New Forum Structure

[FairCasinos]

I have decided to release the new forum before it is finished because I had to restore the site anyway after it was hacked a few days ago. I know what the security hole is and it won't be a problem again. This has happened a couple of other times from the same function of the site which uses multiple php scripts but I hadn't fixed or removed all the insecure files (just the ones they used to get in). It is not to do with the forum but another feature of the site that was not secure. I've now checked all the other files too for problems.

Currently the email isn't back up but will be shortly. Expect a few more changes in the next few days.

[Dee2U]

Wow, I wondered what had happened! I'm glad to see the site back!

[FairCasinos]

Sorry about the forum not being finished yet. There is a method to the madness but you probably won't see it yet. The reason it is being done this way is to organise the news into the different sections. It will take some time though to get past news items all in the right sections but not too long.

The news posts after a certain time will be moved into history (old news) subfolders (not added yet) on all these forum categories. There will also be News/History events written for any event not covered in the news archives which are automatically copied as posts in the forum in the correct categories. History items are also written that simply point to given News stories that have been posted already (rather than creating the stories).

The Casino Database will have history links for every casino and these point to the history/news events linked to that casino. There will also be more databases for the other forum categories (currently the database is only for the gaming sites) and the databases are automatically created using field parameters when the history is written about an entity (eg. when there is an announcement of a new Director in a gaming company, then this is automatically updated in the Gaming Groups database and the History event includes a record of the change which obviously includes the time of the change).

Therefore every database has a full record of every modification along with the time of the modification whenever it is modified by adding/writing new History events for an entity (not every event requires any changes to that entity in the database though). The good thing about this is that it allows the creation of databases that have a time element so we can see each entity at any time in the past by cycling through the record of the changes (a bit hard to explain). Every written news/history event is linked to one particular entity only and also optionally can be linked to any number of posted news items (eg. some History event about a software company is linked to that software company only and may also be linked to any number of news posts). The automatically posted news can be about more than one entity so more than one History event is written that links to it. Also, often a History event is about more than one entity, so separate History events must be written to cover all the entities involved (eg. when a gaming company releases a new game, the game and the gaming company are two separate entities with separate History events). The reason for the need for separate History items for the same News story, is that each History item contains database modifications for one entity only.

I expect to write most of these History items myself but there is the possibility of the members writing them for full credit and also FairCasinos Credits if for example they see any news not linked to a History item or they have another event in mind that hasn't been written about. It is not hard to do and they don't have to be written in any particular order.

[FairCasinos]

By the way, I have not restored some parts of the site such as the past album pics. I will wait until the forum structure and code for the History events is finished. This is because at the moment I often have to do quick backups which means I have to backup the whole site and it takes much longer with everything restored.

I haven't yet restored the email from the last backup as it was taking a lot of space. Anyone who needs their past email urgently that was stored please PM me and I'll restore yours.

[FairCasinos]

I'm still sorting out the forum. It will make more sense shortly because currently almost none of the entities are currently added in their respective forum categories in the new format. I've had to rethink the databases slightly and how things are displayed in the forum automatically since entities such as casinos sometimes have more than one name and change names but I have figured out how to do everything properly. I'm taking my time so I don't have to change it any more.