The Spam Email's

Yes, this is an issue large enough to warrant its own thread. Those of you have checked your email have probably noticed that you have a buttload of emails from this forum, automatically generated. Quite simply, it wont do.

The first step to temporarily fixing the problem is to go to your profile, and under preferences anything that says "email" or "notify," just turn the damn thing off. For most of you I've already accessed your accounts and done this for you, for any relative newcomers you may want to check it.

But the issue doesn't stop there. It will also send an email if someone responds to a topic that you are watching - and heres the really annoying bit - it automatically watches any topic you post in

This is a bug. This is a monolithic bug in fact, and from my searches have found no simple modification to alter it, but im persistent

As a temporary solution you have three options:

1 - Live with it for the time being
2 - Change your default email to something that doesn't exist (note: this will mean password retrieval will not work)
3 - Every so often click the "action" button at the top right, go into 'watched topics' and untick them all



So Whats to be Done?

The technical jargon would involve me raffling off that we are currently using a slightly outdated (but apparently 'stable' ) version of whats called PHPBB2. I want to update this to PHPBB3 to see if the new code is indeed more stable and bug free. For those less computer literate, let me make an analogy; this forum is a band, and many of the little edits I've made to it are akin to deciding to turn the guitar volume up slightly, or adding a drum fill between passages. Changing up to PHPBB3 will be rather more like firing half the members for shiny spanky new ones. I'll take the forum down for maintenance whilst the adjustments are being made, I expect it to take less than an hour, and they'll probably happen towards the end of the week. I'll do it whilst you Americans are asleep so you probably wont even notice the blood spatter where I've banged my head against the wall when things have gone awry. Whilst im updating the new banner and navbar will also be updated too. Naturally



So What Does This Update Actually Mean?

Posts - They will still be there. The stickied threads will still exist, the calendar still with the information, admins and mods will still be admins and mods and the forums will still be in the same order. In terms of actual content, everything will still be there.

Chatbox - I have no idea if it will be still functional with the new code. I would expect it would be, but if not I'll see if I can't find a mod for it.

Avatar - Im 99% confident all your avatar images, signatures and settings will still remain as they currently are. In that 1% off chance im wrong, you may want to make sure that you have a copy of that avatar on your PC.

Aesthetics - Reverting to the new base code will reset all the fancy backgrounds we currently have. It is my intention to backup every image prior to doing anything so they can all be re-inserted. If everything goes as planned, im hoping for that situation where it looks-different-but-you-dont-know-why. (Coupled with the spangly banner courtesy of Dale to distract you).



Naturally, im open to any other suggestions (which can be posted here), and in the mean time will still look for another solution to the issue.

Finally, as a worst case scenario, if everything balls up, it all looks dreadful and the damn bug still isn't fixed, I can revert back to the older PHPBB2. Restoring everything as it is now shouldn't be too tricky.