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VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

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VoyForums News Archive

  • Friday, May 2, 2008: Search enabled
    • You can now search inside forums. We hope you enjoy this feature -- and we will improve it in the near future.
  • Friday, May 2, 2008: New servers are in!
    • The new servers have been installed!

      Sorry for the extended downtime folks. There were some complications in the migration but we took measures to ensure the data integrity of all the forums. Thank you for being patient during the recent past trying times. Going forward, we are excited to offer you a better, more reliable service, and look forward to rolling out new features. If you experience any weirdness or inconsistencies at all, please use this Bugs form to let us know!

      More detailed information can be found at servers-news.html

  • Wednesday, April 30, 2008: Planned Downtime
    • We are planning on installing our new servers on the night of Saturday, May 10th. The migration of all the forums could possibly take several hours, but we are very excited to have our new servers going online. The new architecture has redundant capabilities so downtime should be exceedingly rare or non-existent.
  • Wednesday, April 30, 2008: Hardware issues
    • We experienced hardware issues again. We will be installing the new servers which will provide vastly better speed and reliability.
  • Thursday, April 24, 2008: Unscheduled downtime
    • There were some hardware related problems causing extended downtime. We used the opportunity to install one of our new servers. We will be transitioning to two more new servers soon. The new servers are extremely fast and we have been eager to get them online in order to improve VoyForums speed.
  • Monday Mar 31, 2008: Unscheduled downtime
    • We experienced some problems when putting in some crucial software-fixes. The fixes are now in and should resolve many problems people have been experiencing, especially with Rebuilds.

      We are still keeping a close eye on the system and may make small changes here and there, but we do not anticipate any prolonged downtime. Please report problems from the Bug form in the Exchange Section.

  • Sat Mar 17, 2007: Scheduled downtime
    • Our servers had to be moved to a new location. This location is closer to the backbone and you should experience a 1 to 2 millisecond increase in time of traffic to our systems!
  • Fri Jan 5 14:52:47 PST 2007: Rebuild utility temporarily stopped working
    • We made a couple safety improvements to the Rebuild Message Database utility -- unfortunately one change prevented it from operating at all. We fixed it a bit ago and rebuilds should now function perfectly. We're very sorry for those of you who tried to rebuild and couldn't.
  • Sat Dec 23 22:00:25 PST 2006: Browser updates might have problems
    • Recent MSIE7 and Firefox updates might be giving some users problems (submitting forms and posting messages). The problem doesn't seem to be a VoyForums problem, and also seemed to go away when the users reverted to the older browser versions.
      See: Opera Browser, Mozilla Browser
  • Wed Sep 27 02:13:52 PDT 2006: Verification (Captcha) System in place
    • Forum owners/admins can now enable "Captchas" so posters must verify themselves. You can enable it in the Access/Security section of the administration area and try posting a message.
  • Tue Aug 22 01:10:55 PDT 2006: Feature Updates
    • Preview button now created: Admin option for confirm posts is no longer necessary.
    • Auto-linking is now an admin option: It's default on, and we recommend most admins keep it enabled as it is a very useful feature for your visitors. Note: For now it requires you to have "HTML in Messages" allowed -- this will change in the near future, where auto-linking and maybe images will be possible even if the visitor cannot post HTML. Also, auto-linking will likely work with www, and not just http://
  • Mon Aug 21 21:05:06 PDT 2006: IP Search fixed
    After adding hostname to Message Manager Search, IP Search has stopped working correctly. This has been fixed. Searching IPs and hostnames works in Message Manager now.
  • Mon Aug 20 12:23:16 PDT 2006: Internal Server Error on post: Some people were getting Internal Server Errors when posting long or invalid HTML posts, which was conflicting with autolinking. This has been fixed. If you experience further problems, please report it via the Bugs form.
  • Thu Aug 16 12:35:51 PDT 2006: Downtime and a New Feature: Regarding recent downtime, most notably August 3rd and 13th, we wanted to update you: We were hard at work trying to figure out the solution of the problem we were experiencing; installing, testing, retesting, and replacing hardware. Working in conjunction with our ISP, and top network and routing engineers, we think we finally have isolated the problem. We may need to do more testing in the coming few days, but the outages or slowdowns should be very brief.

    We wanted to take this moment to reiterate our commitment to providing you with quality, stable, reliable service. We're in it for the long haul, as many of you have been with us since 1998 know. In the coming next few months, we will be implementing many new features and improvements that will make our service even better. Keep your eyes peeled on the news page.

    And on that note, we're happy to announce a new feature: Autolinking!
    Now all you have to do to put links into messages is to put the url that starts with http:// in your post and the link will be clickable automatically. We're working on image linking, so look for that soon!

  • Fri Jul 28: Update on problems:
    • Running rebuild a lot? Many problems with your message databases should now be fixed. The actual problem was a "locking" problem where the process which handled the rotation/archival did not "inherit" the lock from the parent process. This means that someone could post WHILE archival/rotation was being done, and this is a problem for a message database as it will get confused data put into it. The problem has been fixed. This problem affected primarily only the very high-volume forums.
    • Efficiency improvements: We found and fixed some problems which slowed down VoyForums.
    • Anything else? We're working on other reported problems, and things we've discovered, and thank you for your patience while we test and debug; please keep in mind, we want to know if there are problems with our system -- bug-reports aren't complaints!
  • Wed Jul 12 12:00:00 PDT 2006: Version 2.9 online: New features!
    Downtime was to put new version online
    • Spam prevention (see Changelog!),
    • Spam submissions,
    • Assistant Moderators,
    • IP Search (for admins),
    • Expressions option,
    • Customizable ban messages,
    • ...
    • See more on our Changelog page.
  • Tue, Nov 22 2005: Troublesome posts:
    Note: Disabling HTML is really a tool for those times that the message manager view is disturbed by a post in such a way that you can't delete it. In general it's safe to have HTML enabled because VoyForums blocks scripts and many other potentially disruptive HTML "features".
    If you are having a problem deleting messages in the Message Manager: Try temporarily disabling HTML in the Display Settings -> HTML Options section. Disabling HTML in your messages, subjects, and author/names will allow your safe viewing and deletion of messages.
  • Fri, Nov 18 2005: Spam issue, General Safety Lock:
    We are working on many solutions to combat spammers who abuse our system.
    Spamming, mass posting, and broadcast posting are against the Terms of Service of VoyForums, and an abuse of our service and systems. We take the problem very seriously.

    We have had various security measures in place for many years to protect you and your visitors from abusers, but many spammers still get their messages through -- however, they should be harmless messages aside from causing the unwanted behavior of your computer (popping up messages, redirecting your browser to other webpages, etc.) They are not viruses or trojans. Nevertheless, we are still hard at work on designing and programming solutions to keep your forums free from spam, script attacks, etc. Please bear with us while we work.

    Spam and General Safety Lock:
    The general-lock issue should be resolved (see above). We sincerely apologize for the problem. If any forums still are seeing the message, it is most probably just a pre-generated page -- one new post to your forum should refresh the information.

    If you have any questions, please email us at vf support.

    Sincerely,
    VoyForums Management

  • Wed Jun 2 05:31:14 PDT 2004: Internet upgrade complete:

    The server move is complete. It was a very grueling process. The Voyager elves are very tired and hungry. We hope the speed is pleasing. Please let us know if you experience any problems--we will be keeping a close watch on things.

  • Fri May 28 23:34:05 PDT 2004: Upgrading Internet facilities - Scheduled downtime

    On Tuesday, June 1st, between 2-5pm PST there will be scheduled downtime to relocate computer systems to a new Internet facility. Read the full news story here.

