Domain expiration

[Tom Booth]

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LOL you are such a cagey bastard. Good luck trying to get someone to pay that.

You really are a moron.

It's already paid for and up and running, or did you somehow miss that?

[Tom Booth]

I'm ok to chip in with some moderating, but I don't have the time or will power to maintain a whole forum.
I've enjoyed this place and it's sad that it's leaving. A replacement would certainly be nice.

phpbb has a rather robust but complicated permissions capability.

Personally I like the Mooker forum idea of the OP of a forum having moderation of their own threads or personal "workbench" group of threads. Nobody should have to put up with, or be forced to endure "trolls" or other unwanted, troublesome participants or long off-topic posts rendering the thread unwieldy and unreadable.

Personally I'd rather have a thread remain idle for years than be "busy" with irrelevant banter.

That goes for me too. If someone doesn't want my "pseudoscience" input or perspective, I can respect that. On the other hand, I shouldn't have to put up with some moron incessantly posting on my threads with the obvious intent of derailing the conversation just because they don't agree with the direction the thread is moving, away from their own prejudices or preconceptions.

On the other hand, some people might welcome a debate and moderate their thread accordingly.

A few years ago, Darryl Boyd was contemplating closing the forum due to lack of interest. I asked him to please keep it open and he agreed, so long as at least one person was interested, so I agreed to post more often, I had been busy working on some engine/experiments for a long time. I came back here just to post a YouTube video of the engine I had been working on and found the notice the forum was about to be closed.

Interest in Stirling engines seems to fluctuate with the price of gas at the pump.

[Tom Booth]

This seems to be a useful feature for screening spam.

"queued posts".

The forum can be set up so that posts made by newly registered members require moderator approval.

Basically as a newly registered member of the forum you are preemptively banned from posting until someone can review the post.

Nothing personal against ACTUAL new members but the alternative is letting spam bots freely overrun the board for however long until whomever gets around to deleting it. I think new members having to await approval is rather common on forums and a small price to pay for a relatively spam free site.

It's actually just a matter of changing some settings already built into phpbb since 2008.

[Tom Booth]

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Excellent. Please moderate it for just verifiable science. Good luck.

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Sorry but your opinion about what constitutes "verifiable science" is completely biased. This is also NOT any kind of formal "science" forum.

All you want to do is censor views and opinions you disagree with, under pain of having to endure your relentless trolling and badgering.

You wouldn't know real science if it ran you over with a Mac truck. You're an incompetent lunatic who belongs in an insane asylum.

[Fool]

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You are fooling yourself.

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[Tom Booth]

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You are fooling yourself.

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Well bub, I'm setting up the site so can do as I please.

Most science theories have been overturned again and again. Most science today will be obsolete tomorrow.

Your clinging to 1820 "science" like your life depends on it, the rest of the world does not have to follow your example, or your bad advice.

[Fool]

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You really are an expert at fooling yourself. Just trying to point out your errors.

My science is modern. You are the clinger of caloric. The Carnot theorem is a step away from caloric. Caloric lacks conservation of energy, right in league with you. The Carnot theorem was derived from conservation law. I'd have thought you have seen that by now. Eyes wide shut.

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[Tom Booth]

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You really are an expert at fooling yourself. Just trying to point out your errors.

My science is modern. You are the clinger of caloric. The Carnot theorem is a step away from caloric. Caloric lacks conservation of energy, right in league with you. The Carnot theorem was derived from conservation law. I'd have thought you have seen that by now. Eyes wide shut.

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The math doesn't add up.

[Fool]

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Grow up. I learn a lot more about mathematics than, addition, duh.

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[Tom Booth]

The "pages" plugin is installed and working:

Compress_20241114_110118_8937.jpg (37.46 KiB) Viewed 510 times

https://stirlingenginebuilders.com/index.php

I added a "Member Sites" link to a page with a simple html table.

I still need to integrate the table with the style sheet to make it look pretty.

Mostly I just wanted to see the functionality on the backend.

A general "links" page to other interesting Stirling engine sites, videos, forums etc. could be useful I think

[Tom Booth]

Toms_avatar.gif (116.69 KiB) Viewed 485 times

How do you like my new avatar?

The avatar upload is rather pernickety.


"Maximum dimensions; width: 90 pixels, height: 90 pixels, file size: 6.00 KiB."

[Tom Booth]

Here is another Stirling Engine Forum

Crop_20241115_001349_9401.jpg (93.42 KiB) Viewed 475 times

https://stirling-engine.boards.net/

I already had a Proboards account so why not?

Fiddling around I found that Proboards has custom pages also, no extra plugin required.

The backend (admin) is not entirely mobile friendly. It seems the only way to organize categories and forums is a drag and drop method that doesn't seem to work on a mobile phone. I hardly ever find a need to fire up a computer anymore.

[Tom Booth]

The Proboards site is (now) set up to moderate registrations.

I did a test registration using an alternative email and got this response.

Thank you for creating your forum account at Stirling Engines Forum!

Your activation key is: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By activating my account, I agree to ProBoards' Privacy Policy which includes Cookies, Data Collection, Data Use, and Data Sharing: www.proboards.com/privacy

Click to activate: login.proboards.com/activation/xxx xx&key=xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Your forum account is currently pending approval from a forum staff member. Once the account has been approved, you will receive a confirmation email.

There can also be multiple moderators for the various Topics/Forums. I'm not sure of the granularity as I haven't had a need for it.

I know Scott Robertson's excellent Air Car Access forum was on Proboards for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately he deleted it.

The Proboards login can get confusing at times, especially if you're a member of multiple Proboards forums.

[Tom Booth]

This is kinda neat.

Well, fun anyway.

I made a custom icon for the boards. Instead of that circle thing, a little animated Stirling engine gif.

Just trying it out, but the icon or engine gif could change for read, unread, new posts, etc.

I just used one to start out

Compress_20241115_060403_3962.jpg (33.93 KiB) Viewed 461 times

On the live site, the little engine gifs are running.

https://stirlingenginebuilders.com/index.php

It seems they could probably be a little bigger. I shrunk them down to the original icon size but that looses some clarity.

[Tom Booth]

I think a "related links" type page is a good idea,

There is one here on this site:

viewtopic.php?t=1599&sid=3bdc957c6d4892 ... 1cae174dd2

Unfortunately the majority of the links are stale, 404, no longer exist.

Something that can be more easily edited to keep it up to date.