Network maintenance

On Sunday, 29th January, Vintage Radio and Television will be unavailable between 09:00 and 12:00, NSW time, due to necessary server and network maintenance.

During this time there will be security updates to the server's operating system and the server will also be shifted from its primary Internet connection to the secondary as the primary connection will be transferred to a new provider in the coming weeks.

This work will ensure that this site remains available whilst one of the two connections is unavailable during the transfer to the new provider.

Welcome to 2012

Last night I spent about fifteen minutes on the Gladesville Bridge in Sydney taking photos of the New Year fireworks on the harbour. I was joined by around 1.5 million other people wanting to see in the new year on the harbour.

Happy New Year everyone.

Site downtime

On Saturday, 31st December between 07:00 and 11:00 Vintage Radio and Television will be offline so that annual server maintenance can be carried out. The server will be turned off, stripped, cleaned and reassembled and then operating system patching and security updates will be applied.

There will also be some work carried out on the database before the site is returned to active service.

Update: Work is now complete.

Merry Christmas to all...

It's that time of year again where, hopefully, we are all making plans for the Christmas break.

During the break I will be spending any downtime available on developing a new member's profile page for this site. The current one seems to serve its purpose but its layout and organisation could improve. I also want to add some new features to it in-line with what I have said in the previous front page thread. I also have plans on restoring some of the radios I have owned for years but never seemed to have found the time in the past.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all members and guests a Merry Christmas and hope that 2012 is an enjoyable year for us all.

New thread display page and new forum guidelines

There are a couple of announcements relating to forum usage.

New thread display page:

On Sunday, 4th December between 07:00 and 10:00, NSW time, there will be some brief periods where Vintage Radio and Television will not be available. These interruptions are due to a couple of new pages being incorporated into the site.

One of these pages will replace an existing one which displays the forum's discussions. For a while, the existing page has become a lot slower each time new features have been added. The new page has been developed from the ground up, is a lot faster and has some extra functionality over the existing page. Whilst the new page is faster and more functional, it also contains 1/3 less code and is therefore much more efficient.

The pages to be included on the site will not go live tomorrow but will be fully functional for the purpose of testing. Over the next week the new pages will be tested for functionality, ease of navigation and will also be probed for security flaws. If all goes will the new pages will go live before Christmas.

New Forum Guidelines:

Spam attacks have become quite frequent on hundreds of forum sites on the Internet in recent times. Whilst it is rarely apparent, this website has had more than its fair share of these and much work has been done to prevent the database being flooded with member accounts generated by automated processes.

It is an enforceable rule on Vintage Radio and Television that all members be real people, members may only have one account and that the application process be done manually under the hand of the applicant and not a computer programme. In layman's terms, this means that a real person must apply for membership without the assistance of browser addons or robots. Of course, disabled people are welcome to use speech recognition programmes if this is required.

With the exception of the above, all accounts opened with an automated process will be closed as soon as they are detected.

The next issue is the inclusion of phone numbers and e-mail addresses in posts. There is limited protection in place for e-mail addresses in posts however there is none available for phone numbers. To this end, a guideline will soon apply that will prohibit members from including any personal details in their forum posts. This will include everything except your real name, a business name and postal addresses (PO Boxes only). The Forum Guidelines will include more detail of what will be permitted and what won't when the time comes and to assist members with being able to contact each other there will be new functions made available on your profile page to display any personal or contact details you wish to make available to other members.

Naming convention for member's usernames:

Until now, members have been able to use pretty much any combination of letters, numerals, spaces and some special characters in their usernames. As a measure to prevent some types of automated sign-ups and to reflect a desire that members refrain from the practice of using a government-issued callsign as a username, it will soon be required that new members refrain from using numerals or any special characters in their usernames. Letters and spaces will be the only characters permitted.

Callsigns are not issued on a permanent basis, despite the wide belief to the contrary. In Australia, at least, your callsign is issued until you either no longer require it, or it is revoked by the Commonwealth Government, or it is replaced when you upgrade your amateur operator's licence. By virtue of the Commonwealth Radiocommunications Act, 1992 it is an offence to use a callsign that has either not been allocated to you or has been revoked or replaced. An offence would therefore be committed by you if you continued to be identified on any communications medium (including discussion forums) by a callsign not, or no longer, allocated to you.

Those members whose usernames are callsigns will not be required to change to another username however all new members will be subject to the new requirements for usernames. A function will become available on your profile page to allow you to display any callsigns you are legally permitted to use and this information will also be displayed in your posts under your username.

Update (12th December, 2011): All nine forums now displays their threads using the new page.