Archive for the ‘IRC’ category

IRCWhore – A free network for all!

March 3rd, 2010

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

At the end of my last blog-post, I mentioned something about a website called IRCWhore. This is a new project of mine, which involves making an IRC Network, a feature-rich website, combining them, and making it free for everyone.

At the moment, the website is nowhere near completed. A lot of the core features like registration, login, and features such as password reset have been completed. Features such as the webchat, forums, and personal blog-pages are still in the concept stages, and may not appear for a long time. Features which are proving difficult to conceptualise are:

Webchat – Currently, most IRC Networks have a bog-standard webchat which doesn’t offer any form of user-customisation. I plan to make it so that users can customise their webchat the way they like it. This means making it so they can customise the colours, the size and style of the default font, changing the popup’s that appear when the user right-clicks, and more.
Forums – This could either go one of two ways, full-custom coded forum from scratch based on existing forum software, or integrate an existing forum board with the website. The second may prove difficult, as I have used my own custom hashing on the passwords. Hopefully, I’ll be able to authenticate the panels by means of cookies and sessions.
Blogs – There is a plan in the pipeline for users to create their own custom blog, based on the url http://www.ircwhore.org.uk/blog/user/post. This will hopefully encourage users to start blogging, then once they’ve picked up the art of blogging, they can use blog-hosting services like blogger, and wordpress.com. We need more blogs!
Ulysses – Ulysses is our Website=IRC integration bot. The bot is capable of doing absolutely anything (providing it’s within its powers), including killing a ghosted session, requesting an administrator, reporting a webpage on our website by the click of a button, assign an SWHOIS to a user based on their age/gender.

The current time scale for the project is 9 months, so the project is ready to go by the new year. If the project can be completed in 6 months, it will be a bonus. Once new year comes, any feature which isn’t required to make the site work, will be put on a feature-freeze. This means that all the other things which don’t need to exist for the site to work will be held in development, while the rest of the features are completed.

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Posted in IRC

Tags: blogs forums ircwhore ulysses webchat

The End of an Era (Part II)

February 24th, 2010

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

To quote a previous post:

FLIRC was over. Stolen-Enterprise was slowly coming back to its former glory. I was later approached by FSIRC if I wanted to join their network. How could I refuse an offer like this?! 12 months on, and Stolen-Enterprise is failing. Aversion has become to greedy and careless that he’s let his own network fall under its own corruption!
The End of an Era posted April 9th 2009 by KingTarquin

It appears that moving on is the key to building new skills. After running my own network and website once before, I’ve now decided to do it again, but with flair. From January 2010, I’ve been working on IRCWhore’s. I’ve owned the domain since about 2008, but never really had a use for it, but I guess, now I do.

There were a couple of reasons why I could no longer keep my server over at FSIRC;

Server Traffic – Over the time I was a network administrator at FSIRC, I had certainly noticed a major decline in traffic. Whether their target users were moving on in life, or they didn’t like the way the server was run. Who knows, but all I can say is that my server was being wasted on FSIRC, as it was averaging about 150MB of transfer per month. I’m still currently working out what to do with that, might run a few of my websites round-robin styleee..
No Pressure – I know this might seem a bit of a harsh thing to say, but the rest of the staff really didn’t care about the network. I was the one to repair it when it went down, I was the one to update all the systems, I maintained all the websites, and I was the one to issue bans for the network. I don’t wish to work for a network, and run it for them. That’s not how I see helping someone. I’d much rather spend the time running my own network, and putting the time and the effort into maintaining my own systems.

Over the next 12 months, there will be several stages of rapid development for IRCWhore’s, including the completion of the main website back-end, the inclusion of forums/message boards (tbc), the addition of more customisable profile pages, and the coding of an entirely customised chat browser (where the chatter can change the aspects of the page the chat window is on, not just the chat window). I also plan to get a bot coded for the Backend/IRC Server integration system. There will be more plans on this released at a later date.

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Posted in Coding/Programming, IRC

Tags: coding fsirc. IRCWhore's. bots websites

Protection In Numbers

June 10th, 2009

Rating: 7.0/10 (3 votes cast)

UKChatterbox fails again!

