Dear All,
It’s been a busy year for the E-goat boiler room team and despite a few outages which were dotted throughout the year, we have finally achieved what we set out to do and achieved server stability.
In September / October time, E-Goat was successfully moved to a better, more efficient and more powerful server and since then, the site has been running better than it has for the last couple of years. If you cast your mind back to August 2014, the site was down for a couple of weeks and we have done a lot of tinkering to make sure, fingers crossed, that we are never in that situation again.
We have also made some notable achievements with small, but nevertheless, important things such as being recognised as Google friendly and also as mobile friendly. This has helped us to reshape how people find us online and along with the use of adsense, we have monetised the site allowing the server fees to be met more easily.
Other things include Tapatalk re-installation and the reactivation of PayPal with the correct links for both donations and subscriptions of which we are humbly grateful. Without the efforts of the membership to support the site, we would not be here so it’s a big, wholehearted thank you to each and everyone of you who has helped to secure the site for another year.
Despite the successes, the site has also suffered from some serious attempts to hack into our server, notably from the Chinese and “have a go at being a code cracker” kids. There was also a number of open ports to resellers which were closed down and thus lessening the prospect of an attack. The server security is strong and the server company have helped us to make some positive security moves for the better.
Then, there is the ever ongoing battle against spammers. The number of IP addresses of people trying to join the site which originate in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan and so on has been huge and vigilance has been our biggest asset. They want to spam us and flood the server with traffic to take us down and we will not let this happen.
Going back to hacking attempts, the server hacking resistance could not have been achieved without the invaluable work of E-Goats very own CodeMonkey who can only be described in the nicest sense as an uber geek who lives in a cyberworld, far more advanced than any of us care to realise. Regardless, his support has been invaluable and rightly so, he deserves to be publically thanked for all he has done. Cheers CM!
Also, special thanks go out to ChipRAFP who has been instrumental in making sure that we stay IGS friendly and has pointed me in the right direction on some issues. It’s an aim of E-Goat to allow serving members of the RAF an easily accessible platform with which they can read, contribute and use as a forum to discuss issues that really affect them, so thanks Chip for the sage advice as and when it has been required.
Moving on to 2016, we will be in the position to start looking at small upgrades such as reskinning the VB software so we can provide the site with a newer, yet familiar user interface. Later on and hopefully by mid 2016, we can look at changing the software to a newer version. At the moment, we are using a lot of add ons and plug ins to allow embedding of youtube, posting of photos etc where as newer software has those things built in and offers a much slicker user experience. The Front of House team , namely Vim, Fomz, Downsizer and the Mod team, will be directing me on what visual changes will be good for the Goat and I will do my best to accommodate their ideas and suggestions.
Lastly, a massive Thank You to the membership.
Without your posts, there would be no need for this website so it would be true to say that E-Goat is here because of you and yourselves only. The support that you have demonstrated during the transition of server responsibility has been tremendous and at times, very buoying. Along with a plethora of supportive PM's and comments, it is clear we have turned a corner and the future of the site will be a healthy one. The seeds of redeveloping the community spirit that E-Goat started with have been sown and over the last few months, we have seen plenty of new people signing up as well as a positive return of established members and a return to the spirit with which E-Goat was intended. Long may this continue.
From the E-Goat Tech Team, Happy New Year and we look forward to the challenges that 2016 will bring.
Talk Wrench.
It’s been a busy year for the E-goat boiler room team and despite a few outages which were dotted throughout the year, we have finally achieved what we set out to do and achieved server stability.
In September / October time, E-Goat was successfully moved to a better, more efficient and more powerful server and since then, the site has been running better than it has for the last couple of years. If you cast your mind back to August 2014, the site was down for a couple of weeks and we have done a lot of tinkering to make sure, fingers crossed, that we are never in that situation again.
We have also made some notable achievements with small, but nevertheless, important things such as being recognised as Google friendly and also as mobile friendly. This has helped us to reshape how people find us online and along with the use of adsense, we have monetised the site allowing the server fees to be met more easily.
Other things include Tapatalk re-installation and the reactivation of PayPal with the correct links for both donations and subscriptions of which we are humbly grateful. Without the efforts of the membership to support the site, we would not be here so it’s a big, wholehearted thank you to each and everyone of you who has helped to secure the site for another year.
Despite the successes, the site has also suffered from some serious attempts to hack into our server, notably from the Chinese and “have a go at being a code cracker” kids. There was also a number of open ports to resellers which were closed down and thus lessening the prospect of an attack. The server security is strong and the server company have helped us to make some positive security moves for the better.
Then, there is the ever ongoing battle against spammers. The number of IP addresses of people trying to join the site which originate in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan and so on has been huge and vigilance has been our biggest asset. They want to spam us and flood the server with traffic to take us down and we will not let this happen.
Going back to hacking attempts, the server hacking resistance could not have been achieved without the invaluable work of E-Goats very own CodeMonkey who can only be described in the nicest sense as an uber geek who lives in a cyberworld, far more advanced than any of us care to realise. Regardless, his support has been invaluable and rightly so, he deserves to be publically thanked for all he has done. Cheers CM!
Also, special thanks go out to ChipRAFP who has been instrumental in making sure that we stay IGS friendly and has pointed me in the right direction on some issues. It’s an aim of E-Goat to allow serving members of the RAF an easily accessible platform with which they can read, contribute and use as a forum to discuss issues that really affect them, so thanks Chip for the sage advice as and when it has been required.
Moving on to 2016, we will be in the position to start looking at small upgrades such as reskinning the VB software so we can provide the site with a newer, yet familiar user interface. Later on and hopefully by mid 2016, we can look at changing the software to a newer version. At the moment, we are using a lot of add ons and plug ins to allow embedding of youtube, posting of photos etc where as newer software has those things built in and offers a much slicker user experience. The Front of House team , namely Vim, Fomz, Downsizer and the Mod team, will be directing me on what visual changes will be good for the Goat and I will do my best to accommodate their ideas and suggestions.
Lastly, a massive Thank You to the membership.
Without your posts, there would be no need for this website so it would be true to say that E-Goat is here because of you and yourselves only. The support that you have demonstrated during the transition of server responsibility has been tremendous and at times, very buoying. Along with a plethora of supportive PM's and comments, it is clear we have turned a corner and the future of the site will be a healthy one. The seeds of redeveloping the community spirit that E-Goat started with have been sown and over the last few months, we have seen plenty of new people signing up as well as a positive return of established members and a return to the spirit with which E-Goat was intended. Long may this continue.
From the E-Goat Tech Team, Happy New Year and we look forward to the challenges that 2016 will bring.
Talk Wrench.