  • Fri May 21 18:35:35 PST 2004: Downtime

    As of this writing, we are still experiencing a network outage which started at 4:40 am this morning, which upon being alerted, immediately started investigating. We quickly surmised that it was not a problem at our end. We then contacted all parties which might be involved to try and locate the error. They have been working to find the source of the downage, and correct it. We are extremely sorry for this problem, we know you have shared our frustrations of today. This was beyond our control.

    What IS under our control. We had been in final negotiations and preparations to move our Internet connections to a new facility already. We had expected this announcement to be under better circumstances, but be that as it may, we will do so now. There will be a scheduled downtime sometime next week, which we will announce in advance, as we move the servers.

    What this means for you: the new facility doesn't just mean a better internet connection, it will be one of the best. We have carefully screened out potential facilities and services until we arrived at what we feel is the best fit for our service, and the best performance for you. The bandwidth is premium quality, extremely redundant, and very fast. Upon every visit to our servers, the most optimal and fastest route, through many different networks, from you to us will be taken. This means that traffic is spread accross multiple points of entry, and if a certain route gets bogged down, traffic is offloaded and diverted elsewhere. The new facility also has gas generators with fuel for a month, completely climate controlled, and a 99.99% uptime guarantee. We are excited about this move, and it will be a very noticeable improvement in our service. In June, our next step is replacing all our server equipment to high end, top of the line servers; and a reorganisation to improve email tech support, so keep your eyes peeled to this page for announcements!

  • Fri Dec 5 23:36:00 PST 2003: Downtime

    Due to clerical errors on the part of our internet line service provider, our connection was arbitrarily shutoff without notice today at 2pm PST. It was an accident on their part, but it has happened a few times now. In any case, we have been working on a solution to move our servers and internet connection to a location with more reliable service and higher-speed internet access. We apologize for the problems and want to let you know they are temporary, and things will even get better. Lastly, you should know that, in the case of actual planned downtime, we do try to place an announcement, in advance, here and in the forum-owner login page. Thank you for being patient with us, and we apologise for the downtime.

  • Mon Sep 22 20:12:52 PDT 2003: New Version A new version of VoyForums has been placed online!

    New features include:

    VoyUsers:

    • User profiles: VoyUsers can now optionally enter in information about themselves to be viewed by the public or other VoyUsers. * Future feature will also allow you to restrict viewing to your buddies list.
    • More control over how your ID looks in forums: Optionally toggle your name to your profile, email address, or no link. You can also disable/enable your profile icon.
    • Autofill Email address when posting: Option to autofill your email address on each post.
    • Remember VoyUser login: If you click on the link "Login to VoyForums and Remember Login", you will not get timed out and have to relogin for a much longer duration.

    Forums:

    • Delete whole Archives at a time: Admins can now delete whole archives at a time, and total archives will readjust.
    • Better internal data storage: Some handling of data such as admin email address, password, and daily hit totals have been changed for safeguarding purposes.
    • Bug fixes: Various internal bugfixes have been applied.

    Future Features on the agenda for next update (very likely but tentative still):

    • Admin ability for joining individual forums into a larger community structure with subforums and sections.
    • A who's online for forums
    • More User ID functionality in the forums
    • Cosmetic improvements
    • ...Much more!
  • Sat Sep 13 03:59:23 PDT 2003: Speed Fixed! Interworld has restored proper functionality of their routers and the speed problem many Voyforums users have been experiencing has been fixed. A result of our attempts of finding the cause during the last week is that many things have been upgraded and added, so now speed of the service should be better than ever before. To those of you who sent in traceroutes and pings, thank you. If you have emailed us during this past week regarding the speed issue, we apologize for not being able to reply to you. All our human resources were assigned to finding a solution to the problem.

    We are looking into a better peering situation for our bandwidth. If you would like to recommend an exceptional data center in the Los Angeles area on the Westside, please contact us.
  • Fri Sep 12 23:41:36 PDT 2003: Problem isolated! After a week's worth of non-stop intense investigating for the cause of this peculiar slowdown not affecting everyone, not related to bandwidth usage or server speed, the cause of the problem was finally found and isolated. Through process of elimination, we upgraded server hardware, updated software, installed, reinstalled, reconfigured packages, and narrowed down the possibilities until the source was found. Interworld.net, an upstream provider from us had problems with overloaded routers because of all the worm traffic caused by faulty and insecure email clients. The routers affected were restricting web traffic to downstream connections. The reason why everyone was not affected and why the symptoms were so hard for us to diagnose was because people's routes are different and not all routers were going through the afflicted routers. We are working with Interworld to fix their problem, and hope that they will get it cleared up soon.

    What can you do?

    The most important thing you can do is to stop using Email Clients that don't put your privacy and security, and that of the whole Internet, as a priority. The sobig worm has caused $29.7 billion of economic damages alone, including our own losses this last week, monitarily and to our reputation. We strongly advocate the use of safe Email Clients such as Pegasus Mail which will never autolaunch or execute code on reading an email.

