Confused by Integramod2

[ianbutty]

Ok folks, I don't want to rake up past hurts and politics, but I'm confused over the Integramod split. I have a rather old version of IntegraMod - 1.3.2c. I know it needs upgrading but........

I'm not a regular visitor to the Integramod forums (may be I should be) but I've come to find the latest version to upgrade to; I thought this was IntegraMod2 only to find that there are now TWO integramod sites (both of which have my account details). One calls itself integramod.com and is primairly to do with version 2 of integramod the other calls iteself integramod2.com and is to do with 1.4.1. And I am confused.

I realise there must have been a falling out somewhere along the line, but where does all this leave me as a user? How do I know which of the two IntegraMod varients is the right one for me? Can anyone offer any advice. I'm posting this on both forums to try to get as balanced a responce as possible. Would anyone like to explain how/why they decided on the varient they went with? So why did you go with Integramod v2 or v1.4.1 ? I'm sure I can't be other only user facing this dilema so any help would be welcomed.

...maybe I might just be better moving over to vBulletin!

[Helter]

your confussion is understandable. To make a long story short, Weeke is the host of integramod.com. The staff here is the original staff of that site. The server that hosted integramod.com broke, causing numerous problems and making moderating and supporting Integramod impossible. Weeke, was in the hospital, though nobody knew this because he just dissapeared for months and did not reply to any of our emails and pms. The staff decided the only way to continue to support this project was to change hosts. This was integramod2.com. When weeke returned, he did not bother to read all the pms and posts pertaining to the move, he just removed all of our status and accused us of stealing "his" project. There are a lot of post about all this here if you want to read the entire story. We have also preserved the original forum here ( http://www.integrmod.com/home/index.php ) so you can still access the info that has been collected since day1

Teelk has added full support for IM132 to the updgrade script, meaning that when it is released (soon) you will be able to upgrade directly to IM141. If you choose to upgrade to Weeke's IM2, you will also have a decent forum, but you will be orphaned as far as adding additional mods due to the fact that his version of Catagories Hiarchy, while superior (slightly faster) to ours, re-writes to much of the phpbb core, rendering the hundreds of mods written for phpbb, useless. Also, I dont believe he has any additional complete themes.

[ianbutty]

HelterSkelter,
Thank you for your explanation. Am I correct in assuming from your post that IM2 is effectively a 'one-man-band?' (I'm a bit worried about any software supported by only one person).

One difference I have spotted between the two new versions is the "Control picture" - my forums are being heavily hit by automated spammers (on one day I had over 100 spammer accounts created). They are getting past the "control picture" because it is made up of individual graphics (ie alpha_a.gif for the letter a; alpha_b.gif for b etc). It is a simple task for the scripts to read the source file and enter the right code. IM2 has a proper CAPTCHA built in (something that I desperately need) is there any plans to incorporate CAPTCHA into IM141?

Thanks,
Ian M Butterfield.

[Teelk]

I was actually looking at CAPTCHA today. Although with IM141 you probably won't need it nearly as badly, since CrackerTracker is installed. CrackerTracker blocks most, if not all bot registrations.

And, if it's not included in the package it can definitely be available as an addon.

I'll take a look at some of the available visual confirmation MODs.

[ianbutty]

I was actually looking at CAPTCHA today. Although with IM141 you probably won't need it nearly as badly, since CrackerTracker is installed. CrackerTracker blocks most, if not all bot registrations.

And, if it's not included in the package it can definitely be available as an addon.

I'll take a look at some of the available visual confirmation MODs.

Thanks for this info. I'm glad to hear that CrackerTracker should deal with the bots and also that CAPTCHA can be added if needed.

I note that the current RC5 comes with a warning about not using it on live sites (understandable). I'm reluctant to ask this as I know it is the one question all developers hate.... but.... are you able to give any (general) indication of as to how long before the formal release. I'm not asking for dates or anything like that, but just a general idea. For example if RC5 is the last Release Candidate and the next version will be the released version it is worth me putting up with the spammers... if, however, you are currently preparing an RC6 version I'll know that I need to do something as an interim measure to deal with the spammers.

Thanks for all your help.

BTW / FYI - I note from replies to the copy of my original question on the Integramod.com forum that some people are having trouble logging on to this site. I had one or two problems myself. I *think* it might be to do with pop-up blockers as I note that a stats window displays on login but gets caught by IE pop-up prevention. Once I alowed pop-ups from this site I had no more problems logging in.