Help Wanted

[nicholassolutions]

This thread is being started as a place for people (e.g. Cd&, the PHP team, the graphics team) to post 'job openings' on ERT, requesting help with tasks necessary to run or improve the site. People can then volunteer their time and skills to help complete them. At some point, maybe we can make a chronological "wall of fame" where we acknowledge the help given by members who volunteer here.

So..."someone" post some jobs  :wink:

[seandelaney]

...and to start things off i'll free few more hours tonight so i'll take one on...   :D

[COBOLdinosaur]

Okay a shopping list, or wish list.  :glasses7:

This is PHP stuff, so whoever takes it on please co-ordinate through Matt.  In most cases you should not need me to access what you need, as Matt has access and can give you FTP and privilege to get what you need or can move it where you need it.
:thumbup:  == done   :D == in progress

•  :thumbup: IP generator --- the ip are stored on the database in raw numeric fornn instead of real ip so when  do an ip look up for a member it converts it to xxx.yyy.zzz.??? for me and that is fine, but there are times when I get an ip in the logs and I need to know if it is a member's ip I have a tool that will convert back and forth for me but only one ip at a time, so I need an admin privileged screen that will return a list of members who have used an ip by chaecking agais=nst all the IPs in the database.
•  :thumbup: referral link finder.  One of the spammer tricks is to register in forums and post a referal link as their web site.  I have had to remove 3 of them this week.  What I need is a script I can give to CRON that will look at website links in the members database and when it finds a referal link either email me or delete the link and email it to me.  Whether it deletes or not determined by a config option or parameter.
•  :D log parser.  I need a script that CRON can run that will look at the server logs and email me any records that contain a string I have given as an argument. needs to be usable for both the acces and error logs.
•  :thumbup: Mail usage totals I need a job I can run to give me a summary of the total storage being used by each email account.  Now that we are giving email accounts to members I need ot monitor that because the usage is part of our total storage for the site.  I don't want to runout of storage because an inactive member has been accumulating a 100 spams a day.
•  :thumbup: For the member sort ist would make my life a lot easier if we added a sort by rank to the member sort. Because we are using all thos special ranks there is no automatic change, and so I have to go through the list manually.
• Content management DB.  This is a big piece.  I have already done a preliminary setup of a db to track articles and such but I still have not started the process of actually codeing anything.  We will need to be able to generate the links for the content menus from the databse, keep track of hits, select by catgory or author and sort on author, date, and subject as well.  the articles will each be in their own file and the db will just have the link to the content, not th econtent itself.
•  :D Contact consolidation  this is a start on clening up the look of the forum.  Instead of all the buttons along the bottom of the posts with YIM, MIM, email etc., we would just have a single contact link, and when the link is clicked it brings up a small pop up with the list of various contact methods available.
• Old file cleanup tool.  Two mode reporting and actin in reporting mode it generated a list of files that meet specific parameters for path (ith wild card), lst access date, extension or type. In action mode it would archive, move or delete based on a parameter.

And if any one wants to take a real tough one you can write me a program that will generate winning lottery numbers so I can retire in comfort and devote myself to ERT. :sign5:

I prbably have so other stuff that has slip away while I took care of priority items, as the re-visit I will post the her.  I would eventually get to doing all of these but then I would have a new list of all the stuff I didn't do while I was working on these.

Sean I'll have your mail read a little later this evening.

[nicholassolutions]

For the contact consolidation, I recommend the following (which can create some extra jobs too)

1) edit the current template to remove every link/image under a member's name EXCEPT the profile link. Maybe just make this a textual link, and place it somewhere else on the page to look nicer and take up less space.

2) The profile page already lists all available contact methods, and we can easily recode/restyle it to take on the new look. Maybe someone with client-side skills can do this.

3) make a new image for the profile link that goes better with the new look and doesn't so obviously say "phpBB default". In fact, it might make sense to redesign all the buttons. Graphics team?

[nicholassolutions]

For the ip generator, here's a pointer for whomever takes it on (maybe me  :wink:).

Start with an IP address xx.xx.xx.xx in the variable $s_ip. First, convert it to it's corresponding decimal "IP number". The convert it to hex (which is how phpBB stores it).

Code:

$i_ip_dec = ip2long($s_ip);
$s_ip_hex = dechex($i_ip_dec);

then connect to the database and run

Code:

$query = "SELECT * FROM phpbb_posts WHERE poster_ip = '$s_ip_hex'";

Loop through the results and display them nicely. DB access 101  :wink:

[nicholassolutions]

Anyone interested in doing the IP thing above can simply write the script for Roy with three variables at the top:
$db_username = "Username";
$db_password = "Password";
$db_use_name = "database_name";

and he can put in his credentials and the proper database name.