    We appreciate the patience, support, and cooperation of our admins and visitors this past week as we sorted out this problem, even as it was not on our end.
  • Fri Sep 12 00:52:20 PDT 2003: Speed Issues We are still, and continuously, working to fix the problem affecting speed to the site. This has been a particularly elusive problem, afflicting only some people while others encounter no problem at all. It is most likely a network and routing issue. In trying to pinpoint this problem, server equipment has been upgraded, and software has been updated. The side effect of this all will be that once this problem is fixed, service will be faster than ever. We understand and feel the frustration that many of you feel in not being able to access the forums normally, we are doing our best to restore site connectivity for everyone.
  • Tue Sep 9 09:21:26 PDT 2003: Speed Issues We are working on the speed problems. Your patience during this time while we track down the cause and fix it, is much appreciated.
  • Wed Jul 16 15:45:56 PDT 2003: New version online: A new version has been placed online. This version has some internal spam-cleaning code, as well as the new features for configuring the date and time displays in your forum. Further, it adds some options for controlling the looks of the linkbar at the top of your forum. See the new Display Settings->Pre-Linkbar and Post-Linkbar area, as well as the new Date/time format configuration section.
  • Thu Jul 10 18:46:15 PDT 2003: Slowdown fixed: Slowdown plaguing the servers this morning and this afternoon has been fixed.
  • Thu Jul 10 13:53:54 PDT 2003: Server up and down We are working on system efficiency and database handling today, this means there have been many up and down periods which we are doing ourselves, and further, it means the access will be slow much of the time, today, as we do our work and make improvements in speed.
  • Thu May 29 02:07:03 PDT 2003: Pre-paid codes work for No-ads signups at users.voyager.com
  • Thu May 29 02:03:20 PDT 2003: Fixed "Contact Admin" form's border
  • Thu May 28 23:38:00 PDT 2003: Fixed admin menu's "Message Manager" archive display
  • Mon May 26 22:08:55 PDT 2003: NEW! Version Upgrade
    • Earlier today we upgraded VoyForums to a new version. The new version contains new code which reduces the likelihood of your visitors encountering a locked message database. This event occurs primarily in high volume forums when multiple people are posting at the same time, although there are other times it can occur as well. This new version's changes affect the method of locking and increase on the speed and efficiency of each hit to your messageboard, and also improve on the speed of VoyForums at large.
    • Message editing: This version also includes new code for the beginnings of message editing, which will soon allow VoyUsers to edit their posts. You will see the new option available in the upper-right side of the Owner Login->Admin Menu, although it is currently not a completed option.
    • VoyUser name filled in: Users with VoyUser accounts can now login to VoyForums--this is new in this last release in that it not only fills in your username in posts, but it also marks the message as owned by that user and will allow the posts owner to edit their own post in the future (see above).
    • VoyUsers forum management: VoyUsers favorite forums list is now more convenient.
    • Report bugs through the VoyForums Exchange.
  • Thu May 1 02:34:07 PDT 2003: Forum totals
    • Some downtime was necessary to make some updates to new version's forum hit counts--they were not accurate for quite some time as many have noticed, but should now be up-to-date and accurate; however, you might not see this until the update on the morning of the 2nd.
  • Tue Apr 22 20:11:24 PDT 2003: Network downtime
    • Upstream internet provider has been down for about an hour. This is not directly related to Voyager nor its ISP, but is somewhere further along a major Internet pathway.
  • Sun Apr 13 05:00:45 PDT 2003: Announcement and New forum page
  • Fri Apr 11 18:42:01 PDT 2003: Images
    • We are in the process of distributing VoyForums load by placing some of the images found on VoyForums onto another server. This will allow VoyForums systems better and more-efficient handling of your forum pages.
  • Thu Apr 3 23:46:13 PST 2003: News
    • Added the automatic display of the date/time at which the News file was updated -- now displayed on the Owner Login page. :) Please read the other important announcements below.
  • Thu Apr 3 21:39:30 PST 2003: Latest news + locking improvement
    • Please read the past few news announcements for other important updates and explanations.
    • During the upgrade two-days ago we placed a new version of VoyForums online which has some important improvements to forum-database locking. It should reduce on the possibility that a forum remains locked, preventing other visitors from viewing/posting, and should have successfully made the system more convenient. Please report if it seems better. :)
  • Thu Apr 3 21:25:06 PST 2003: Hardware problem
    • A problem with storage hardware (scsi drive(s)) occurred. We upgraded to a new system kernel during the downtime and are trying to address the speed issues after the last full-system upgrade (see April 2's announcement). It seems no data was lost, so all forums should be back to normal; nevertheless, please report any bugs you feel we should know about, especially ones you are able to repeat. If the problem is with your forum itself, it is usually best if you keep a regular backup (Backups & Repairs admin section), and when the error occurs, contact us so we can compare the functional backup copy to the copy with the problem you are reporting.
    • After the system upgrade 2 days ago there were system slowdowns caused by lingering connections to our servers from visitors. We worked for a long time to find some configuration that prevented this from happening, and it seems the new kernel configuration has solved the problem, in addition to numerous system efficiency improvements we have made.
  • Thu Apr 3 17:45:18 PST 2003: Speed and internet-line issues
    • There are some slowdowns in different areas. One of these is packet loss in our high-speed line. We are presently waiting for the phone-company to run tests. There is also a problem with networking protocols and the web-server, which we have been unable to make configuration changes to fix.
  • Wed Apr 2 22:26:46 PST 2003: System online
    • System is back online after a system hardware problem. There should be no forums affected, nor data loss, but because the entire system has been built up from scratch, it is possible there may be some configuration differences, so please let us know from the Exchange->Contact area if you notice any problems or anything acting funny. Outside of that, VoyForums should be back to a high speed, and we've not noticed any forum errors.

      Please consider contributing to VoyForums to help improve reliability and speed, as VoyForums has been free for its members and visitors, but supported in materials, labor, and cost by VoyForums Staff for several years. Contributions and No-Ads are available from the VoyForums Exchange.

  • Mon Mar 31 00:18:23 PST 2003: Fixed form to "Contact Forum Admin"
  • Fri Mar 28 14:44:18 PST 2003: Message ID warning
    • There was a harmless bug fixed. It pertained to tracking the last available message ID, but caused no actual changes to databases or messages. Nevertheless, the bug has been fixed.
  • Fri Mar 28 14:44:18 PST 2003: Added option to display Thread-modified time
    • A new option has been added: Display->Message Listing Format and Style->Use Thread-modified time. Selecting this will display the thread's last modified time instead of the post's last modified time on the first-message in each thread. This is especially useful in a format like Super Compact, but some might want it on other formats as well.
  • Thu Mar 27 20:38:54 PST 2003: Posting to moderated forums, admin-password changes
        A new update has been placed online with the following changes:
    • Moderated forums display of 'Message has been posted' page has been remedied.
    • The problem with changing an admin password has been fixed.
  • Wed Mar 26 22:14:47 PST 2003: Fixes
        A new update has been placed online with the following changes:
    • Numerous bug fixes to the big archive/rotation bugs. If your forum is not functioning right, run a rebuild from the Admin area. If you can't run it, or are still having problems, contact us with the Bugs form.
    • Changes were made to the way the rebuild tool functioned.
    • Counters values were fixed. If you manually set your counters, you will need to redo it. All counters values were reset to VoyForums internal counts.
    • Theme values were adjusted (background color to match bg image).
    • Rotate done after message-posted page is displayed. This shortens the delay between posting a message and seeing the confirmation and also has some system-efficiency and speed improvements.
  • Sun Mar 23 04:17:20 PST 2003: Updates
    • A problem with mod-gzip caused it to not compress pages viewed on the site. This caused a tripling of bandwidth consumption, making the site sluggish and decreasing speed. Speed should be much better now.
    • Archive/rotation bug is being worked on. If you've emailed us with a forum that you can't fix with the instructions sent out when the error occured, we are going through and trying to fix them. If you haven't yet emailed us and you can't fix the problem following the instructions, please let us know.
    • IP/Hosts in Message Manager: A small bug caused IP's not to show alongside message links in Message Manager. This should be fixed now.
  • Fri Mar 21 11:35:00 PST 2003: Bugs
    • Internal Server Errors, Archival bug, and posting problems are being worked on. Speed will improve drastically when these issues are fixed. If your forum is afflicted, please report your forum through the Bugs Form. All forums were backed up March 17 (separately from admin backups). This is noted here because some admins feared having months old backups.

      Please understand that we are hard at work fixing these issues, so a personal reply to your emails may be delayed until the matters are resolved. All reports and feedback are read however, so please keep them coming. We really appreciate your understanding and patience during this trying time for us all. The issues will be resolved and VoyForums will be better than ever!

  • Thu Mar 20 10:07:17 PST 2003: Speed
    • We are working on the issues with speed, as well as others. There is no reason to lose hope, as we at VoyForums will not cease to work until the speed of VoyForums is in fact faster than it was prior to the upgrade. We are aware of what some of the problems are and are working to address the issues. This might take a bit of time though, as we don't want to jepardize system stability and reliability.

      We have already made numerous fixes to archiving, posting, network packet loss, etc. and are working to address many others.

