UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons Welcome - New Collectors Start Here GDC is Back!

I have had several inquiries concerning GDC and the events leading to our return to the web.

First, I would like to explain the structure of GDC. GDC resides on two servers. The primary server supports our main page, www.germandaggers.com. This server contains our support software and email client, the forum graphics, and all the files and photos for the GDC Reference Gallery. The second server contains UBB.Threads, our forum software, and the associated user profiles, forum posts, and forum photos. This structure effectively doubles our bandwidth and provides much faster response times for both the forum and the Reference Gallery. To illustrate, during last November, the forum did 182,000 page views and the Reference Galleries did 628,000 page views. During January, while the forum was down, the Reference Gallery still did 524,000 page views. Having both functions on the same server would significantly impact response times. The only downside to using this configuration is that unless metrics are run against both servers, banner advertisers do not get a true count of the number of banner views they receive.

In late December, I was informed that our email client was generating a significant number of emails to the same email address. Scanning all our software, I found a virus attached to the forum login.php program that was trying to capture id and password information. I contacted our forum host ISP so they could scan all of their servers. The virus was found on several servers which ran UBB.Threads forums and they proceeded to isolate and delete the virus. They also cleared all of the UBB.Threads configuration and data set name files. They then spent the next 6 weeks trying to reconstruct the configuration files. They were able to get bits and pieces fixed but were not able to get everything to work at the same time. On February 7, they reported that the forums files were corrupted beyond their ability to repair and were ceasing recovery efforts. On February 8, I hired a UBB.Threads/data recovery expert to install the latest version of the software and attempt to recover our files. I contracted for a new host ISP for the forum on February 9, and a test version of the forum was up on February 11. After doing the initial data loads, we had all of the user profiles and posts, and approximately 60% of the photos. By February 15, we had performed 4 specialized extracts and recovered as many photos as possible, being at around 95-98% complete. The new host ISP has much stronger virus scanning procedures and firewall. And by upgrading UBB.Threads from version 7.5.5 to 7.6.1.1, we have eliminated the vulnerabilities in the forum software which allowed the virus to infect the forum initially.

Several new features are available in the new forum software. You can choose one of 16 display styles to control the color and format of the forum. You select the style from the window on the bottom of the forum page. The initial setting is "UBB.Threads - Dark". Click on the window to view the selections and click on your choice to use it. This setting will only effect your view of the forum. Just under that window you will see "show/hide columns on this page". Clicking here will toggle the GDC Reference Library column on and off. The "My Stuff" lick is missing from the top of the forum. You now access your profile, private messages and several other features by clicking on the arrow next to your login name at the upper right of the forum page. To make it easier to view the posts, thumbnail images are now automatically generated for photos over 640 pixels wide. You can click on the thumbnail to view the full size photo. The new forum software has a feature to automatically resize photos when they are uploaded but it is still being tested. The new software is mobile device friendly but I have not tested it yet. There are several additional features in the new software that are being tested for the future. Minor configuration and tuning are still ongoing. If you have any problems or comments, please let me know. Thanks again for your patience