Recent Posts

3226

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 27, 2017, 03:09 PM »

Hey Carol!
Yeah, that's not a bad idea..

Though I think I have a pretty good solution in place with some custom extensions I've written (I've enjoyed writing joomla extensions).
With my approach the page content of parent pages is dynamically generated from the menu structure, to yield parent pages that look like those shown here.
Perhaps the nicest thing about this approach is that if pages are added and moved around, those parent pages are automatically always up to date.

3227

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:49 PM »

What isn't too obvious in the menu, is that you can click on every level in the menu and get to see the page from that point on, allowing to navigate deeper down if desired... Removing that huge menu structure is going to take away that confusion I guess

Yes, exactly.  That is one of the main motivations for removing the deep structure -- otherwise it is not at all clear that those intermediate items in the menu are actual (important) pages.
Removing the deep structure in the navigation bar will eliminate that problem and people will need to progress through the pages to reach a deep page.

3228

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:30 PM »

The menu used does seem a bit sluggish in some places.

I'll look into it..

One thing that I'm fairly sure will change before the real site goes live is that those deep menus will change to only be 1 level deep.
Having the super deep menus in the navigation bar is fun to be able to see the entire site structure, but I think it may be a bit overwhelming.

So for example there won't be this:


And instead the navigation bar will just show the 1st level children of the "Software" section, and from there you will navigate the page content to get to specific programs.

3229

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:20 PM »

Rather than run google ads, I made a custom "internal advert" module which can show in the sidebar some different things at random..  You'll see it in action in the screenshots above.

It can show a random "testimonial" quote (like our current site does on some pages), except now it's easy for people to submit new quotes, and it has custom avatar pictures.  But it can also show some random blurbs we can create that mention either one of our software programs with a screenshot, or a blurb and screenshot recommending one of the many websites we are fond of (techsupport alert, ghacks, etc.), or a random DC member website, etc.

3230

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:16 PM »

Top-level section pages now have a uniform look -- it's not cutting edge but it's clean and easy to maintain and is dynamically generated so if we move stuff around it requires no editing.

Some examples:

3231

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:12 PM »

I'm still not entirely sure the best way to organize the software section, but what I'm leaning towards now is a page under the main software section for "Friends of DC", which can link to the software sites of DC members and tell people about them.  The idea is that while we may not "host" this software, we can help draw some attention to the software pages of DC members:

3232

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:09 PM »

I've tried hard to not remove any content from the new site; but some old pages/sections that are out of date are being moved into a "Historical Archives" section so that the main site organization can be a little easier to navigate:

3233

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:05 PM »

Instead of the old help database, which was ok, we now have a series of FAQ sections, again using expanders to minimize information overload:

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DC Website Help and Extras / Re: Official CMS Migration Progress Thread - September 2017

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 01:03 PM »

A few more screenshots of the new cms..

The new License Key landing page:


Each section expands to show a little more info.
Clicking the free license key page instantly provides the user a temporary (60day?) license key on the screen.  Much simpler process than the current site and should be a lot less confusing for folks.

3235

PopUp Wisdom / Re: New books wanted!

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 12:53 PM »

Having scientist quotes is awesome -- I think no point having separate quote books for different scientists -- combine them all in one!

3236

N.A.N.Y. 2017 / Re: NANY 2017 Release: sPinger

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2017, 12:15 PM »

Nice ideas..

3237

N.A.N.Y. 2018 / Re: N.A.N.Y. 2018 Announcement

« Last post by mouser on September 24, 2017, 08:52 AM »

The new (CMS) version of the website already has a more prominent and up-to-date NANY landing page.. It will go live before the end of the year.
I will update the preset text for forum.

3238

General Software Discussion / SafeBrowse chrome extension hides a cpu draining trojan

« Last post by mouser on September 24, 2017, 08:46 AM »

SafeBrowse, a Chrome extension with more than 140,000 users, contains an embedded JavaScript library in the extension's code that mines for the Monero cryptocurrency using users' computers and without getting their consent. The additional code drives CPU usage through the roof, making users' computers sluggish and hard to use.

https://slashdot.org...cryptocurrency-miner

From https://www.bleeping...hat-drains-your-cpu/

3239

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to automatically restart a windows service?

« Last post by mouser on September 22, 2017, 03:36 PM »

First thing would be to find out how to make a batch file to restart the service, then you can easily invoke that batch file from FARR.

3240

General Software Discussion / Re: A Free And Instant Logo App, DesignEvo

« Last post by mouser on September 21, 2017, 10:01 PM »

The reason Ath asks is because there are so many cases where people post about a product and have some financial (or other bias) motivation to promote a product.  So it's important that when anyone on the forum recommends a product, they make very clear if they have any relationship with the company or any other motivation for recommending the product, or any reason to be biased about it (relative invented it, etc.).

Unlike many sites, we actually do have a section where we allow authors to announce products that they have created -- our rules simply require full disclosure and posting in the right place.

3241

Living Room / Re: World Wide Web Consortium abandons consensus, standardizes DRM, EFF resigns

« Last post by mouser on September 21, 2017, 08:40 PM »

Thanks for the link 

3242

N.A.N.Y. 2018 / Re: NANY 2018 - 6 Command line Database utilities

« Last post by mouser on September 21, 2017, 07:29 PM »

What x16wda said.
These days it seems packing your exe is just asking for headaches with antivirus tools.

3243

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: Welcome - READ THIS FIRST!

« Last post by mouser on September 21, 2017, 06:47 PM »

Probably the best place would be to read our old newsletters:
https://www.donation...index.php?board=63.0

Each newsletter rounds up and organizes the "best" new threads on the forum from the preceding months.

3244

Living Room / Re: Recommend some music videos to me!

« Last post by mouser on September 20, 2017, 04:11 PM »

Love it:

3245

General Software Discussion / CCleanup: A Vast Number of Machines at Risk

« Last post by mouser on September 19, 2017, 10:24 AM »

Reported by OS News:

Talos recently observed a case where the download servers used by software vendor to distribute a legitimate software package were leveraged to deliver malware to unsuspecting victims. For a period of time, the legitimate signed version of CCleaner 5.33 being distributed by Avast also contained a multi-stage malware payload that rode on top of the installation of CCleaner.

Original article:
http://blog.talosint...ributes-malware.html

In reviewing the Version History page on the CCleaner download site, it appears that the affected version (5.33) was released on August 15, 2017. On September 12, 2017 version 5.34 was released. The version containing the malicious payload (5.33) was being distributed between these dates.

3246

Living Room / Re: What's your favorite scientist ?

« Last post by mouser on September 16, 2017, 03:48 AM »

Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr

3247

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by mouser on September 15, 2017, 09:42 AM »

Thanks for sharing, that was a fun read. 

3248

N.A.N.Y. 2018 / Re: NANY 2018 Mug/T-Shirt Design Competition

« Last post by mouser on September 15, 2017, 03:11 AM »

I'll add one more thing about the image -- in an ideal world you will use a graphics program with layers so that you could easily update the image for future years (NANY 2020, etc.).

3249

N.A.N.Y. 2018 / Re: NANY 2018 Mug/T-Shirt Design Competition

« Last post by mouser on September 14, 2017, 11:56 PM »

Regarding sizes, the design for a mug, which is what we normally give out for NANY should be 1662x600 (or anything larger with that aspect ratio).
Ideally a t-shirt design will be square, but we could always use the same 1662x600 image on a shirt.

3250

Living Room / Re: Jumpy: Animated videogame short

« Last post by mouser on September 14, 2017, 02:37 PM »

I like Iain's interpretation as well.. This is a a good exercise.