[CrYpTiC_MauleR]

referral link finder. One of the spammer tricks is to register in forums and post a referal link as their web site. I have had to remove 3 of them this week. What I need is a script I can give to CRON that will look at website links in the members database and when it finds a referal link either email me or delete the link and email it to me. Whether it deletes or not determined by a config option or parameter.

member database? Are you searching for these links in profiles, posts etc? Or globally? Also are you wanting a blacklist to be made so program basically learns when you block a link to delete it next time it comes across it. Also do you want spam words to be detected too? Will increase false positives, but can be done to do spam word search only if a link is present in the content. This is something I am willing to collaborate on in my free time, but cant devote time to do whole script. Anyone interested in doing this?

[COBOLdinosaur]

Nick for a start I am just looking for something to look at the website address they post in their profile.  Most of them do not even turn notifs on and they never verify off the email.  They only register so they can post the referal link in the profile, an then they get credit for a click everytime someone looks it up.

There are 'bot that do it but I have them dealt with by requires the entry of text in a graphic. All the script has to do is reconize a non-standards url like mysite.com?rId=123456 then I can just have CRON run it on a regular schedule.  LAter it can be expanded to banned sites like warez and know porn sites; and at some point it can be expanded to look at link in comments as well.  Right now we are not so busy that a nasty link is going to get by everyone in a comment, but the only way for me to check the profiles is manually or by querying the DB.  The manual way is actually faster and more accurate bbecause there are still not many to look at.

So the script at this point does not have to be complex I just need it to mail me and say "hey I found this link that looks like it is not right.

I appreciate the way you keep pitching in to help.  :cheers:

[CrYpTiC_MauleR]

If you can post the table name and the fields for that table I can whip up something for the min requirements needed for now.

[nicholassolutions]

Hey Nick,

Thanks for pitchin in man. The table is phpbb_users, and the field is user_website. It's a full URL, so for example mine is http://www.nicholassolutions.com. The other fields it should probably report are user_id and username. The best thing to do is probably to just have it echo any results (and nothing otherwise), and when Roy crons it, he can direct the output to whatever email address he needs to. Let me know if you need anything else.

Matt

[CrYpTiC_MauleR]

Code:

<?php

$auto_delete = false;

$sql = 'SELECT `user_id`, `username`, `user_website` '
     . 'FROM `phpbb_users`';
$result = mysql_query($sql);

$body = '';

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
    if (!preg_match('/^https?://([\w-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,6}/?$/', $row['user_website']))
    {
        if ($auto_delete)
        {
            $sql = 'DELETE FROM `phpbb_users` '
                 . 'WHERE `user_id` = ' . $row['user_id'];
            mysql_query($sql);
        }
        else
        {
            $body .= 'Username : ' . $row['username'] . "\n"
                   . 'User ID : ' . $row['user_id'] . "\n"
                   . 'User Site : ' . $row['user_website'] . "\n\n";
        }
    }
}

if ((!$auto_delete) && (!empty($body)))
{
    mail('example@example.com', 'Spam Links', $body);
}

?>

What I came up with was in a hurry for forgive any mistakes, but I got to eat dinner now so be back tomorrow after work.

[nicholassolutions]

The mail quota thing is done -- see my PM

[seandelaney]

Ive got script that i use for a mailing list that fires each week.  I coded this as i dont have a UNIX system and didnt something in the same line for a Windows systems.

Code:

<?php
if (file_get_contents('rundate.txt')!=date('Ymd') and
date('H')>=12 and date('l')=='Friday')
{
include("killOffNastyLinks.php");
$fp=fopen('rundate.txt', 'w');
fwrite($fp,date("Ymd"));
fclose($fp);
}
?>

All Ive have done to get it working was paste this code in your page.  then based on the date in the rundate.txt it will either run the killOffNastyLinks.php or do nothing.

here is the rundate.txt file:

Code:

20060301

It might be useful it might not be...

I'll take a closer look at the others jobs now...

[CrYpTiC_MauleR]

log parser. I need a script that CRON can run that will look at the server logs and email me any records that contain a string I have given as an argument. needs to be usable for both the acces and error logs.

If you can email me some sample logs of both files to my ERT email and also a list of things you want to detect can whip up something. I'm likely going to be pulling an all nighter so will be up.

[seandelaney]

Has anybody taken on sort by rank?

If not, i'll take it on.

 :D