Kitty Corp Meow Mix Forums

Hey there.

Increasingly, I've noticed the issue of "Error 500" messages recurring (which, correct me if I'm wrong, are due to bandwidth issues). Several users on the forum have decided to move to other sites, including those in LST. I'm not here to condemn their behavior or anything; it certainly is frustrating to put up with these issues.
However, what if we took the initiative to solve these problems and prevent unnecessary splits in the Brawl Hacking community?

Assuming that the Error 500 issues can be resolved by paying for higher bandwidth, we could all "chip-in" and donate a bit of money to keep the site running smoothly.

The purpose of this thread: is it worth donating towards, and would you yourself donate? If so, how much?

Whether or not this idea becomes received well is not my concern; I'm more here to get opinions and responses on this idea.
Additionally, I don't know much about the finances of the site, so if Picano or someone else central to kc-mm could comment concerning these, to put things in perspective, it would help a lot.

I wouldn't mind spending between 20 and 30 dollars a month to keep a new server running, honestly. Until now, I've been spending it on something that I really don't need, and if it could keep this site healthy, I'd love to help like that.

Also, moving to LST probably isn't going to be the best idea. And I'm not saying that because of petty competition.
They are hosted on Proboards. We were hosted by these guys 2 years ago, when our traffic was about a tenth of our current traffic. And they kicked us for taking too much bandwidth. That is obviously much worse than 500 errors.

We're currently trying to look for way to reduce queries and the number of Errors 500. Like, now, Guests won't be able to access anything but the most basic Hacking boards, and BV.
But it's not enough, and we have to keep finding more and more ideas.

This, so many times this. Most people haven't been around long enough to realize this and instead [censored] about how crappy our server is. In fact I saw people spouting nonsense like "This never happened on a proboards forum for me."

Back then the entire bloody forum went down because we were taking up too much bandwith for proboards. The situation now might blow but it's still way better than what we had before.

As for people moving to LST, well for a while I thought splitting the traffic might help in the long run. But in reality, all hacks still get uploaded to BV which means our traffic won't change all that much. Though as Miacis stated, if moving to LST becomes a trend then that forum will soon share the same fate KC:MM did 2 years ago.

The thing about donations is, that it's a bit risky. I can see that we probably wouldn't have trouble getting the requied money now that the topic is hot but what will be in a few months after the hostchange? People will start to forget about the Error 500 ordeal and their eagerness to donate will dimnish. Next we know we can't meet the monthly fee and poof goes the forum.

Are you saying it will be 20-30 a month in total  to get more bandwidth.  Or is that what you are willing to donate and really it costs a lot more?    I currently do not have a job, but if its only 20-30 a month i'm sure i could donate like what... 5 bucks a month?  

Moving to LST could help you guys out a bit though. taking a fraction of the traffic elsewhere.... idk. I don't feel its competition. We are basically the same thing >.>


Edit: how about we get rid of BRTSM entries in the vault?

Edit: also I completly agree with black boo on the whole family thread.  Why not just make a new threac, lock it, and add an embeded IRC chat in the main post. It will still feel like you are on KC:MM, just without all the f5's.... or maybe a Xat chat, so people can still have their avies n stuff.

I'll quote my reply from the admin section

It wouldn't help in the slightest?  I'm not an expert on bandwidth D=  but wouldn't you save a lot refreshes/page views and posts?  

Just restrict guests from viewing the family thread and make it an IRC?  i mean it is the most viewed thread by a longshot with "511527" views. It is also the #2 posted in topic (and i'm sure its been restarted a bunch)  i think it would help out a bit...   And with beyonds thread being the 2nd most viewed and having moved to LST...   Are you saying this won't help at all?  D=



idk ... just trying to throw out ideas here.


edit:  Again I'm willing to help out with funds. I should be getting a "job" soon. Atm I am only paying $40 a year for LST related stuff.

Guests outnumber registered members at almost any given point of time.

IIRC, when we left Proboards, stage hacking was barely even a thing. The SD Loader hadn't been around for very long. I dunno, it's hard to remember that far back. But if I'm right, Miacis saying we had a tenth of our current traffic is probably being too generous.

I doubt we'll get more than we can handle over at LSTeam Forums >.>  but I'm sure it'll help you guys with people checking out the vertex section a bit, knowing beyonds thread isnt there. 

We'll see what happens... No one anwered my question about how much it will cost to get rid of the "500 errors"

I'll just quote my post from the admin section, about the Family Thread :



As I said above, Guests do not have access to it anymore. In fact, they can now only visit the most basic of hacking boards. And BV.


Reason is : I don't know. We'd have to ask Dantarion or a professionnal for that. And Dantarion is a bit hard to catch.

And when I mentionned $20-$30, I was of course talking about how much I could invest in the website. I have no idea if it's even remotely close from the actual price.

TBH, I never even saw that comic D=

I was just looking at stats

You guys doing the whole guests have limited viewing abilities thing is a good idea.  But man look at thems forum games.

And I still think turning it into an irc thread might help a little... look at all thems views. people wouldn't be constantly refreshing to see new posts. If it were a chat box of some sort, its likely people will just keep that 1 page open.

I dunno what you should do about forum games though...  Maybe only have like a page of games approved by moderators to post in >.>   that would seem a little limited idk.


And would song entries being taken away from the vault help in any way?   theres just so  many of them =|  and they each only have like 10 or so downloads.

and this may sound absurd as well because i have no idea what i'm talking about.  What if you put a quality filter on the vault?  like if something gets under 5-10 downloads in a 3 moth span it gets removed?

edit: I worded that wrong... If they don't acheive 5-10 downloads within their first 2 or 3 months it gets removed...

