*** TALKCHESS SERVER TO BE SHUT DOWN ***

[smatovic]

For the files, updated forum incarnations info:

################################################################################
1. 1997 - 2006 www.icdchess.com, self-written forum software, hosted by
ChessUSA, "Steven Schwartz", archive hosted on https://www.stmintz.com/ccc/
2. 2006 -~2012 www.talkchess.com, phpBB version <=2.0.19, hosted by ChessUSA,
"Quentin Turner", cos of update to phpBB v2 all old posts were lost
3.~2012 - 2024 www.talkchess.com, phpBB v 3.0.11 to 3.2.2, hosted by ChessUSA,
"Quentin Turner", update to phpBB v3 lost the "threaded view", v3 only with
flat view, and it lost the old real name database, added a pgn viewer, from
2020 to 2024 IP blocking and issues with Cloudflare CDN to prevent presumed
DDoS attacks on TC, causing collateral damage on ChessUSA shop hosted
together on same server
4. 03/2024 - www.talkchess.com, phpBB version 3.3.11, hosted by 2nd Founders,
with modded Absolution v3 and old ProSilver styles available, fen-diagram +
interactive-diagram + pgn-viewer .js scripts working, >3800 members, >800K
posts, ~2.5GB DB, https only, server as hardened Linux w/o Cloudflare as
proxy in front
################################################################################

--
Srdja

[smatovic]

FYI:

All new forum issues fixed, most feature requests solved, Linux server hardened
in a 1st and 2nd step, two months w/o DDoS attack, crawlers and scrapers active,
load/memory/traffic look good to me.

Overall, I think I can unplug now from this operation (maybe called Phoenix
with an easy conscience.

--
Srdja

PS:

...If that goes well for another month, then I fulfilled my duty and will 2024-05-01 drop out of this operation again.

After saving the town, the hero rides off into the sunset...

[Ras]

Overall, I think I can unplug now from this operation (maybe called Phoenix with an easy conscience.

Good job, thank you!

If I may suggest some server side improvements: setting the HTTP headers HSTS and X-Content-Type-Options. If you use htaccess, it cvould be like this, setting the HSTS for 180 days:

Code: Select all

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
    Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains" env=HTTPS
    Header set X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff"
</IfModule>

Also, the server sets the "Server" http reply header with the Apache version information, and it's best security practice not to leak versions. That would also apply to the version info of the forum software.

Then, in the main page of the forum, there is a reference to https://hgm.nubati.net/down.png - which doesn't load, like anything from HGM's server, because the certificate is self-signed. So it could be moved to TC or removed entirely.

[smatovic]

...

Thanks for the suggestions, that's now a job for HGM

--
Srdja

[Eelco de Groot]

Thanks a lot Srdja!

[jshriver]

Maybe to document the 4 different forum incarnations:

################################################################################
1. 1997 - 2006 www.icdchess.com, self-written forum software, hosted by
ChessUSA, "Steven Schwartz", archive hosted on https://www.stmintz.com/ccc/

I remember those days fondly. Glad to see that it was saved and thanks for taking me down memory lane.