  • Thu Mar 20 08:35:52 PST 2003: Users posting duplicates
    • A modification was made to reduce on the possibility that a user will repost a message by clicking reload. The submitted-post page now redirects to a page which can be reloaded without re-posting. Posting messages repeatedly not only makes forums messy, takes up admin time to delete it, but it also means your forum database is locked for a longer period of time. Addressing this problem has solved numerous issues. If you are still getting errors resulting in duplicate posts, please let us know through the Bugs form.
  • Wed Mar 19 11:25:44 PST 2003: Fixed Auto-Version Upgrade
    • Some forums "refused to upgrade". It was a problem with the theme, that some admins chose, that resets to VoyForums defaults. This has been fixed.
  • Wed Mar 19 11:25:44 PST 2003: Fixed Networking: Speed, Errors, etc.
      As a result of the extremely high volume VoyForums receives, some new changes to our network configuration resulted in packet loss. This possibly related to several problems, and fixing it may have cured the posting-problems as well as others.
  • Wed Mar 19 10:25:03 PST 2003: New Version Issues
      The new version of VoyForums software went online.
      We are aware there are various issues and are working to address them even as you read this. We have already made numerous fixes and placed them online, and will be making periodic announcements about testing in the owner login area and here.
  • Mon Mar 17 15:41:18 PST 2003: New Version Online
      The new version of VoyForums software is online.
  • Sun Mar 16 21:24:30 PST 2003: Speed increase
      We have made configuration adjustments to the new system which have brought VoyForums speed back.
  • Sun Mar 16 19:10:56 PST 2003: VoyForums speed
      We are aware of the slowdown after the hardware and system software update--it is partially due to some overhead from the more-reliable data-handling system. We appreciate your patience as we work on optimization of the new system and prepare it for the new version of VoyForums itself.
  • Sat Mar 15 23:03:09 PST 2003: VoyForums Upgrade Not Yet Complete
    • VoyForums was down to upgrade and reconfigure system hardware and software in order to prepare for the new version of the VoyForums software--available for your viewing at the beta.voy.com website. The upgrades address crucial system reliability issues and will reduce on the possibility of data-loss/forum-message-loss in the future.

      Lastly, this successful update has implemented the first important step prior to placing the new version online. We apologize for any inconvenience this downtime has caused you--there were unexpected system problems and we were unable to make our planned announcement prior to the downtime; if there are any problems with any forums as a result of this, please use our Bugs-feedback form on the Beta site (see link above) -> VoyForums Exchange. Please do not contact us but through this new form.

      Sincerely, the folks at Voyager Info-Systems.

  • Wed Feb 26 20:42:44 PST 2003: Network changes
    • While we are making changes to our network, we will be experiencing some ups and downs periodically.
  • Thu Feb 20 19:54:34 PST 2003: Network upgrades
    • We are having several intentional up and down periods, lasting only a few minutes each, for the purpose of some system upgrades.
  • Mon Feb 3 08:12:31 PST 2003: New version announcement
    • VoyForums is planning a scheduled downtime within the next few days. The downtime is for the purpose of upgrading the VoyForums software to the newest version. We expect the downtime to last hours, and may be prolonged to ensure a clean upgrade. Please see Beta.voy.com and Beta.users.voyager.com to view the new software.

      More information

  • Sat Nov 9 19:58:14 PST 2002: Power Outtage
    • Systems were temporarily shutdown after a power outage occurred-- until the power was restored. There should be no problems, but if you experience any, please let us know.
  • Sat Oct 5 00:18:06 PDT 2002: Forums Recovered
    • We have recovered many forums and e-mailed admins of affected forums where possible. If your forum is having a problem, please contact us with your Forum ID and some information you used when signing up (your birthdate, zipcode, etc.) and we will see what we can do. (E-mail us at our special sysdoc1@voy.com account).
  • Fri Oct 4 08:37:14 PDT 2002:
    • VoyForums was down for several hours in order to recover from a hardware failure. We apologize for the inconvenience and are still working on restoring some forums. We are working on e-mailing instructions out to several admins who's forums require special attention.
  • Fri Sep 20 00:07:50 PDT 2002:
    • Down for a few minutes of maintenance.
  • Sun Aug 18 11:56:06 PDT 2002:
    • Line downtime. We've been told Southern California Edison is replacing power equipment, and this is affecting an entire block, including a building affecting our Internet Connection. We've been given no ETA on when power will be back up, and until it is you could not read this to find out anyway. :) We apologize for the downtime.
  • Tue Jul 23 01:46:28 PDT 2002:
    • The telephone company has found a physical problem with equipment and has replaced it. This should eliminate the network downages we've been experiencing recently.
  • Mon Jul 22 21:01:08 PDT 2002:
    • Our main Internet Network connection is experiencing an intermittent problem where it goes up and down. Up until now, noone has been able to find the problem, but today there seemed to be some luck and progress. There may still be some ups-and-downs, but hopefully a solution will be found.
  • Sat Jul 13 18:08:24 PDT 2002:
    • More network problems. Worldcom, who has been very helpful with our technical problems, which have only rarely occurred, is performing tests to try and determine the cause of these recent intermittent ups-and-downs. We apologize for any inconvenience.
  • Tue Jul 9 22:44:25 PDT 2002:
    • There was a network downage again. It seems it's finally been fixed.
  • Sat Jun 22 02:13:15 PDT 2002: NEWS!
    • Line back up: See notice from 21st. There was a line problem which the telephone company has now fixed. We apologize for the downtime.
  • Fri Jun 21 16:47:11 PDT 2002: NEWS!
    • Line downtime: There is presently an upstream internet downage in a location not under our control--They are working on fixing the problem but we have been given no estimate as to when it will be back up.
    • Beta site testing (again): The beta site is open for testing at beta.voy.com. This is a new version of VoyForums, and it should not disturb your current forum much, unless we do not receive adequate testing of the beta software by users. The more bugs you find now, the less will go online and affect your actual forum later.
  • Thu Jun 6 01:11:53 PDT 2002: NEWS!
    • Bug-fix: Access to non-existent forums now returns proper HTTP 404 (File Not Found) error code.
  • Fri May 17 03:34:50 PDT 2002: NEWS!
    • There was some downtime as a result of some upstream network problems unrelated to VoyForums systems.
  • Wed Mar 13 10:32:53 PST 2002: NEWS!
    • Due to a few new issues found with the beta software, the launch has been postponed a few days (forseeably 2 to 3, at the present time).
  • Thu Mar 7 12:39:16 PST 2002: NEW! NEW VERSION ANNOUNCEMENT...
    Beta Software at beta.Voy.com

    Announcing the final Beta-test of the new version of VoyForums...
    The new version of VoyForums is almost ready to go on. This version has a great number of improvements, including:
        1. More reliable message handling
        2. Speed and bandwidth efficiency improvements
        3. Enhanced backup & restore area
        4. Hits/posts counter summary
        5. CSS (style-sheets) support
        6. The first phase of introducing User-accounts
        7. No-ads option for bannerless forums
        8. ...and many more improvements.

    The planned time to upgrade www.voy.com is on Tuesday 12, 2002 (if all goes well). We need forum owners to help with rigorous testing of this final beta version. We hope to catch any remaining bugs before this version goes live--please help us ensure the quality of your forum.

  • Sat Feb 2 14:57:43 PST 2002: Admins experiencing problems
    • If you're still experiencing problems, please e-mail us -- make sure to include the Forum ID.
    • If you have lost your forum messages and are one of the admins who backs up periodically, your backup should be fine to restore from. (You probably shouldn't do this if you haven't backed up recently).
    • If you have any questions, please e-mail us.
  • Fri Feb 1 04:35:34 PST 2002: Downtime for efficiency
    • We also took VoyForums down for a bit to make some improvements on speed.
    • (Also see the last news message, below.)
  • Thu Jan 31 20:19:07 PST 2002: Urgent update
    • We had to take down VoyForums for an urgent software manual update. Many forums have been experiencing problems with rebuilding their message databases, and we had to implement some important changes right away. Please be patient while we work on this area, which should help improve the quality of the system and the reliability of message rebuilds.

      We apologize for not being able to respond to each of you personally, but our time is consumed in fixing the problem.

  • Sat Jan 19 08:33:33 PST 2002: Beta site needs testing
      We are hoping to place the Beta version of VoyForums (beta.voy.com) on www.voy.com soon; however, we aren't receiving any bug reports.