Well, these are ideas. But most are ideas that all have the inconvenience of bothering our users beyond what the 500 Error actually does. =/ It's difficult to please everyone, but what's what we've gotta do.

The IRC idea has already been considered. But for once, it's not the same as a thread, and has both good things and bad things about it (so obviously, some users would be left out in the end). Also the fact that we have no control over the IRC whatsoever. The people "administrating" that IRC aren't linked to the staff in any way and from past experience, it's pretty obvious that they do not share our methods of moderating discussions.
So I honestly do not think that it would end up nice with so many people around.

As for "quality filters" ... I don't know, I really don't know. We've always made sure that BV was open to every hack, for everyone.
And I'm pretty sure bandwidth is not affected by the "disk-space" they occupy, but I wouldn't bet my hand on that, so it's kinda difficult to know without the advice of someone knowledgeable.

We've really gotta contact our host Dantarion ... ._.

This.


This, harder.

As far as quick fixes go... disabling guest access to the vault would work... for a bit... But, back when we did that while the vault was still the gallery... we just got a huge amount of new registrants.

And implemented.

KC MM wouldn't have that error 500 without the 'role players' in the forum games section.

I've seen like 218 guests once and 64 users i think that the guests are causing the problem (This is what i think)

pffffthahahaha

No, I don't think so.

Seems like things have changed... (http://www.proboards.com/features)

I mean, KC-MM gets how many people/guests online at the same time? Top 400, right? Then how come this forum can hold this massive amount of Guests while Proboards is hosting? (http://wfigs.proboards.com/index.cgi?) Or this? (http://realwrestlecrap.proboards.com/index.cgi?) Or this one? (http://pulsemusic.proboards.com/index.cgi?)

I also looked around to see if I found some people complaining about Proboards' bandwitch, and only found this (http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=support&action=display&thread=401933) and mistakes like this (http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=support&action=display&thread=344861)

Point is, no one seems to be having problems with their forums being kicked for what I've looked.

Also, seems like bandwitch is unlimited for everyone, as paid services don't include them, as well as it mentions it on the general "Features". (http://support.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=support&action=display&thread=402648)

EDIT: The irony, I got Error 500 twice while posting this. <_< (And just had a 8 minutes freeze while fixing some miss spelt words. <_<)

Then what do you think is the reason we got kicked out ? >_>

We had the Texture Gallery, and now we have BV. And both of them gather a huge amount of queries.

I'm pretty sure we left Proboards because everyone hated it, not because of bandwidth concerns.

The free bandwidth was probably the one reason we stayed as long as we did.

Okay, I said nothing. ~

On a side-note, I've just asked someone pretty competent in the domain.
Count around $60 A MONTH for hosting the boards+BV somewhere.

How many people are ready to pump the $30 EVERY MONTH that I won't be able to pay myself ? Not many, I guess ...

This is all incredibly irritating. Personally, I say we move to ProBoards and try to recreate this forum the best that we can, but then if also possible, leave BrawlVault here and leave a link to it at the top of the forums like we have now.

My idea in short

-Recreate the KCMM forums on Proboards to the best of our ability
-Leave BrawlVault on forums.kc-mm.com linking to it from the proboards forum and the blog
-see what happens.

Let me start off by spouting some nonsense. LST Forums will not have bandwidth issues. Also, I beta tested the Proboards V5. Epic stuff there. Really makes me glad I decided to make the LST forum on Proboards (which I've seen support communities as large as this one).

And our hacks still taking up BrawlVault traffic? No problemo, I'll gladly take all of mine down.

And I got three Error 500s (http://kittyleaksleaksleaks.blogspot.com/2011/08/episode-48.html) as I was trying to post this super srs post. (http://kittyleaksleaksleaks.blogspot.com/2011/10/episode-65.html)

Oh, here's an idea. Try removing your forums games section for a week and see how that jives with your bandwidth. You know, for science.

I just got six, yes SIX Error 500s and Error 503s IN A ROW

Somebody just freakin fix this :srs:

Again I present the idea of moving to proboards, or, well I'm also partly on board with SJS's idea of the forum games removal. It's by far the area that gets the most traffic, you can see it in the statistics.

Moving forums (again) would mean abandoning (again) everything we have.
-Topics
-Posts
-Usernames
-Awards

Also, Brawl Vault is heavily integrated into the forum. It could be a stand alone entity (using this forum's login features)... but that is also a hassle.

I have said for a long time that Brawl Vault was resource intensive and that it needs to be optimized. But, as the sole programmer... I have no time to make such an extensive fix.

Also, some features are naturally resource intensive... such as all the safety measures I've had to implement due to people whining about download count abuse and the like.

I'm sure that in the short run I can disable many features (download count / abuse prevention, action logging, sig generator, statistics page) to speed things up... but I really just need someone who can code something better than the vault.

Anyway... when did the issues start getting really bad anyway? We've had tons of people at other times with a bit less issue... maybe some recent change to the forum itself screwed things up?

On a side note, we've almost hit a new record in our Most People Online Ever today, and I don't even understand why. Even Guests have been flooding in.

That's a terrible timing, but there's nothing we can do about that.  :-\

We'll be adding advertisements to pay for a new server host before you see us taking down a section that's used so much. If people post there, it's because they want to. Removing a whole part of the boards that users enjoy so much is the last of our options here.

Besides, are you guys blind or what ? If people don't post in Forum Games, they'll post elsewhere. I don't see what's so difficult to understand.
I've never seen a forum section causing bandwidth issue all by itself, and I don't see why it would start now. >_>

Before calling people dumb and making assumptions, why not try it so you can back yourself with actual evidence?

Maybe it was Waluigi?  You know that whole incident with Conan?  Maybe it's like that, but with Waluigi since he's been featured on a number of sites recently.

