Webmaster Tips & Tricks - The Webmaster’s Blog

I think it was about the time I made a new phpBB theme. Not for my sites, but for free download. I wanted to create a theme for people who like games and want a dark theme for their site. To be honest, I always loved a nice dark theme, but I was never able to use one for my own sites since, to be honest, they have to use a light skin.

But my fascination for black is still there. I created the main layout 1 year ago to be distributed free to 1 member only. I was willing to give the psd source for a member who’d “buy” it with the points made by posting on the forums.

I already “sold” 2 themes to my members, but lately I stopped “marketing” them as I should. And since I did want to start creating some themes for forums, I thought it would be a nice idea to use this layout.

So .. I installed phpBB on a test folder and made a copy after the subSilver theme. Then it was the time to slice my theme and code it for the template. It took me 2 days to finish it, but I am pleased to see how it looks now.

Should you wish to know more about it, feel free to see the downloads page. And we also have a support thread, if you come to any problems.

Few days ago I was yet again bored. Since many of my forums have already been redesigned I started looking at some that still don’t look as I wanted them to look. I logged into my account on Women Only Forums and started looking at the theme and possible improvements.

The theme had already been improved weeks ago, when I changed the header and made it smaller as height is concerned. Now I wanted even more changes.

I started liking have a right-left column in my forums. I can put more information and links to the other sites … It’s a space that can be used to have even more impact on the members and visitors. This was something I wanted on WOF too.

I opened overall_header and overall_footer and placed the code for the rigth column that would show on all pages. Then I got to photoshop to create the tables. I wanted a “talk” shape to convey the idea of communication (it’s a forum after all). And then merged the layers, coded the first table and added it.

This was the first thing, but I would go even farther. I opened the images controlling the tables and modified them to look “bubbly” and on a whitish colour. And then to viewtopic for even more customization. I parted the postbit in 2 tables and then moved some of the info. Of course we had some “nice” table errors as I was implementing my ideas, but in 3-4 hours of effective work I was pleased.

We have a forum that shows once again that phpBB is not a bad script, if you know your business

Today is a historical day I have finaly managed to do something with my StampsToBuy domain, other than let it rot with a default osCommerce installation on it. I woke up this morning, very decided to finish the work I started yesterday. Wished I was able to finish the site yesterday, but I was at an Al Di Meola concert in my town. You can read a very nice review made by one of my top members about the concert on Lyrics and Talk.

We went to the concert, so I left the site half way in design. Today I wanted to finish it, and it’s almost ready. I need to work some icons, because I never like the “normal” icons, other than that I am pretty pleased with how it’s looking.

Created the entire layout as a big stamp itself, with the Dojo Design button made like a obliteration on it. I am already in talks with some friends who have big stamp collections to sell theor stamps with a nice fee for myself and we’re already agreeing with everything. That would allow me to sell some stamps and not having to re-buy them for my collection.

As you guess, I have to go now to oscommerce.com and make some useful posts with my link in the signature and since we have some tips on the forums too, I’ll try link to the articles too.

Yesterday night I was quite bored. I got home at 8 from the radio station and made a small “walk” in all my 9 forums. I placed a banner to my Pet Rescue site at noon from the admin panel and discovered I can indeed modify the IPB theme with the wrapper options. I wanted for a long time to modify the theme on my Martial Arts Forums and this was a good time to start.

As you can imagine I couldn’t wait to get home and do the deed. I wasn’t planning to work too much since I just started playing Neverwinter Nights and I became addicted. But I played already for 2 hours that day and I forced myself not to open the game, but work on my projects.

I logged into the admin panel and looked for the template options. I saved the old wrapper and the CSS file since I always end up messing something. Started looking in my collection of templates images to look for some nice colours and ideas. After few minutes I already got few elements I loved and knew how to make the new layout.

So I opened Photoshop and started with the layout. I always design the main layout so that I can see the colours and the elements. Worked on the background image and colour and updated the CSS. Put a left column and the layout was already a mess. I knew it would take me under 2 hours to mod the theme, so I wasn’t scared that much. I also announced my members that we’ll have some weird theme looks, but the forums will function normally.

I designed the new logo and placed it on the left column leaving it empty after this (only the logo) to put the main table wrappers in place. Had to delete some more images on the tables since I didn’t want them anymore. In few mintes I understood exactly what I need to delete and from where so I was quite speedy.

After this I placed a network table in the left column and then started tweaking some of the images in the table navigation and the CSS.

The masterpiece is not yet ready since I want to recreate the buttons and the icons from the scratch in order to have the forums better designed than now. Will keep you updated

These days have been hectic. After the hacking attempt I already posted about we had another problem. We needed to move servers into another datacenter. What did this mean? Well DOWNTIME and even more downtime. My main host was fast enough to put the sites on a new server, but we had to wait for many hours for the DNS propagation to end. That meant zero activity in my forums and some threads/posts being lost.

It really made me mad. But I was still happy that the entire thing was done and the week-end passed without too many dowtimes as I would have expected. I spent then some good hours trying to see what’s working and what not and starting some new threads to get my members interested in the communities again.

Yesterday I spent some more time on content writing in some of my forums. As I previously mentioned I have a bit too many, so I just cannot cover all the work on a daily basis anymore. I still try to keep them up as much as I can.

