Woopsie

We're back up! Here is what happened.

Posted by Rambler admin in Ramble

First off, to the small handful who use the site, thanks for your patience and sorry about breaking everything.

As you likely saw on the temporary page setup after the site went down, I had pushed an update to the production server that I had made, pushed and tested on the development server. Was a simple cosmetic change, no big deal. Well, it ended up breaking a lot of stuff. Unfortunately reverting simple changes isn't so simple it seems nowadays with asinine software stacks that some developers use to run relatively simple sites, and Symfony php framework was throwing a hissy fit over the change(s) (change to, and attempt to change back) and filling the error log quickly with it's inability to access cache directories that do not / did not exist and that the software (postmill) itself didn't create and that, even after manual creation, would not resolve the many many issue(s).

Look, this site is just a hobby site. It's a passion project. That's it. I work a real, blue collar job. I have some family health stuff and have been picking up some slack in a household that may soon be short a head member. I also have a commercial project on the side so my time lately has been very, very limited. Hobbies are supposed to be fun and enjoyable, so after trying to diagnose and correct the issue with RAMBLE after I pushed an update that broke everything, I decided to put up the page you've seen for the last couple of days and I went to bed. Woke up, went to work, took care of family stuff afterwards, went to bed, went to work, family stuff, repeat.

But hey, the site is back up now. Some of the alternative network connections may not work properly just yet (Namely Loki and Yggdrasil). I've gone ahead and pushed forward with a plan to move RAMBLE to Luxembourg, outside of the USA. I was waiting to do this until I get some hardware racked in the datacenter I'll be using for another project but this server will be fine for now and I've attatched a larger slab of fully encrypted disk space to encourage the use of more media uploads.

Speaking of upgrades, I went ahead and pulled the latest version of Postmill, the underlying software stack powering RAMBLE. You can find out more about this here: https://gitlab.com/postmill/Postmill/ . This comes with post tags, which some of have requested as well as a feature I wanted to implement: Ability to open submission links / images as a post instead of going directly there, similar to how Ruqqus is setup. This site is meant for discussion, so hopefully this will encourage more discussion as a result. Other than that, I've done a few cosmetic changes, namely to the navigation bar where I've added links to show ALL new posts, not just posts on forums you're subscribed to. This will likely showcase content you may or may not wish to see, but should help newcomers find content to interact with.

You'll note the Global Mod Log is more easily available too. Transparency and openness is important, so I wanted to highlight the ability for you to hold community moderators as well as myself (the only admin) accountable for actions are are published publicly. Userbans are not made public in the log by default, so I've added /f/sitebans to remedy that where I'll post all the users that I have banned, and why.

Other than that, the changes are minimal. You'll notice a new footer, some minor changes in the phrasing or wording around the site and that's about it for right now. If you're a developer, feel free to check out the Postmill source ( https://gitlab.com/postmill/Postmill/ ) and I may be able to hook you up with a VPS for testing if you're up for the task of developing some updates / features that will be worthwhile for this site. If I can generate some donations I may be able to toss some funds your way for the trouble, too.

Anyway, the site is back up now. Let me know if anything is broke anywhere and I'll try not to burn the place down when 'fixing' it. -_-

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Comments

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Wahaha wrote (edited )

This may not be Voat, but it sure as hell feels like Voat.
Don't stress out too much, if it's down, it's down.

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BlackWinnerYoshi wrote

At least [RAMBLE] is not Clownflared, doesn't require JavaScript, doesn't limit you to one post per day. You know, it's just better than the now defunct Voat.co.

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Wahaha wrote

On a technological level I might agree, but other than that it's just a different experience. Voat didn't limit me to three posts per subverse per hour, like Ramble does. And Voat had some privileges attached to the Internet points you could collect. Above 100 points or so, all restrictions were lifted and beyond that it didn't matter, anymore.

This was a measure against bots and shills. Not sure if it accomplished anything. But since the original Voat is now dead, everything will be better, so there's that.

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Rambler OP wrote

Wait, this happens?

Send me a PM with details if you can and I'll review it further as able.

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Wahaha wrote (edited )

I think it's more of a global thing. I get three submissions per hour (independent of where I post), after that: https://i.imgur.com/MQ89QxW.png

Thought it's to prevent spam.

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Rambler OP wrote

It may be, I see no specific setting for it on my end. There are some config settings available to whitelist certain IPs, which I have to use so Tor Onion, I2P, Loki network users don't get rate limited since they share the same IP of the network connection they're using...

I can individually whitelist accounts which does: "Whitelisting will allow this user to bypass IP bans and some flood protections. Additionally, their IP addresses will no longer be stored." So I've gone ahead and done that for you, but no sort of global "X posts per 1 hour" type of rule to be set.

IPs are merged automatically on a cronjob schedule anyway for everyone so whitelisting really only prevents you from getting stopped by the spam filter that has no configurable settings anywhere.

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Wahaha wrote

Cool, thank you very much. Then I can enable IP spoofing again without running into issues again.

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Rambler OP wrote

Should be able to. If it doesn't, drop me a line and I can at least look into. May not be immediate but I have a to-do list of stuff I work on even if some things are super old on it, haha.

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smartypants wrote (edited )

I felt sad when I learned it was corrupted lost and down.

I now feel much happier with the world.

I am glad you are back.

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J0yI9YUX41Wx wrote

If it's any consolation, fancy pants professional programmers like me also push an update to production that breaks everything. It's a part of the process. :)

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Rambler OP wrote

Usually it's me pushing untested stuff into production because, "Of course it'll work. It's simple." that breaks stuff. I care a little more about this site and even tested it first, confirmed it worked, and still broke it all.

Eh. It happens, I guess.

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Rambler OP wrote

Okay, now we're back. I posted this prematurely.

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Wingless wrote

I wish somebody would rewrite the Internet from scratch, and shitcan any software feature with an IQ over 85. Also, have a 200-mile exclusion zone for corporate flunkies, enforced by heavy artillery.

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