It's simple: because I don't plan on removing huge chunks of the boards unless someone gives me EVIDENCE that it's going to be any bit useful. And not "for science" and/or because some users like to put the blame on the Family and Forum Games for every issue that comes up on this [censored]ing board.


Indeed it is. Wow, what a pretty awful timing indeed. Everyone, I ask you to be patient, there are hundreds of visitors coming from outside. Don't talk to dem strangers Please bear with it until the boards become calmer. There's nothing we can do but wait. ._.


Now, let's be clear, I've contacted Dantarion, who's hosting us for free, (when something like our website could be charged for $40 a month) and asked him about our situation, and our possible ways out of this.

We will not, I repeat WE WILL NOT make any move until we know where we are going. That is, when Dantarion replies to us.
So don't ask, don't complain, don't try to rush us, we won't do anything until we know where we're going.

PS : And heck no we're not going to move back to those crappy ProBoards and lose all our data + all our mods.

Quoted fof truth.

And Picano, I can understand the hassle with Brawlvault, that to me seems like the only real thing "keeping" KCMM here. The topics, posts, awards, etc? Oh baww, cry me a river. People can start over, it's like moving out of a neighborhood to a new city.

Perhaps we're integrating a little to much into the forums though. The awards system is a possible good example. They have one on Minus world and it's not causing problems, but they're not as large of a community.

Also, just a thought, but perhaps it's Brawlvault's deep integration into these forums that's causing the issue as well? Again, if we split the forums off of Brawlvault, we would most likely cut the traffic on the server in half, which would be diverted to the proboards server.

And Miacis, how do you know this? Some people just come here FOR the forum games. Not gonna lie, when I'm on my breaks from hacking, it's the only thing that's kept me here until i decide to come back to hacking. You assume way too much.

It's called you get your god damn evidence from doing a frickin experiment like any good scientist. And look at the statistics? Isn't that evidence enough?

Seriously, just hide the god damn board for a week, and then un-hide it. Is it that much trouble? Or are you worried about all the [censored]ing you're going to get from the users who live for that board?

Evidence? Why it's been right there under you nose the whole time! I think you've seen the legendary forum games post chart enough times. Oh, and let's recall the whole off-topic post count removal. We've all seen the people that went from thousands to less than a hundred posts. It's common knowledge that forum games takes up a huge chunk of the forum, you said so yourself. I don't see why you're trying to cater towards the roleplayers over the hackers.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a hacking forum?

And what exactly does this have to do with bandwidth ?
The only thing to get less queries is to make people less active. There is absolutely no evidence that closing the Forum Games section will stop users from posting anywhere else on the boards. In fact, anyone with a little bit of common sense can see that it's completely absurd.

Actually, all of these posts, and all this activity was focused on Off-Topic before we created the Forum Games to separate games from topics. And the activity in Off-Topic dropped pretty low after we split it like that. Why ? Because people who were psoting in one place ... moved to another. Not really hard to understand, right ?

That's all the evidence I need to be sure that what I'm saying is right:
Closing a sub-board will not make people go out and work out. It will make them post elsewhere on the boards. Thus not saving any little bit of bandwidth. And restraining users to less boards. No positive point. One negative point. => Rejected.


Now, as I said, I'd appreciate it if you guys could stop trying to rush us. It's already difficult enough as it is. So as I said, we'll wait until Dantarion answers us. And if you don't like waiting, go post on LST in the mean time.

Tank you and good night.

We've done so once and it was a massive inconvenience to everyone. It took a while to build back up. (Not to mention issues with people stealing names and such...)


That is a possibility.


We... can't. Splitting the forum from Brawl Vault is a MASSIVE undertaking as it was hard coded into the forum itself. I've been asking for someone to help / take over coding for AGES. No one has / has been able to rise to that call.


And how do you know that it is? Casting blame without any sort of evidence is a shameful practice. Yes, that games for has tons of posts / activity. Is it a major source of trouble? Doubtful. The main strains on this server are: Wordpress (it's optimization is worse than Brawl Vautls!) and Brawl Vault (I had never dreamed it would be this popular)

Loading / posting the the forum page take at most 2 queries. 1 to load / post the forum data and 1 to load the user data for permissions.

Wordpress on the other hand... 1 to load content, 1 to load user data, 1 to load theme data, and 1 for each mod.

Brawl Vault... 1 to load user data (forum), 1 to load page data, 1 to load basic statistics, 5 to load statistics page.

Not to mention a couple queries for each download call... Brawl Vault sig...

Well thanks for putting some serious consideration into all my posts >.>

I love it when i just get copy/pasta messages and brushed off to the side.
I was seriously concerned with your guyses problem and trying to help, and everyone just says "NO THAT WONT WORK"  Everyone from forum games are just gonna post elsewhere?

I doubt they'll be posting as much as they did in there...because well theres really no place they can spam without end, and I don't see them starting up a role playing game in someones random hacking thread.

Against my better judgement, I will still keep my word and donate $5 a month until i get my job in which case i can donate more. Why punish the community for the Stubbornness of the admins >.>

It's people like you that make me wish I could put my hand through the internet and [censored] slap them to hopefully knock some sense into them. Yes, it may not stop them from posting anywhere else, but as SJS said, when the forum games and off topic posts were removed from post counts, people's post counts were DESTROYED and set back to fractions of what they once were.

The only reason that activity in the off topic dropped with the founding of the forum games section was because you CREATED another outlet for their psychotic whims, because apparently the Off topic was mostly being used FOR games. If you close the forum games board and prohibit the playing of games and Roleplays in the Off topic board, guess what? Those posts will be cut off and will cut down on a good number of queries. It's like the flow of water when you think about it. The Forum games is a fountain spouting tons and tons of water into the "bandwith pool." If you close off that fountain, the water, as you say, will then go to the off topic pool, and then from there to the bandwith pool again. But, what if you close off the path to the off topic pool from the forum games pool? The water in the forum games fountain has nowhere to go, thus forcing it's shutdown and will cut down on the amount of water being poured into the pool. Tell me I'm wrong there. I fricking dare you.

