up on the histories of websites such as SomethingAwful.com, Rotten.com, Newgrounds.com, GameFAQs.com and so on.

The furries stuck around, some of them requesting to be granted mod status. Eventually, one of the furries deleted all posts on JCF, slightly after a discussion started around fairies. I interpret this as Kobolds being afraid of the Fae.

JCF was quickly followed by Helix Games Community, another board for the discussion of Thorson's games. At this point I no longer paid attention to the behind the scenes, focusing on collecting the files instead. Eventually HGC was shut down and Sulsay (LT) let Dabomstew's new site become the main platfrm for the Thorson circlejerk.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:30:33 AM
The new site, Helix Community bled members who had gotten tired of said circlejerk, the furries and even the basic act of discussing videogames.

In 2006 or so, one of the furries probated me and more or less every post I made from that point 'til around 2023 was me trying to get said furry to stop posting, hence all the low-effort spamlike garbage I've posted over the years. Calling them out on their rape fantasies seems to have finally done the trick.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:35:06 AM
In other words,
the og helixc friend
were not exactly friends, sorry. The original crew was already gone when dcco started posting on MattMakesGames around 2009, and the HelixC crew was run by a furry holding everyone else hostage, which is what Cook is still doing now by upholding this website. :dancedog:
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:38:47 AM
Somebody pretending to have made Cat Planet on the raocow forums is still the biggest mystery in all of this, however.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: switch 2 punyan, nya~ on June 30, 2026, 07:42:00 AM
One more time for old time's sake, take it away boys:



:banana: :apple: :orange: :strawberry: :pineapple: :pear: :lemon: :raspberry: :clementine: :grape: :mango: :tomato: :broccoli: :carrot: :cucumber: :rutabaga: :chili: :jalapeno: :sonic:
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on June 30, 2026, 09:28:28 PM
My memory isn't as good as it used to be, but I'm pretty sure some of those events didn't play out quite as described.

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRLV8q9Plk2lTHE0Yfkb__ZLWaIkqAilgEKjLBYRCLULA)
(Rashomon, good movie)

At least when CK7 deleted the JCF, it seemed to be from a misunderstanding of why they'd been given control.  It wasn't malicious, just kind of dumb and impulsive.

And to be honest, I think you've blown up any drama with BW in your mind.  She and I used to butt heads too, but all of that stopped mattering yonks ago.  It all happened 20 years in the past, and we were either teenagers then or close to.  I have better stuff to worry about now like home insurance or job security or who's going to win Eurovision.

I still come here because I miss the old internet, and I like hanging out with my Helix pals.  You're welcome, too, but I think you'd be happier if you moved on from what's been eating you.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on June 30, 2026, 09:29:49 PM
Also yes the bots have been crazy, and that might be triggering the 503s I've noticed over the last few days.  I might need to start finding ways to block them.  Hope I don't have to put us behind Cloudflare, because centralization isn't ideal and that just complicates things.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: dcco on July 01, 2026, 02:50:37 AM
In other words,
the og helixc friend
were not exactly friends, sorry. The original crew was already gone when dcco started posting on MattMakesGames around 2009, and the HelixC crew was run by a furry holding everyone else hostage, which is what Cook is still doing now by upholding this website. :dancedog:

im using "friends" in a petersonian sense

(altho i did consider most of us to be friends to some degree, especially since yeah it was literally in my teenage yrs when i barely had social interactino outside of here)
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: hubol on July 01, 2026, 03:38:43 PM
Yes, I want you all to be my friends, too :-) i met you all during a pivotal time that informed a lot of who i am and what i make. i feel bad for being a dick back in da day, i think ducko received the worst of that, so sorry dude!

q—not sure what to say, i think cook put it best… im not sure there is a good reason to harbor this tremendous grudge…
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on July 05, 2026, 01:30:30 PM
Also yes the bots have been crazy, and that might be triggering the 503s I've noticed over the last few days.

Oh yeah, I'd say that's it.
(https://i.imgur.com/h6MBZH8.png)

We jumped from 8K hits per day to 200K, basically overnight.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on July 05, 2026, 02:45:22 PM
Cloudflare DNS propagation is currently in process.  There may be some SSL errors to sort out along the way.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on July 05, 2026, 03:15:40 PM
Okay, we're officially on Cloudflare.  I looked into some other options for fighting bots, but detecting and blocking them is often more expensive than just serving the page.  Hopefully that resolves the sporadic 503s.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on July 05, 2026, 06:10:35 PM
What's wrong with cloudflare?
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on July 05, 2026, 06:13:04 PM
I was debugging 503s recently and it was php had been forking out to some unix tool to convert IPs to hostnames but for whatever reason one evening the server wasn't clearing up those processes so they just sat forever hogging resources.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on July 06, 2026, 05:17:37 AM
What's wrong with cloudflare?
Nothing really, but I'm wary of overcomplicating things.  That said, can't argue with results.  CPU usage plummeted when I switched over.

(https://i.imgur.com/WLlV6D3.png)

I was still seeing 503s though.  Digging in deeper, there was indeed a problem with zombie processes eating up server resources.  It looks like SMF does a hostname lookup for every connection, for ban and logging purposes.  They time out, but slowly.  I disabled that feature and our numbers returned to normal.

It looks like SMTP mail is broken.  I thought it might be from the certificate changeover (mail.cutey.zone is now covered by the CF Origin cert instead, which won't work), but actually, I think SMF just crafts really spammy-looking messages.  I ran a separate PHPMailer test with mail-tester.com and we scored 10/10.  Sending a password reset request through SMF triggers a SpamAssassin scores around 20 every time though, which is bloody high.

Not really sure how to fix that.  I could try updating SMF, but the addons we use literally makes changes to the forum source files and it's the most cursed thing I've ever seen.  I'm sure an upgrade is doable, but it'd probably break all the themes and addons and make people sad.

On the plus side, while reviewing things I discovered that I named the sending email address Parakarry, which I find delightful.

(https://i.imgur.com/UZToc7I.png)
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on July 06, 2026, 03:16:02 PM
Think I've got the mail sorted now.  I made some changes to the message template, since it was reading as too generic.  I also tinkered with the mail send function.  Something was off with the email MIME headers, but after struggling with it for a while, I just grafted PHPMailer on to send correctly-coded messages.

The biggest problem though was a bayesian filter that very much did not like password reset emails.  I retrained it on all of my tests, and added a negative modifier for transactional email.

So that should be everything.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: SquareWheel on July 09, 2026, 09:35:18 AM
By the way, I was annoyed that the error log was absolutely useless because there were thousands of PHP deprecation notices filling it up every day, so I made a few patches to fix those errors.

We're now PHP 7.4 compatible.  Welcome to 2019, everybody.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on July 14, 2026, 02:16:57 AM
The last good year of our lifetimes.
Title: Re: Admins
Post by: Tinister on July 14, 2026, 02:18:19 AM
Or maybe to be more accurate the best year within the set of years that include only 2019 and above.