      This may mean the software is very clean, or it may mean users aren't testing it much. If it is the later, there is the risk that the software may be placed online without thorough user testing. Please use the new Exchange area on the beta site to report bugs.

  • Sat Jan 19 08:33:33 PST 2002: Forum looks
    • As mentioned in our Jan 3 news message, the new version of VoyForums will handle some settings of forum-looks differently. When the new version of VoyForums goes online, all forums set to use Tables will be set to a default Theme. If you do not wish this to occur, please select a Theme from the Admin Menu -> Theme Selector. Selecting a theme as soon as you can is recommended for all forums set to a Tables style. Even if you have previously selected a theme you should go select one again -- this is because we have made some special changes to the themes to allow the upgrade to go smoother.
  • Thu Jan 17 08:53:15 PST 2002: VoyForums down for about 1/2 hour for system maintenance.
  • Thu Jan 3 10:32:01 PST 2002: Bandwidth/Message limitations
    • The bandwidth used by VoyForums has gotten very high, and this must be paid for. This high-bandwidth is primarily the result of the size of many forums main index pages, as well the extremely high-volume of many forums. This problem must be resolved ASAP, primarily through admin/user-cooperation.

      During this period of time we recommend to all forum admins to try the Text style of display (as opposed to Tables). Additionally, we highly-recommend the Compact format. Please consider selecting a Text-theme, and setting your forum to Compact.

      Anything you can do to limit the size of your forum pages and/or traffic can be useful during this crucial period!

      Until Donations and No-ads options are available, user-cooperation is required to keep VoyForums running.

      We have taken several measures to deal with this issue, including lowering limits of the max threads/index, messages/index, and bytes/index -- we have set these lower, but to reasonable values, for Verbose forums -- this is better for bandwidth, system efficiency, and especially to users loading the pages. Be considerate to them as well. If they wish to view older threads, they can always visit your archives. If you wish you may visit the "Index & Archive" config area, and enable the two settings, Allow replies to Archived Threads? and Display new-post form in Archives?.

      Lastly, the new version of VoyForums will no longer support tables and table-colors in the same fashion. We have chosen to use a much more-powerful method, "CSS/Cascading Style Sheets" -- this allows users (who learn about CSS) much more power over their forum-looks, and immensely reduces on the bandwidth used by forums with tables.

      The implications of this: When the new version of VoyForums goes online, your forum may look different! You must select a new theme and then, if you wish, customize your forum looks/colors. We will keep a viewable-version of your old settings for your reference and convenience for a period of time after the upgrade.

      Do not be upset at us if you do not read this news-announcement and are surprised when the upgrade occurs.

  • Fri Dec 14 11:33:39 PST 2001: Problem posting messages
    • Our local workaround to solve the posting problem appears to be working in most cases. Slowly, the Caching Servers are expiring their old pages and are refreshing with the new VoyForums post code which has the workaround. This is why some users can now post while others still can't -- their caching proxy server needs to expire the page. Two days ago, we changed the addpost post URL from /cgi/addpost?[forum-id] to /cgi/addpost-[forum-id]. We've noticed that some browsers were still trying to post with the question mark URL as opposed to the new dash URL, 1 to 2 days after the change. Since the question mark URL no longer exists anywhere on our site, this proved to us that those posting with the question mark URL must be posting from old Voy pages, like those from Caching Proxy Servers -- in short, some users are still seeing old "stale" pages. While this is proof that a problem exists with Caching Proxy Servers, it is just one example.

      While we hope that our workaround fixes the problem permanently, ideally the ISPs and Software Programmers should address this bug or misconfiguration in their software. We know that many ISPs may initially reject that the problem can be at their end, as is all too common in the technical world; however, it is a fact that many ISPs are using broken/faulty Caching Proxy Server software which is not behaving according to standards. The best course of action is to try to send the problem up the technical chain of command until it's brought to the attention of the System Administrators who actually install and configure your ISP's software. Feel free to send them to this page, our informative Problems with Caching Proxy Servers page, or to email us at support@voy.com.

  • Thu Dec 13 10:35:10 PST 2001: Problem posting messages
      (Please read earlier announcements, below, for information on the problem.)

      We've had one report from one ISP who says they don't use caching proxy servers, but are also experiencing the problem. This isn't fully conclusive, though. In short we still do not know why this is happening. Basically, all the symptoms are as if a user visited the /cgi/addpost* URL directly, without submitting a form. This would reproduce the problem with no form content being submitted, the URL being retrieved with the GET method, and no REFERER URL. If anyone has any ideas on what could be the problem, please let us know.

  • Wed Dec 12 19:59:25 PST 2001: Problem posting messages
      Because of the broken caching proxy servers used by many user's ISPs -- they really should use proxy servers which follow the standards, such as the free "Squid" cache software; unfortunately, many of them use other packages which have had, and still do, various problems (we've seen a report that a MS cache was giving one user's data in a transfer made by another user!)

      Basically, we finally came up with some local measures we can do to address this situation as best as possible. Ideally, because our pages do not contain any "time" information, proxy servers should not cache our pages -- leaving it to your web-browser to handle the caching; however, some user's are using ISPs who have faulty cache servers or faulty configurations -- this has resulted in them sending you very "old" pages, and now something strange is happening with sending post data.

      We hope our recent work-arounds will compensate for these servers. For more information on Caching Proxy Servers, please view our Help page on it.

  • Wed Dec 12 16:38:24 PST 2001: Problem posting messages
      Our testing seems to show this is problems with Caching Proxy Servers (see our Help Page for information). Basically, on our side, we are receiving form submissions using the "GET method" instead of the "POST method", and the form content is missing. Furthermore, all the connects having this problem are showing no "referrer URL" (the page with the actual Post-form on it). Pretty much all of this points to some faulty caching proxy servers.

      We are not sure why this would suddenly start occuring, but have hypothesized that there may have been a recent software update which introduced the bug.

      Please view this page for updates.

  • Wed Dec 12 14:49:09 PST 2001: Problem posting messages

      As of yet, we have been unable to reproduce the problem ourselves and are finding it difficult to find out what's going on.

      If you notice anything consistent, or if you can repeat the error over and over, please let us know. Also, please reload the page with the post-form and try again -- if you still have the problem, then that's even better for helping us find what is causing this. It may help if you send us a copy of the HTML of the page with the post-form on it (not the error page).

  • Wed Dec 12 12:59:25 PST 2001: Problem posting messages
      We've received numerous reports of a problem occurring the past day or two -- users are unable to post new messages. We're working on finding the problem and, of course, a solution.

      Please e-mail us if you've found a solution. One user reported that using a different Internet Service Provider solved it, another reported that changing something in their General Configuration worked.