Picano, the main question is this, would switching servers be any less inconvenient, or having to pay for the server? Or what about these errors in general? If you ask me, I say they're the biggest inconvenience we can possibly have at the moment.

I see. If I knew how to code and such I would GLADLY help you out, since I have a decent amount of time on my hands. But I don't, so unfortunately, it seems you still remain the only one able to do so...sorry.

The brawlvault sigs...now THOSE could definately be a huge wrench in the works, eh? What if we took that feature out (again, I'm aware it may very well be a lot of coding), true, people may not like it, but really, they're rather pointless when you get right down to it. If people want this information, they can look at ther person's damn profile.

And about the blame game thing here, I'm playing the same game as Miacis, as it takes two to tango, and I couldn't BARE to see him without a dance partner.

I'm talking about bandwidth. You're talking about post counts.

Picano just explained to you where the problem comes from. Read it before assuming that the two notions are the same thing.
I mean, please! This is just making the debate even more confuse.

No, you're perfectly right. To sum it up in a few words : if we forbid users to do something they've been enjoying to do for one year now, they will stop doing it. That's the gist of it.

But that doesn't make it a good idea either. And as mentionned already, it's not going to do much good to our bandwidth either, so no.

Considering you have absolutely no idea of server costs, of how much and how we can pay new stuff, didn't witness how much of a pain in the ass it was when we changed servers, and all that crap ... sorry, but I'll wait until I get the opinion from our server hosts to make any move.

Neither you nor I know enough about that to take a sensible decision or emit a valuable judgement on what to do. So let's just stop [censored]ing at each other, okay ? This is not helping at all.

Everyone, we've heard your ideas, but right now, we still are trying to determine the best course of actions and what actions would beworth it, and which won't.
In the end, our goal is the same as yours : getting rid of these freagin' errors.

So please, can we all calm down and wait until e get some crucial info from Dant ?

So to sum it up....   Role players, keep on keeping on!

Brawl hackers? go somewhere else =|


makes sense.

Would you cut that crap ?

We're open to anyone and everyone here.

We are not going to kick out people out of here just because some people feel that hackers deserve a better treatment than any other users on the boards.

This is the best way it can be put.

Marcov, Vyse, and I tried our hardest to ensure the community survived the BROKEN proboard forums, the REJECTION of free hosts, and the SHAMEFUL TAKEOVER PROSPECT. There are a lot of factors to consider here and... maybe our issue will just die out? I was fully expecting the surge of users to drop down thanks to school --- as it has every other year.

I will say this though... if there is a move, I will not be going. It has been a long time since I have been to this forum for pleasure; I have seen the worst aspects of both community and staff and have no motivation whatsoever to put my own time, effort, and worry into starting fresh once again.


Miacis has tried to be kind, sure he slipped up a bit with the stupid comment but...

If we did test your theory and it turned out NOT to be the issue; us staff will have taken on the backlash of many members (which... we have already, multiple times). That section of the forum has been a major headache for many reasons... but I do not believe removing it will fix the solution.

So, if all you are going to do is insult Miacis and throw around accusations that he is biased in favor of the role players... GET OFF MY FORUM.

I've never had a problem loading the BrawlVault. I've only received errors when using the forum. But it doesn't matter what we suggest. We're just lowly peasants with inferior intellect. We aren't worthy! Guess I should just get off your forum then.  r)

Biased twards role playing? no not really.

I was kinda hopeing he was maybe... perhaps... just a little... biased twards Brawl mods... because well, isnt that what this forums/brawlvault is based off of?  

It's great that he thinks of them equally... but... come onnnnnnnnnn.

anyways, ciao! pm on LSTeam to let me know when you find out the actual details of upgrading/switching servers so i know when to donate.

that's what I heard in your post Mia.

Oh, but I just recalled. And I know you're going to hate me for referancing my old times on a different forum, but this is actually valuable input.

MFGG was experiencing similar problems on their forums, though I don't believe it was this extreme. So what they did was they disconnected the forums from the mainsite and called it "Minus World," leaving everything such as post counts, awards, etc in tact. They then made a new forum designed specifically for fangaming items and topics, and then used Mius World for their sitlly general discussion. The situations seem nearly identical to me. So, if it's possible, cut off the current forum from the main KCMM blog and hacking community and leave it for the roleplayers and gamers. Then make a new forum on a seperate host or something to the effect simply for brawl hacking, and connect that to Brawlvault, (Yes I know it's a lot of coding but we're running out of options). Roleplayers and not serious people get their forum, the hackers get theirs. Everyone wins, except possibly Pocano, who unfortunately would have to do the coding to reintegrate brawlvault, which I understand would be a pain and difficult....:c

Frankly, if you really think that way... yes. If you aren't knowledgeable enough to fix my code, you aren't knowledgeable enough to fix the site and shouldn't harass the people who might be able to.

But, I'm not saying your opinions don't matter... I even said the exact opposite in my post. I just don't want a stupid flame war to start up from people who don't actually know how to fix things...

Quoting for truth, actually. We're all doing our best to come up with possible ideas to cut down on the usage, even the slightest. And right now, Star, SJS, and I are all in agreement that the forum games could stand to go, but Miacis is being, frankly, a stubborn jackass (by that i mean mule) and refusing to even try our suggestion. The results may surprise you.

I can assure you that currently we have alot more options that that, and they are much more feasible. Again, coding is the first thing that we lack. So moving to a different platform would be complete suicide.