Today I got another nice news that made me happy. I applied for a Mentor position at TAZ (The Admin Zone) and it seems like I was elected. The first one to be elected, and yeah, I am VERY proud and happy about this. I spend quite some time there too, so I think this Mentor position would mean I can wear a nice badge too … I’m such a kid sometimes …

I forgot to mention that I worked a bit on my portfolio, Dojo Design, yesterday. I still have some work on it, but I don’t think I’ll do this too soon. I always get distracted to work on other projects in the network, so it’s gonna have to wait a bit. I woke up this morning with the idea for a 10th forum … then I realised I should be crazy to start one again when I have 9 already and absolutely no personal life anymore. I mean I spend my week-ends with my BF and work for 10-15 hours a day on the sites ..

So .. at this moment .. this nice project would have to wait .. unless I find myself “bored” one week-end and start it …

After the server has been hacked, we managed to get the sites up and running again. The “fun” was at my host’s end since the hackers succeeded in messing up the servers in a serious way. So, friday caught us on the move.

My host decided to move the sites on a new server that would not have any traces of the attack and would be a faster one too. Still, I didn’t find out about this until the sites were down, since the new IPs needed to propagate. Till the entire DNS propagation was ready, we couldn’t reach the sites.

This resulted in a small problem: well, quite big if you want my opinion - my members posted some messages and they were lost after the migration. Since I wasn’t able to close the boards till we move on, everything posted in between was lost. And I don’t think we can recover the messages since there are new ones posted and now they would have the same IDs …

Well, the good thing is that we were quite OK after the hacking attempt on the servers. The bad thing for my main host is that he’s got a nice weekend now, trying to move some sites on new servers and doing all the configuration needed to have them work propely. This would result in some small dowtimes these days, but I just hope we’re not gonna have too many in the end.

Last night, after getting ready to go to sleep (was 1 in the morning already) I noticed an “unpleasant” page instead of the Wtricks.com forums page. At first I freaked out: I WAS HACKED. Then I realised this is VBulletin, not impossible to hack, but still quite OK. So I tried to look at other sites from my network too. Well, 5 of them were down.

www.wtricks.com, www.morrowind.ro, www.womenonlyforums.com, www.lyricsandtalk.com and www.martialartlinks.com were all bearing a nice black page with some political information and the nice text: hacked

Since it’s not the first time I have sites being targeted, my first move was to get into the FTP and see what’s wrong there. Usually they put another file there or change the config (had such a case too). But then it was a file modified: INDEX. All my index files (.html or .php) were changed with that page. Since I was a good girl and HAD BACKUPS for the files too, I just needed to replace the index files.

I have called my host ASAP and he went to the servers in few minutes. I already solved the issue on Wtricks.com and the women forums and he told me to not bother anymore since he had the full backups for the last night. He just needed my addresses and he restored the sites.

Lesson: 1. sometimes people do have backups for your sites, but it’s still a good idea to BACK UP the files too. ALL files. And the database.

2. Many times the hackers will modify the files and not the database. I had 4-5 hacks already and the DB was left alone. Still, back up the database daily.

3. EVEN if the host does or promises to back up, DO IT YOURSELF.

I tried to find a pattern in this and I wasn’t able:

- maybe they targeted forums, well, they still destroyed: 1 portal, 1 link directory and 1 blog.

- a script they preffered? No, we had VB, IPB, phpBB, indexu, wordpress and phpNuke affected

- they wanted big sites? No, morrowind.ro is very small, just started it.

Still can’t find a pattern or serious explanation. Anyway .. good to have this solved as soon as we solved it. Another lesson learnt and another chance to write a blog entry here

Since it’s my first “day-to-day” description post in my blog, let me give you some info about my routine today. After getting to work I made it to the PC and logged to Wtricks.com

So far it’s my main project and I really like seeing the new posts. So it’s the first web site I open. After seeing the new posts, welcoming the new people I made a small visit to AdminFusion and TheAdminZone, 2 forums I frequent. I then went to my martial arts forums to see what’s new. As usually there were already new messages I had to read.

Then I started looking at the new project in my network: LovingDoggies. The forums had a small “face lift” made last night and I was testing them. Of course IE had them messed up and since I totally hate internet explorer I failed to test the new headers in IE too.

You can imagine that when I got home this was my priority.

Then some “walks” in the other forums, a small problem with a new member and now I prepare for the last inspection in the communities and then will go to sleep. It’s almost midnight

Well, since I had to start a blog I went for one of the most known scripts in this area: WordPress. I just dowloaded the script and unzipped it. Since I already know how to install scripts I also prepared an empty database for it.

All went well. It took me few minutes to do all this job and see my default looking blog. But as some of you might already know, I am not the default theme type of designer, so my first thing on the to do list was to mod the theme and try to integrate it into the entire Wtricks.com style.

And then it went to h@ll. I knew I can have static urls and I was able to find them. After messing the page for 3 minutes I kinda realised what to do. Then I found the 2 files I needed to change the template: footer and header. I put the images and styling from the main design and realised I still have some missing images. Since I was getting quite frustrated I just put the complete URL for the images so that I don’t have any problems with it anymore.

I also wanted to put the sidebar with links and other issues on the LEFT, but couldn’t make the script listen to me.

Right now I officially hate it. It’s the worst template system I had to work on and I did run into some horrid ones. Hope it will do the job though.

After spending quite some deal on the forums we have here and reading a lot about blogs, I thought it was the time for me to start one too. Don’t expect to read too much personal info about me. The more personal Journal can be found on My own blog section on the Wtricks.com forums.

Even if I can discuss about what’s going on in my life, I wanted to be able to offer some more info about my design and development routine (if anyone is interested in that) and the problems I face as a web developer and forum admin myself.

This would sum it up. I hope I will be able to post regularly in here. If not, then I will still try to post from time to time.