  • Sat Dec 1 08:54:54 PST 2001: Network update
      The network problems were handed over to PacBell -- they had tested earlier and gave things the "Okay", but it turns out their test-equipment was malfunctioning. Things have been up and down since, and we've not heard any new word.
  • Fri Nov 30 23:56:38 PST 2001: Internet problems.
      There have been some serious network problems for the past week -- MCI/Worldcom is working on fixing it. This has been the cause of the up-and-down service as well as slow system speed you may have noticed recently.
  • Wed Nov 28 18:49:57 PST 2001: Some non-local internet traffic problems are causing slowdowns. In the meantime we are working on our system to prepare it for some major speed upgrades.
  • Wed Nov 21 07:24:29 PST 2001: Down for 20 minutes for repairs.
  • Sun Nov 4 14:09:33 PST 2001: Hardware problems & Forums appearing to be missing
    • There are some periodic problems being experienced with our new system storage, this is the cause of the recent two downtimes. We are, of course, working to find a solution. When this problem occurs, it is possible that a forum's files may not be accessible by VoyForums software -- such forums are not gone, but you may get an error saying the forum is invalid or missing. Again, we're working on the problem.
  • Thu Oct 30 16:33:45 PDT 2001: Downtime
    • There was an upstream network downage for about 4 or 5 hours.
  • Thu Oct 25 04:49:17 PDT 2001: Hardware addition
    • New system storage added: When adding our new storage, we relocated crucial system data. While we have tested, and the system seems to be operating fine, please let us know if you notice any problems.
  • Fri Oct 12 05:35:55 PDT 2001: System efficiency
    • We performed a hardware upgrade to improve on system speed to deal with the massive load on VoyForums machines from many millions of users.
  • Tue Aug 30, 2001 (23:00pm): Downtime
      VoyForums had to have its systems taken down for emergency security updates. We are truely sorry for the downtime, but this was a necessary measure.
      Sincerely,
      VoyForums Staff
  • Wed Aug 8, 2001 (6:30): Message problems
    • An unknown problem occurred yesterday affecting several forums. We are not yet sure of the cause. If your forum is experiencing errors you may want to restore from your latest backup. If you have not backed up your forum recently, you may wish to do so, then attempt a "Forum rebuild". If this fails, you might have to clear all messages. We apologize for the problem. If anyone finds out how to reproduce the error starting from a working message database, please let us know -- it may help us find and fix it.
    • Various possible problems have been addressed in the latest version of our software, but unfortunately it is not ready to be placed online yet.
  • Mon Aug 6, 2001 (13:30): Upstream provider network problem
    • According to the information we have received from our ISP, there is a problem with an upstream network connection. We do not have further details yet, but they are working on the problem.
  • Tue Jul 31, 2001: Power Outages
    • Two power outages occurred in Beverly Hills on Tuesday. We have been unable to get information from the power company on the extent or reason for the outages. Nevertheless, our systems were down during this period.
  • Fri Jul 20, 2001: "Forum does not exist"
    • Message result of Counter Installation:
      Forums were innaccessible for about 3 hours 10 minutes today after an installation was performed for our soon-to-be forum hit and post counters. We appologize for the downtime and the confusing message -- No forums were damaged or deleted during this update.
  • Thu Jul 19, 2001: System Administration
    • We have discovered the cause of some system slowdowns. We have already made repairs to our beta software, but must make manual changes to some forums. This is the cause of the temporary ups-and-downs experienced today. Forums with a Maximum Archives setting of 0 should change this to 1 and then run the Rebuild Messages option. (Backup messages first.)
  • Sun Jul 1, 2001: Server Speed Improvements
    • There may be a noticable speed increase in VoyForums at peak hours. Since many thousands of new forums have migrated to Voy.com we have been constantly returning to the task of addressing server load issues. We hope the latest changes will keep VoyForums from slowing down at peak hours (with some exceptions under certain conditions).
  • Fri Jun 29, 2001 (11:30): Downtime
    • Hardware Upgrade: New hardware was installed this morning to improve system performance. Unfortunately, some new faulty hardware may have caused some forum databases to have been damaged. If you feel your forum message database may be malfunctioning, please try the Message Rebuild option to recover what you can. If problems persist, please send us an e-mail and we will see what we can do.
  • Mon Jun 11, 2001 (13:20): Fixes
    • Searching: See Sun Jun 10, 2001.
    • Emoticons: Replies now default to having no emoticon set.
  • Sun Jun 10, 2001 (22:00): Searching VoyForums
    • We now provide a form for searching VoyForums -- It is available from our Help Section.
  • Thu May 24, 2001 (3:45): New features
    • New option General Settings -> Require Name with Posts: This is a new option which may be enabled or disabled, making it required or optional for a user to enter a name with their post. This is a complimentary option to Require E-mail address with Posts.
    • Anonymous option modified: The General -> Anonymous Posting option, when enabled, has always prevented the display of any message names and e-mail addresses. Users still had the option of entering this information, but it would never be displayed. We feel this is unfair to visitors because the forum may later have anonymous turned off, and suddenly the user's name is visible to everyone. Thus, we have now made it so the Anonymous option disables the areas where a user enters their name and e-mail address. Please note: If you are dissatisfied with this operation, look into disabling "Anonymous" along with the "Require Name" and "Require E-mail Address" options -- all are available from General Settings.
    • Minimum time between posts now configurable: To prevent spam we have a required minimum amount of time between a user's postings. When we first added this it was set at one minute, but it has now been made into an option for forum owners (in the Access/Security configuration area).
  • Wed May 23, 2001 (2:25): Possible downtime...
    • A large hub for many ISPs in Los Angeles has scheduled electrical upgrades for Thursday, May 24. This may result in temporary network downtime -- we're told maybe 15 minutes (but this isn't certain).
  • Wed May 2, 2001 (23:45): VHTML single-character key fix
  • Sat Apr 28, 2001 (01:00): Hostname banning back
    • Hostnames can now be used in the Posting ban-list. The Viewing ban-list is still limited to IP addresses. Options are available at Owner Login -> Access/Password Security.
  • Fri Apr 27, 2001 (00:45): New Help section How to Search VoyForums.
  • Tue Apr 18, 2001 (13:40): Optimization & Bug Fixes
    • Fix to mail-transfer bug. (Apr 12)
    • Fixed display-quoting bug (Apr 12)
    • Internal Optimization: When viewing message, NT messages no longer perform check for message-body record.
    • Internal Optimization: Checks performed per/hit on files, directories, and programs have been optimized.
  • Tue Apr 17, 2001 (12:40): Help -> Information on Caching Servers
    Many are aware of the problem of "seeing old pages." We have added to our Caching Server help-page with additional information for users and ISPs. Many ISPs have fixed their servers, but there are others who refuse.
  • Tue Apr 17, 2001 (13:40): Rotation/Archival & Rebuild Update
    • Changes made to the Message Rebuild option so it would total messages sizes properly, and to the thread rotation routines to fix a bug. If you are experiencing problems with your message archival/rotation, please Backup your messages and then Rebuild them.
  • Sat Apr 14, 2001 (13:00): Hostname lookups
    • A bug preventing the lookup of an author's hostname has been fixed. Hosts can now be seen in messages. This does not affect banning -- bans will still only work with IP addresses. (This is because banning requires looking up a host each access; however, we currently only look up a user's host when they post a message.)
  • Wed Apr 11, 2001 (05:00): VoyForums v2.6 Installed!
    • Message-Handling Improvements:
      We've made changes to the internal handling of our message-system; these changes, along with others we've made in the past few weeks should increase on VoyForums speed. Please report bugs to support@voy.com.
    • Forum Backups:
      Upon access, your forum messages are backed up and your forum is updated to the new version. If you experience message problems, please report the error to us. If you find a crucial bug, we will need to fix the bug, and then your original messages can be restored.
    • IP-Only display:
      Now you can show IP addresses without the Hostname (for privacy and comfort of your users). See the Show Host and IP Only options in Display Settings -> Enable/Disable Display Features.
    • No-text (NT):
      The No-text option returns with version 2.6. Messages posted under the new version with no message body will get the "(NT)" flag added to them.
    • Posting messages now includes Forum ID.
    • Forum rotation minimum time: Message archivals will not occur within 5 minutes of each other.
  • Fri Apr 6, 2001: ISP unscheduled downtime
    • Upstream provider down for an hour for unscheduled maintainence.
  • Wed Apr 4, 2001:
    • Please read: Server Efficiency: Almost all of the recent problems are due to the high server load caused by the thousands of new forums (mentioned in an older news announcement below).