Our first priority is to try and find an arrangement with Dantarion to upgrade the server. If we can't, we can try and move the whole website "as is" to another server where we'd have to pay.
What would be lacking would be money for (most likely) both solutions. And fortunately, we have more ways to make money than to make coders.

Majora, I see what your idea is, and I understand your experience. But right now, this is not the easiest solution for us. And for the users.

I'm trying to say that as calmly and non-agressvely as possible. We understood the idea. But we won't consider moving to proboards, splitting the site, etc... or restraining our users to certain sub-boards until we're sure that there aren't more pleasant solutions.

Oh, no. You've been polite and all that jazz. You're fellow administrators really could really learn a thing or two about politeness. You should teach 'em.

We were just trying to help you guys out. Keep that in mind.

Y'know Mia, you're right. However, if there ISN'T the possibility of upgrading our bandwith on a free server, I suggest removing the forum games before it actually costs money to run the site. Make cutbacks so this place can run efficntly as possible while still being free and not needing donations.

Almost exactly what I suggested pages ago but it got pushed aside for being "dumb".

Don't knock it 'til you try it.

Okay, I've had enough. If you guys can't stand my very presence, and me telling you why we don't think your ideas are good, then I don't even see what I'm doing here.

I've been up al day to discuss with every admin about how to get us out of this mess. I've tried to contact Dantarion by different means, and i've been trying as best as I could to underline the reasons of our decisions, here.
I've done NOTHING in all my afternoon and evening but trying to take care of that 500 Error crap.

So pardon me if sometimes I'm a little annoyed when you insist that your idea is right and should be absolutely applied. And when I don't think it should. I apologize for being a bit rude at times. But I've been on full-throttle for 10 hours now, worrying about this issue.

Now, as I said, if you can't stand my presence anymore, I'll just take my leave from here and do my admin job without discussing with the users about said job.

PS at Majora: I know. I've been thinking about it all day. I know.

I find it quite interesting that this topic has just started...
Considering the fact that this problem has been going on for a few months now I'd think it would have been addressed earlier.

That being said, the only real reason people are starting to get generally pissed by this error is because other modders have finally taken action and taken their wares else where.

I'm not taking sides in this argument or anything but it is quite logical to get rid of a section that could potentially be ruining the forum experience and you know the main part of a hacking community, The hacks. I dunno bout you guys but I find it very aggravating that every time I try and add some mods to my SD card I lose motivation due to errors...
 
I'm not really trying to say it's anyone's fault but It may be worth looking into to try and see what happens when temporarily removing a section...
I also feel you guys should stop arguing and discuss this more like adults, not children. Fighting isn't gunna make the issues go away >.>

Just my 5 cents sorry if I come of as rude at all...
I'll try thinking of some other potential ideas for you guys to help fix these issues.

Oh you poor hurt kitten. I don't recall getting a good reason why my idea was bad. It was more of a test run thing, really.

I just think it's funny how everyone's suggestions are just pushed aside. People here have has some reasonable suggestions.

Alright, this is annoying, just see what happens when you HIDE the forums games for a bit.

"No evidence this will work", well, there maybe no "real" evidence, but the statistics show quite a bit there...

It couldn't hurt to try it, even mods can hide parts of a forum... I don't see how this would truly hurt anything, just a test. All good testers try everything out once... Just try that for a week, and see if the 500 errors continue, if they do, then okay, open it back up, if it doesn't? Move the family and what not to another board... Nothing major lost.

Mia, I get that you're trying to fix this, but the "evidence" you put against our suggestions is as nonsensical as you say our idea are.

Let's everyone just calm the [censored] down here. Walk away, go have some dinner or a snack or something, and then come back and reflect.

I'll put my 5 cents in...

About this whole games forum thing...
I've seen the games section have A LOT of users and guests even before this whole Error 500 issue came up, but it has died down a little bit after but there was still a ton users posting i don't know how all a sudden this happens.

And sitting here fighting IS NOT helping this forum. If everyone would hear others opinions and maybe ask questions maybe we could deal with this Error 500 a lot quicker.

Exactly. Sitting here [censored]ing at each other is not gonna solve [censored]. Honestly, the forums game section should be cut.

inb4theywillpostsomewhereelse.

Actually, no, they won't.

A lot of people who post on that thread, JUST post on that thread. They come here, just to post on that thread/section, whatever.

They have even said it themselves how they could give a flying [censored] about Brawl hacking itself, and they just want to role play, etc. That's fine, but if it's gonna be a [censored]ing issue to where one can't browse the damn forum AND Brawlvault, then I think that's a problem.

It's just stupid to me how when regular users try to find solutions, some Administrators/Moderators reply with demeaning [censored]. You think that's gonna help?

And it's stupid to me how when admins reply with a meaningful reply on why it wouldn't help (number of queries performed) it's ignored and instead the staff (Miacis especially) is bashed.

I've made a change as suggested by Miacis; things are running a bit smoother right now. No?

If not, give us time; we are still awaiting on Dantarion and... at worst will place an ad somewhere on brawlvault.

I'm sure the person/people who "bashed" him, had a reason to as they felt bashed as well. I'm not gonna get into it, or read every damn post. It's too much honestly.

Just saying, there isn't need to be fighting and drama in every thread. There can't be a damn discussion, I swear.

Anyway, I say those who are really bothered and annoy, can go to LST or somewhere else for the mean time.

Also, if Guests are the cause of this, why not make this boards completely invisible to those, therefore, they won't always be lurking.

We've already restricted their access to only the very minimum of boards. Only the basic hacking sub-boards and News (for the Rules), so that they at least know what the forum is about, before registering. :)

Access to BV for Guests has been removed as well. (Not sure if I've mentionned it earlier.)

