New Administration at The Write Idea

[canadian]

May 1 2008 – It is our pleasure to announce that we have become the new owners and administrators of the vibrantly strong writers' community called The Write Idea.

Following in the footsteps of Helen Whittaker, who founded the site four years ago, we will continue building the camaraderie and helpful encouragement amongst writers from around the world as they strive to improve their craft.

We welcome new members. Come and visit us at:
http://www.helenwhittaker.net/phpBB2

Doug Pugh & Donna Gagnon
(Flirtybee & canadian)

[starktheground]

Hey, cool! 

[Ed]

Congratulations, you two. What prompted the change of ownership? 

[canadian]

Congratulations, you two. What prompted the change of ownership? 

Helen's become increasingly occupied with the writing of educational materials (paid gig, of course!). In addition, she and her hubby are in the midst of building a house on a new plot of land. Looks like they'll be living in a tent or caravan for the duration and their internet access could be quite limited. As TWI has been a true love project for her, Helen approached Doug and I to see if we'd be interested in taking over the reins as she hated the thought of it fading into obscurity.

So, we're on a steep phpBB2 learning curve and hoping we can not only keep it going but add a bit of vim & vigor!

[Ed]

Cool Are you going to get a domain name and change servers, or are you going to stay on Helen's? PHPBB shouldn't take up too much of your time, if it's anything like other forum softwares I've seen, that is. Most of the time, all you have to do is back it up once a week. Setting it up and dealing with the upgrades is the worst part. And if you decide to add a portal, yeesh

[canadian]

We do have plans to get a new domain name & change hosting companies but that's a few months off yet.  Most of my spare time is being spent zapping spammers at the moment.

[Ed]

It's pretty rare that I get any spammers to deal with, here. Every time I get one, I put the details on a thread, so that other forum owners can google people they find suspicious. We maybe get one every two months, if that. We used to get a lot more, but once I set up the .htaccess file on the server with a bunch of banned IP ranges, activity gradually dropped off to nothing.

Each time you get a new spammer, get their IP address and write it to the .htaccess file:

deny from 65.193.0.0

You can actually block entire ranges, but the code gets a little bit convoluted. The forum software helps with banning some spammers, because you can opt to ban host names as well as individual addresses.

[canadian]

Thanks for that reminder, Ed. I'll be placing a lot of host names & addresses in a banned file. In two days, we've had more than 90 of the pesky critters.

[Ed]

Wow - really? 45 per day would drive me crazy.

[canadian]

Yeah, it's been driving me, that's for sure! But I spent hours last night doing some work behind the scenes and there have only been three this morning.

[canadian]

A new writing competition has just been launched at The Write Idea. Please visit here for details of The Whittaker Prize 2008:

http://www.helenwhittaker.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3723

[SharonBell]

Congratulations!