( Anonymous) Any guy 15 to 19 wants to talk to a cute, naturally fit 23 male Feltham, London?????? Pm Me Please

UKChatterbox really needs to be more vigilant. This user was passing through channels, asking this question, and when I asked an Administrator how it was being dealt with, this is the response I get:

<Me> Are you not allowed to deal with stuff like that?
<Admin> no has to be security which is what i was trying to say
<Me> So what if there are no security admin on for a few days? What do you do then? Leave them?
<Admin> no mail them get a quick response still and temp site ban til they sort it
<Me> Okay..
<Me> So you are not allowed to deal with them directly?
<Admin> nope remove and pass to security
<Admin> which i have done now
<Me> Then what do security do?
<Admin> look in to it qiuickly and remove permo and suspend
<Me> Do they not report them to the IWF, or CPA’s?
<Admin> the who?
<Me> Internet Watch Foundation, Child Protection Agencies, or Internet Service Providers.
<Me> COPPA, surely that rings a bell?
<Admin> no idea but it does get dealt with

This is a shocking discovery on many levels.

The fact the admin present is not allowed to directly deal with the issue.
The admin is not even aware of COPPA.
Note: COPPA is an American Act, yet it is known about by most IRC Networks.
It took them over half an hour to deal with the issue since first contact.

If UKChatterbox want to boast safety, they need to get their act sorted, take on some REAL staff, and start patrolling properly. They have the resources to look for stuff like this, such as bots with REGEX, as well as an IRCd-level spamfilter. Surely they must realise that they are one of the most popular IRC networks in the western world, yet they still take inexperienced actions to serious issues.

Please Note:
All nicknames have been removed from this article to protect those involved.

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Posted in IRC

Tags: IRC ukchatterbox

FLUBBERHOSTS – The hosting scams and scandals!

April 30th, 2009

Rating: 7.0/10 (3 votes cast)

What type of host puts you on a server with way too many users on it already? What type of host deletes your data before you have chance to back it up? What type of host deletes your account in spite? What type of host gets personal when you leave their services for a better host? What type of host null-routes users who had a small disagreement with them?

FLUBBERHOSTS DO!

This network claims to be better because of various little things, but quite a few shocking discoveries came out over the past couple of days…

Overcrowded Servers – According to my reliable source, they stick far too many clients on a single server. This causes a fight for resources and often leads to CPU battles between users. This also sends the performance of the network right down.
Null-Routing Nasties – If you ever have a disagreement with them, and you are using one of their clients services, you will be null-routed because “they can”. Any ethical host will only resort to null-routing if a particular user DDoS’s them.
Deleting Dictators – If you even give them the hint that you are going to be migrating to a difference service because its cheaper or your getting more, they’ll delete your account before you have chance to get a backup. They are notorious for deleting MySQL databases from clients accounts before they have chance to get them.

If you want a decent host, use Flubberhost’s Host, Gridstar!

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Posted in IRC

Tags: flubberhosts

Stability Restored

April 21st, 2009

Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

You may have seen a highly contraversial blog about 6 months ago stating why UKChatterbox was regarded as unstable. By the looks of it, someone saw it and took my advice.

New channel mode developped to restrict ages/genders from channels.
Moved database to a dedicated server.

Despite the performance fixes above, there are still some issues which need to be addressed before UKChatterbox can become as great as any other network.

Ditch SQLMod. This module actually stops the IRCd when an SQL query is being performed.
Ditch privlog and chanlog. These modules are ethically wrong, and can be seen as a breech of our human rights.
Ditch m_restrictnotice. This module prevents users from noticing each other. As long as you have the right modes set, users shouldn’t be able to disrupt channels by using /NOTICE #channel.
Move to a Data Centre dedicated to providing a decent service. Actually getting 4 VPS’s in the UK would work out cheaper than 4 shells from UKShells. Apparently, they need to have their servers in the UK for legal reasons (I can’t actually see what this reason may be).

I reall do hope UKChatterbox becomes the better network. They have so much to offer, but they go the wrong way. You can be safe without logging, you just set extremely advanced spamfilters. UKChatterbox have so much going for them, they just need to listen to people’s views and take them into consideration.

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Posted in IRC

Tags: IRC stability ukchatterbox