Honestly, your words matter little to me after trying to pull off that fake "bandwitch" card on us together with dRage.

It's also sad when you see people registering with the sole purpose of jumping on the Gaming Boards.

Concerning your idea of "They'll just start posting elsewhere and keep the bandwitch the same"... COME ON! Most family members have 300-600 posts, that shows how interested they are in Brawl Hacking, with that said, I highly doubt they'd be joining the Hacking Community if the Games Section is gone.

I'll go with this.

Never change KC:MM.

Complaining about not being able to contact Dantarion and not being able to fix the source of the problem, that's a valid. Throwing temporary solutions out the window with posts that contain you saying "that won't fix the problem", followed by quotes about pouring water on hot stone, that is NOT valid.

Cover the problem under some blankets until you can get it fixed properly.

Remove EVERYTHING not related to brawl hacking.
Put the family in an IRC/seperate forum (make on on proboards or something, a load of the popular family members don't even hack anymore).
DON'T remove guest access, they will sign up and look anyway (which will make it WORSE).

This will alleviate the issue for a short period of time, which you can use to contact Dantarion and do what you please.

-

I await the rage and tears from the replies this gets.

That's the hillarious thing, that's what half of us have been saying throughout this topic.

VILE has my full support. Put the forum games or something on a seperate forum, although, I like the idea of removing guest access from certain areas as well, so that's one difference, such as the requests boards and such.

I wonder if the other admin would let me make a wager...

If we hide the forum for a bit and it doesn't make a significant difference... we ban everyone who has complained?

Oh? So we're recurring to this? I'm not scared of losing my account in this Roleplaying Forum. Fine by me, go ahead, if it's not fixed by doing this, I'd just migrate to a real Hacking Forum free of these errors.

havent read all 5 pages.

about the forum games, here is my opinion, this is a BRAWL HACKING FORUM.

being a forum dedicated to something that specific, why should there even be off-topic?
i mean, if its off-topic, go to another forum where its on-topic... or do u really feel other users like neighbours or even REAL family???

im not gonna say nobody, but ALMOST nobody on here knows each other outside the internet, so whats the big deal about not talking with a brawl hacker about something that has nothing to do with brawl hacking... and if u rly know the user, than u dont have excuses either, since u can chat through msn, or go together to another forum, where ur off-topic discussion is on-topic...

my point baically is that if a forum is made for a specific TOPIC (brawl hacking) than why is there a section called OFF-TOPIC???

there are plenty of forums out there, which go about video gaming in general, or just hacking another game... WHY DISCUSS IT ON THIS FORUM???

i hope u ppl get my point and opinion, and please think about these words before replying, if u even plan to reply...

Doubt that this is gonna make even a lick of difference, Most Online Today: 344. Most Online Ever: 344.

As I'm typing, about 274 users and guests are online, and only about 10 members are in the Fourm Games section.

Worst idea presented so far, not because I'd get banned because of it, but because a lot of other things could very wlel happen in a chain reaction. Star would be banned. No more Starwaffle hacks. Starwaffle owns LST. LST stops hosting their hacks on BrawlVault as a result. Brawlvault quality drops drastically. People begin to lose interest in this forum and demand unbannings, which will most likely go unheard.  The forum deteriorates into an exclusive Roleplay forum starring furries and furry porn, with maybe some stage and PSA hacks popping up. Good bye KCMM.

Or that's what I see happening. It's probably dramatized to a great extent, but remember this is the internet, so it's very well possible.

I actually agree with what's being presented in the Administration board right now thuogh. I suggest that people shut up and quit whining while said item is brought into effect, which will hopefully be soon since I know KCMM isn't very patient at all. Perhaps this idea should be shared with the public here so everyone can shut up and we don't need to deliver sanctions?

Edit: Quoting Miacis from the Administration Board. This is the best idea so far, as everyone wins. Roleplayers can keep their roleplays, hackers can come back and/or stay. The slight cost is just having an ad or two on the boards or Brawlvault.

I've already implemented 2 changes which has dropped the occurrence rate a little... and yet people are still whining and even upping the ante.

Even if we do the ad idea... we still have to 1) get Dantarion to upgrade the services and 2) Wait ~a month until we get our first paycheck. No instant fix is going to help too much.

I don't know how anyone still disbelieves me that the games forum is a drop in the bucket... With 100+ GUESTS, they easily overshadow the game forum goers...

People must still be stuck on the statistics graph, that's my thought. I'm shifting myself to neutral now. And even then, if people can wait a month (which they probably can't), we'll be in the clear. There is no "instant fix" psossible, you're right. I'm going to stand by this ad idea though, as an ad or two isn't that cumbersome.

I would just like to throw in some more perspective.

We have had

10,460

downloads since yesterday. That is ~7 downloads a minute. While that doesn't seem like much... to make that download happen... a Brawl Vault page had to be loaded. Each Brawl Vault page makes 3 connections: 1) user info, vault info, statistic info... ~24 connections a minutes. But, this is assuming that the person is only looking at 1 page per download.

Care to enlighten us on what was undergoing maintenance?

Did anyone else get this a few minutes ago?





EDIT: Ninja'd  :>.>:

No. :D

But I'll say it anyway. Just went through and cleaned up all the database tables. (Essentially defragging)

Alrighty, time to see if it all paid off then.

...And then I got error 503 trying to post this XD

I got a 503 try to come here. I also got the following errors upon posting this:
696
123
404
505
Internal 505
Internal 500
500
777
666
999
These were all one after another. Is this a bad sign?

You're going to hell, then upside-down hell.

But the good news is you'll be rich before that.

I'll pack my bags. =D

I'm almost sure it's already been done. I think Brawlvault usage may have also been blocked as well, I'm not certain.