      After weeks of programming and working non-stop the past few days to handle the server load by all of our new users, we have finally gotten some major improvements in efficiency. Thanks for being patient during this period. We are constantly working on VoyForums software and and our systems. Special thanks to those of you who keep updated on this news page. We have many e-mails regarding the recent problems, but and will not be able to respond to them all -- we must focus on fixing them. If you're having problems with your messages not rotating, this is from old corruption, please use the Rebuild Messages option to fix it.

    • Caching Proxy Server issues,
      Users seeing old message indexes,
      Admin area shows wrong forum,
      and Users can't get past password entry:
      Users report some pages improperly displaying; for example, you may be seeing apparent outdated message indexes, someone else's administration section, or you can't get past the read-password entry page. These problems are the result of faulty Caching Proxy Servers, usually belonging to the user's Internet Service Provider.

      We have performed measures to compensate, where we can, for the faulty behavior of these servers. Specifically, we put additional information in URLs to get the caching servers to recognize they contain different data. This doesn't solve the problem, but does help to reduce it. The solution can only come from ISPs fixing their Caching Servers -- you can help by contacting them.

      First, please read our Caching Proxy Servers information to learn a bit about the problem.

    • NT (No Text):
      The (NT) display is temporarily disabled until the new version of VoyForums is able to be placed online.
  • Tue Apr 3, 2001:
    • Host/IP Addresses:
      We have disabled DNS lookups on our server with the result that our system only knows a visitor's IP address, and not the Hostname. This means banning based on hostname will no longer function, although bans placed on IP addresses still function like normal. We are working on ideas for handling this, but have no estimates when/if it can be done.
      For instructions on Host/IP banning, please read the Help sections on Access Restrictions/Banning and Regular Expressions.
    • Heavy server load, errors, & beta testing:
      VoyForums is receiving a huge amount of access due to another forum site, InsideTheWeb, going down a few weeks ago. Many many thousands of users migrated to VoyForums. We have spent the past few weeks struggling to address newly-encountered problems related to the extremely high load, which results in slowdowns and inconsistent errors throughout the site.
      Please read the other notice, below, on beta testing if you wish to help test our new software and expedite its placement online -- it will help reduce server load and increase reliability. VoyForums has always been known for its extremely high-speed forums and almost no downtime -- please work with us as we try to address the new issues.

      Please remember, VoyForums is a free service, and we've spent countless thousands of hours developing this site (and others like www.Voycabulary.com) in a continued struggle to provide innovative and useful free services. Thank you for your understanding.

    • New Version -- VoyForums v2.6 beta testing open!
      1. The beta software is on a different site and will not affect your current forum.
      2. If you are interested in beta testing our new version of VoyForums, please E-mail Support for access information, and tell us your current Forum ID.
      3. If you have done beta testing in the past, please feel free to access the beta-site.
      4. We have made improvements which should help system speed, but the software needs more testing before we place it at www.Voy.com.
      5. Testing needs: The changes affect posts, so please test posting, reading posts, deleting posts, archival, and anything else you can.
      6. Internal details: Changes have been made to optimize message handling. This will improve system efficiency when viewing message indexes. The changes, however, can possibly affect all areas of message viewing.
      7. Beta-test Forum: When you contact us expressing interest in beta testing, we will give you access to our VoyForums Beta Testers Forum.
  • Mon Apr 2, 2001: Graphics emoticon selection.
    • The multiple-choice selection has been converted to a pull-down text menu. The emoticons are still graphics when displayed, but for now the selection menu is text.
  • Fri Mar 30, 2001:
    1. Anti-Spam measures installed:
      For anti-spam handling we now allow only one post per minute, this not only serves as an anti-spam measure, but also helps prevent duplicate posts in the same forum (when users accidentally click reload and post again). We have also removed spam messages from all forums.
    2. Made name changes to "Message Manager" area
    3. Valid E-mail Address Requirements:
      VoyForums requires valid e-mail addresses for forum owners! New forum signups now require a confirmation of the e-mail sent. We also have plans to check all forum owner's e-mail addresses, so make sure yours is set correctly.
    4. Fixed Table1->Compact font: We fixed a minor mistake where the header-text settings (area 1) were used for the subject area of a message.
  • Mon Mar 26, 2001: Forum rotation bug: An error existed in the archival routines -- this also affected the message Rebuild option. It has been fixed.
  • Tue Mar 20, 2001: Bug fix and error reports...
    An error was fixed which affected some forums' newpost.html.
    There are various reports of errors in forums and configuration ("Internal Server Errors" and others). If you see an error, please send us the URL you were on when you saw the error, and the Forum ID of the forum you were visiting/working on. Reporting errors in forums is almost useless without us knowing the Forum ID and the location.
  • Mon Mar 19, 2001: Rolling power blackouts...
    Power companies in Southern California are complaining of a power shortage. To conserve energy they ordered a "rolling blackout" -- cutting off electricity to sections of the population, each for 1 hour.
  • Wed Mar 14, 2001:
    1. Host/IP wrapping: Put some new-lines (BRs) into the message view of Table1 style forums so the Host and IP address didn't consume so much space.
    2. Table Colors: We have modified our table-colors to make them more consistent. There was an inconsistency where area #4 would override area #2. This has been fixed -- we have also added help on the locations of the areas in the Tables/Borders configuration area.

      The result of fixing the inconsistency is that some forums may experience a few color changes in their forum -- only minor adjustment should be necessary:

      • If you're using a VoyForums Theme and have had a color change, you will need to re-select the Theme.
      • If you custom-modified your Tables/Borders settings, and have had a color change from the last update, it is easily solved by copying your #2 settings to your #4 settings (or making other adjustments).
  • Mon Mar 12, 2001:
    1. Missing "Post a New Message" link: If your "Post a New Message" link is missing, it wasn't enabled. You can enable it in the Display Settings -> Enable/Disable Features. Previously it was displayed on all forums, by mistake, even if they had it disabled.
    2. Subject Quoting: Automatically inserting the subject in the reply box is now optional. This is also available in the Display Settings -> Enable/Disable Features.
    3. "Old"/Cached Pages: We've received many reports that some users weren't seeing new messages. This is actually caused by the page being "cached" (kept around so it doesn't need to be loaded from VoyForums again). This is done by web-browsers and also by many ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to prevent from having to fetch the page again and again, thus reducing on network traffic. We have put some modifications to help the caching servers know when pages have been modified.
  • Sat Mar 10, 2001:
    1. News Page availability: This News Page is now available from the pull-down menu in forums as well as from the Help section.
    2. New FAQ questions: Many new FAQ questions have been added. It is well-worth the time to browse through our FAQ - it may answer some questions or give you some ideas.
    3. Images/Links help section: We have added a new section just for placing images and links in your forum/posts. You can find it at our Help Section -> How to use Images and Links.
    4. Separate Backup option: You can now Backup your message database separately from the Rebuild Messages option. The Rebuild option no-longer performs a backup, so running it twice will not overwrite your backup.
    5. Message corruption: We have improved our database locking mechanisms to counter some of the problems which seem to be causing message corruption. We hope this prevents further corruption. Please read our announcement in the Forum Administration Menu.
    6. Added sunglasses emoticon:
  • Wed Mar 7, 2001:
    1. Logout: Forums with user read-passwords now have a user-logout link.
    2. Message Archival: Several bugs have been fixed and an efficiency improvement made in message rotation.
    3. Contact Form: Changes were made so a forum's contact form could be accessable by users who have been banned. This option is configurable in the Display Settings and Access/Password Security areas. (Previously the contact form was not able to be provided to banned hosts.)
    4. Endorsements: A page with information on VoyForums' ads and endorsements has been added - we will be updating this page to provide more information.
    5. Internal Improvements: Improvements were made to VHTML(tm) (VHTML is Voyager Info-Systems' event-driven object-code-extendable Text/HTML processing system library).
  • Sun Mar 4, 2001: Bug Fixes, Status page enhanced, FAQs & Help added...
    1. Message archival bug: The bug preventing messages from archiving has been fixed.
    2. Message deletion bug: A bug causing a problem when deleting certain messages has also been fixed.
    3. info/status.html page: Added thread counts to the status page. There is help about the status page.
  • Mon Feb 26, 2001: FAQ Update, Help, & Fixes...
    1. FAQ: Many new questions added to FAQ -- still under development.
    2. Option descriptions: More descriptive descriptions have been added to the options in the General Configuration.
    3. Table Config Fix: Minor mistake prevented admins from modifying the Tables/Borders -> #1 Text Start option (used to set the font of the "Subject, Author, ..." in Table-style forums). It's been fixed.
  • Tue Feb, 6, 2001: New Features and Fixes...
    1. Contact Form: Visitors to your forum can now contact you without knowing your e-mail address -- this may be especially useful for password-protected forums. View Display Settings -> Contact Form for information.
    2. E-mail address in approval form: The bug where a required e-mail address said "optional" on the approval form has been fixed.
    3. No emoticons bug: You can now select the option "no emoticons".
    4. Defaults-theme: A special theme has been added to set your forum back to VoyForums defaults.
    5. Delete Forum: An option has been added to delete your forum.
    6. Header Change: You may notice your forum's header looks a bit different. We removed the default Bold from around the header -- If you want your header to be bold again, goto General -> Header and place <B> at the start of your header and </B> at the end.
    7. Sorting Threads: We added an option allowing forum owners the ability to sort threads by hand. This option is probably most-useful to people who are using their forum for a FAQ or some other purpose where the content changes very slowly. This is an advanced option, so please don't complain that you don't like cutting and pasting to sort your threads.
  • Tue Jan 2, 2001: Confirm post box-color. For forums which allow approval/editing of messages: The "Modify/Approve Message" table now uses colors from your chosen Theme.
    (Advanced users: The Tables/Borders settings #1 and #2 (attributes and text) are the options.)
  • Tue Jan 2, 2001: Deleting replies now updates thread total msg count
  • Thu Dec 28, 2000: Medium mode formatting worked on.
  • Thu Dec 21, 2000: Emoticons are now available . Emoticons (post icons) are available from the Display Configuration.
  • Thu Dec 21, 2000: Adding post: password/security checks fixed.
  • Tue Dec 19, 2000: Logout option added to Forum Owner Menu.
  • Sat Dec 16, 2000: Code added to move archived threads to main index on post
  • Mon Dec 11, 2000: Added the host/ips display to message manager
  • Thu Dec 6, 2000: VoyForums-2.3 has been placed online!
    New Features Added:
    1. Themes have been added. Themes with Presets simplify setting up your forum's configuration and look!
    2. Font and Color configurability. We've added the ability to change text fonts and colors, globally for text forums, as well as within tables for forums set to the Table style.
    3. Forum Styles (text or tables). Now your messages can appear in boxes! This is perhaps the most significant feature relating to your forums looks.
    4. Store forum settings. Now you can save your settings and restore them in case you want to test colors and features (without remembering your original settings).
    5. New Super-Compact display format. Index shows only first message in each thread
    6. Post HTML options
      HTML may now be enabled or disabled for messages' contents, names, and subjects.
    7. Forum Configuration areas re-organized. The configuration area has been re-arranged, new areas added, and many new descriptions added to the configuration options.
    8. Search engine META tag options added.
    9. Enable/Disable HR lines in all forum formats and styles.
    10. Compact mode with or without spaces between threads.
    11. Option to display message count per thread.
       This option will show a 1 for all old threads. More information is available in the Owner Login -> Display configuration area.
    12. Compact/Verbose follow-up display format. When viewing a post, replies may be displayed in Compact or Verbose mode.
    13. Colors may now be specified as color names in addition to Hex values. Color names like green and brown may now be used in the Owner Login -> Display Options as well as other areas. Please read the Colors and Fonts Help Page.
    14. Option to disable new post box on main index.
    Bug & Minor Fixes:
    1. Message archival bug fixed
    2. Configuration names "Description" and "Heading" swapped. (In older versions, the forum "Heading" was one line, while the Description and Footer were multi-line textboxes. Now Heading and Footer are multi-line, Description is one.
    3. Heading renamed to "Header" so the name matches "Footer".
    4. Conversion of some HTML codes in message confirmation page fixed.
    5. Bug in post-access password protection, on forums requiring approval, fixed.
    6. Post a Reply box was missing the notice if the forum is moderated.
    7. Link back to Main Index added to page viewing a message.
    Other (Major) Changes:
    1. VHTML(tm): VoyForums is now using VHTML (VoyHTML(tm)) The method VoyForums used for handling all its HTML display was completely redone in the all new VHTML for all its parsing. This allows more power, faster production, and, when we add it, powerful user-customization of forum looks, including the possibility of custom formatting.
  • Mon Sep 18, 2000: VoyForums-2.2 has been placed online!
    Last Thursday VoyForums version 2.2 was placed online. The most significant new addition is Message Management, and with it comes a few other features and bug fixes, including a forum status information page, Manual (Un)Approval of messages in moderated and unmoderated forums.

    Other new features have also been added: Please visit the VoyForums News Board for details and updates!

  • Sat Mar 18, 2000: VoyForums-2.0 has been placed online!
    At first you may not notice the numerous enhancements, as one of the most important changes is hidden from the user's perspective. The messaging system was completely re-designed and re-coded -- this fixes numerous bugs in the old version, and allows for greater extendability of features from now on.

    Forum Owners will notice that the Configuration Area has been completely re-worked. However, one of the most important new aspects is the Message Handling and Archival available from the Forum Archive Configuration area.

    We're going to try and list some of the new features here, but there are way too many to list in full so we will primarily cover those options visible to Forum Owners and Users.

    A more-detailed explanation of all the new features is available at the VoyForums-2.0 Info page.

    Messages, Archives & Rotation:

    1. Messaging Engine rewritten
    2. Thread Rotation is now available to automatically rotate out individual threads as needed (vs. Index Rotation, which moves the whole Index into an archive).
    3. Allow Forum Owners to choose which threads get archived/rotated (by position or age).
    4. Archive messages may now be deleted.
    5. Forum Owners may allow replies to threads already in archives (which are then made active and moved back into the main index).
    6. Doubled maximum archive settings (max index size, threads, and messages).
    7. Option to relocate thread to top when thread is posted to/made active.
    8. Clear All Messages option.
    9. Force Index Rotation into Archive.
    Security:
    1. Password Protect Forum (passwords for read and/or write access).
    2. Internal Security Improvements
    Other:
    1. Software architecture redesign (allowing for accellerated feature addition)
    2. Confirm Message before final post
    3. Forum Configuration area expanded
    4. Owner Login change-password page
    5. Timezone/GMT setting
    6. Reply message quoting on/off
    7. No more non-cookie access in Forum Owner area.
      Supporting both methods limited the configuration area and the amount of people using it (less than 1 per day, on average) showed the lack of necessity.
    8. Lots of bug fixes
    VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
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