Yup, already done. You guys can just log out for a second and you'll see that the only boards accessible for Guests are: News (for the Rules), Textures, Portraits, Vertex, Stages, Music/SFX, Attacks/Animation, Programming, On-Topic, Help, Tutorial and Guides.
All request boards, specific Help sub-boards, off-topic things and BV are no longer accessible. :)

We actually did this a few days ago. And removed BV access around yesterday.

Now, about what I've posted in the Admin section, I wasn't expecting people to agree with it so quickly ... o_o;
But yeah, I've been reserching around the web to estimate how much an ad from Google could hold the website (it's not like we have any other durable solution). My calculus may have been a bit wrong, since I'm pretty sure impressions =/= pageviews.

However, we still have around 20 000 unique visitors a month. So with a decently placed ad, we'll most likely get between $160 and $650 which is more than enough to pay a server upgrade for Dantarion. Or the price of a whole new server if it's not possible for Dantarion to upgrade it.

And uh buh ...bluh ... I've just recieved the answer from Dantarion. o_O


... What the hell.  :>.>palm:
Oh well, guess that should make things even easier. XD

Oh, by the way, a little complementary information: about yesterday's situation.

Apparently, on top of the overwhelming popularity of the Waluigi hack, there's been someone trying to attack the boards. (ie: make them lag as much as possible in a malicious intent)

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

u srs?
kinda weird... the attacking menace i mean....xD

I've actually got a little bit more info than this, that explains pretty clearly why the attack happenned just yesterday at the worst possible time, but that could restart a flamewar here. Just note tha it's attributed to at least two members of this forum.
We'll take the appropriate measures to make sure this never happens again, once we have more informations.

Thankfully for the boards, it was a pretty pitiful attack. A real hacker (in the internet meaning) should have been able to take us down completely. :P

no body listens to the ex-gm anymore ¬.¬''

Here's my Pro info though: The Forum itself is nothing but a hand full of text. All the images (except a select few like Badges) are not hosted on our forum. All the bandwidth from loading a forum page will cause is about 2mb at least for just handling the entire page's data of reading MySQL and forming the page. This Error 500/503 is highly possible caused by the vault's generator and it's handling of the data streams. Also since I know about DDoS attacks, this was actually an attempt to do so.

I fully believe ya. :P (One of the people making the most sense right now)

I can disable / minimize the sig generator for a bit if you think it would help a lot.

The idea of an attack on us makes me sick... haven't had this issue since DSmeet....

The Genny is som'in that does help the site alot honestly, but could experement. I would keep it anyways. personally, through own smf experiance on kcmm:e, I'd maybe offer up disabling User Uploadable avis? it's just a small idea, but it'd save some diskspace and a bit of bandwidth. Not much of an idea, but it's another option as most people already use offsite urls for avis.

Limit sig size, maybe?

Or move the sig generator to another site?

That's an interesting idea actually.

Does this still stand?

It is, but....

it has been down for the past few hours without considerable effect. Right now I'm waiting on Dantarion's response --- I'm pretty sure others have also noticed that when the forum is sluggish... that the blog (aside from posting) seems to work fine.

Yes it does.

(Just log out and you can see what Guests see ... o.o)

Well, I must say, that's the stupidest thing I've seen in a while.  Especially after this:
and, nothing quite drives away people like making them register to use a website.  Also, have a look at how many people are logged on now.  This is probably the least beneficial thing that could have been done for the problem.

We sure did lose a lot of people when the Gallery was the exact same way.

Oh, wait.

While I do agree that, if what Dant says is true (and I have my doubts about that), there's no reason to leave it this way; until we know for sure, we're leaving it. As far as I know.

Yeah, we had that with the Gallery back in the days and we had no problems with that.

And if these people were not logged in, they would be Guests, so it doesn't change a whole lot, does it ?

So you're saying you prefer logging in to anything before being able to use it?  If you don't think people aren't going to like this, you're crazy.

If you look at all the members who joined there is 7 pages of people that joined today O.o

You mean like you have to do for the vast majority of online services?

"Man, I wanna use Netflix, but signing up for it is just this huge time investment, it's such a hassle."

What I think is that you're overexaggerating.

Exactly, that minute or so it takes to register is such a huge deterrent.

Well, actually, I'm startin to wonder if we get even any bandwidth economy at all ...

Hold on, we're discussing the issue between admins in private. .-.

Braw vault is the sh*t right now, that is why there are so many views.  This forum has climbed high to the top of the mountain, please dont slip down by moving.  I was a guest for around a year till i decided to register. Restricting guests is the same as restricting "underground-members". I understand you are doing this to solve errors(good luck) but it was as a guest as i was able to fall in love with your layout of a website in which others will not get to see for i dont know how long. Please consider finding a solution that will not restrict guests.

A few news :

- BV access has been restored for Guests. With the Stats page gone and its huge number of queries, I'm sure it's going to be okay. That way people won't register to look at BV, and thus have access to the Off-Topics again. .-.
Also because it will avoid them the trouble of registering and all that.

- With all the new users, we've also decided to cut the Users Online Threshold to 5 minutes, to make the list at the bottom of the index a bit more slender. 15 minutes was way too much anyways.

- We got a reply from Dantarion about our problems. All he's saying id that he's going to look into it. So I ask you all a bit of patience until it's cleared up. We did mention to him that the error 500 was the top priority problem.

We will try....
that error is getting me mad! >:(

I just got 7 503 errors and 2 500 errors in a row trying to send someone a PM. Is this really bad or is this still the norm? And it seems like BrawlVault is taking a lot longer to load than usual, if it doesn't just flat-out refuse. The 500 errors were starting to get really bad for me months ago...

Thank god I don't hack as much as I used to, but thanks for updating us on the situation.

I Think brawlvault can support to many hacks at a time!
and to much users....

Everyone's brawl vault sig is a X  box and when i click it, it takes me to a different site? I'm guessing you removed it?

Yes. But, that different site thing is weird --- I can only get it to happen with your sig.

EDIT: Seems you mislinked kc-mm as kcmm in your sig. I fixed it.

UR GONNA GET WAY MORE OF THESE ERROR 500'S NOW

I tried another person's brawl vault sig and it didn't happen when i tried mine it did ...Weird...Hopefully its not a bad thing but I'll take the brawl vault sig down anyway.

Oh, look. A grunt.

Fabulous.

Call him by the proper term. A Mook.

I think 'idiot' fits here better.

1. Control your Caps.
2. Stop attacking this site i seen by your other posts your one of them.

lol

^Have I ever told you that I love you guys?

Just doing my job as a Girl with nothing better to do.

Hmm, I give you 2 hours top. =D

True hackers could have our site down in an hour. Less. They speak softly and carry a big stick.

You, my sir, speak loudly and carry a twig.

That is all.

Gotta say, the 500/503 errors are annoying, but they're completely bearable.

It's not like when the site completely crashed due to that Conan hack.

Worst is ... I don't think that guy even remotely understands how much good this is actually doing to this website.

How did anonymoususer (DDOS Attacker) get all those rewards?

'Cause he's definetaly a Good Citizen and Staff Helper by letting them know the Status.

He's on the Team as well thanks to his hepfullness and assisstance on the matter, he feels like he's really a part of it. <3

And a Veteran 'cause he'll soon vanish from this world. =D

Couldn't think of anything for the other 2. XD

I LIEK DEM CAPS TOO. IT'S FUN AMIRITE? WANT A HUG? LALALA!
LET'S GO TO THE MOO TOWN! I LIEK THESE EMOTICONS TOO! :af: x69696969696969696969696969696969696969696969

I waited for brawl vault to load for 15 minutes hopefully the DDOS attackers stop this

Hopefully. At the very least, we're trying to report users stupid enough to use their own IP to their local ISP.

Wow some people at DDOS must be stupid to do that. I wonder why they would do this to sites in the first place.

thay just like missing up sites thay have nothing better to do

DDoS is not a site or place it's something done very simply with a the Cmd prompt and other things..

oh so thats what DDoS is sorry sometimes i dont know much about computers.

=D dont worry about it...

Just a small update...

The suspected organizer of all this has slipped up and gotten caught by the new 'forum firewall'. His activities have been reported to his ISP.

Also, there may have been some innocent casualties in all this --- that is why the 403 message is up above.

If you know someone who can't access the site because of a 403 error, get them to talk to me (or Miacis) and ask for them to be removed from the htaccess ban list.

At least some good news, hopefully this means it will be stopped soon.

And another thing, you ok Picano? Trying to stop them and all.

Good job Picano. Good job. =)

SmashHackers will be one of those people. He had no knowledge of the code's function when he used it.

What code exactly? With access to it I could more effectively stop that specific attack.

Also... there are actually two current variations of attack. One which which is probably what you mentioned, the type that people can be tricked in to. The other is probably more obvious to the user.

EDIT: Or 3 I suppose. One which is just command line ping.

Well. Smash Hackers gave it to me, not to use it though. I'll be right back.


*Goes to grab it.*

Here it is.

---

That's what SmashHackers was given.

Ah. Well, luckily that's low level.

The two other attacks are (without giving away too much detail)
-Accessing 15-21 specific pages at once
-Using an eBay reloader

Both of which should be caught by the current system. (Though, as it is still built into the forum... it might lag a bit --- but it should prevent a continued pounding)

Anything to make your job easier, if at all.

Well good to see the forums running quick again.. Thank you Picano..

Well it's not over yet.

We've got a list of ~50 users who may be running an attack against us unwittingly. Same pattern as I mentioned before. Miacis will be contacting each one of them shortly.

It has died down somewhat. Thanks for the hard work guys ^_^

Glad this is over... I can't believe Aaron caused all this. I always knew he was dumb and mad, but not to this level.

It's not quite over, but it's still better then it was.

It's at how it was before the DDOS attack.
The remaining part of the error 500 problem is something that was already on schedule to be fixed.

Who's Aaron? But it has died down a little

Lol then i get a error 500

aaron is Smash Hacker... a very very... trolly guy.. -_-

and 2 500 errors and a 503 while doing this.. wow

It's... not over. Not sure why you think that. We're getting about... 100 errors per minute from this? Very rough estimate, but yeah.

I know it isn't over since i'm getting errors every single minute now.

Now we can't see any hack...!!! man we need to fix this up!

Heh, with all these issues the only way to speed up the site (in order to work on it) is to temporarily remove the vault.

I have fixed the rss though --- so you can still see latest hacks.

Warning: mysql_query(): 7 is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /home/kcmm/forums.kc-mm.com/Sources/Subs.php on line 321
2: mysql_query(): 7 is not a valid MySQL-Link resource
File: /home/kcmm/forums.kc-mm.com/Sources/Subs.php
Line: 321

what's this.

Ehh... depends on where you found it.

bottom of the homepage, it seems to still be there.

Ah, I see.

Seems to be a chrome only bug. (Odd, I know.) About how long has it been there? I might know how to fix it... but it's probably not that bad of a bug.

heh, I only noticed it today, sorry.

No prob. I know it used to be a problem way back when Chrome was new, and I had fixed it back then; I just don't know if I changed something or if Chrome did. (Damn you useful auto update!)

Is this normal? The guest number is 20 in ONE topic o.o

(http://i56.tinypic.com/bimez9.jpg)

Yea its normal... that topic isnt locked to guests..