Character encodings for different languages

Editthis.info now handles foreign characters properly (just tested cyrillic and french).

For those that are a little geeky, it seems that the php function htmlentities doesn't have a multibyte string version.

Server Errors

There have been a lot of server errors recently, and they are the result of system resources being overwhelmed (using up system memory and processor).

I suspect that this is due to another app I have been working on - a real time web game called constantsail.com.

I am now setting up a separate server for the that game so that it's performance does not effect editthis.info. I expect it will be set up within the next 48 hours, and hopefully this resolves the issues.

Thanks,
Rob

Update

This problem has been resolved and you should not see any more server errors relating to this problem. The app has been moved to another server.

Attacked

It seems that editthis.info was attacked by a distributor of malware. I have reverted the site code that was modified and removed the offending code they added (they add iframe tags that make it so when you visit editthis.info, you were also visiting their site in the background).

I have since changed the passwords on the servers, made a further backup of all data, and am switching the site to a separate account in case there is a compromise that still exists in the current account.

In the last 24 hours since the attack, google has labeled editthis.info as a malware site, and I have requested a rescan of the site since it has been cleaned up.

I am uncertain as to the vector of the attack, so I am taking a number of simultaneous paths to close down possible holes.

If you would like to help, a great help would be to do a view source on any editthis wiki you use for the next couple days. If you see a hidden iframe on the page, just report it here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pwTWRDXAdLN84h6Bk0oA4Pg

Thanks,
Rob

islandwarfare.com coming soon

I am currently looking for users to beta test Island Warfare, which is a new game I am developing. In it you start with an empty island that you can build various types of buildings on, train soldiers, and sail off to conquer other players islands.

To sign up to become a beta tester go to:
http://islandwarfare.com

Image upload issues

So Dreamhost recently locked out creation of new files on the account that hosts editthis.info. It turns out that that account had 250,000+ files, and huge file systems have been a problem for them regarding stability. Almost all of the files were in the image upload directory.

The problem is mediawiki creates a large number of directories, thumbnails, and archive files for every image uploaded. Many of the directories it creates are actually empty, and every directory in linux is really just a file.

I went into the image storage location and ran the command:

 nohup  find -depth -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;&

Which deleted all empty directories, which brought me back under quota, but it won't be long before file count gets to a point where real files will have to be deleted... so I am blocking image uploads for right now.

The solution I am looking at is possibly making image uploads a premium service only, and just charging a small cost for this. So many users create wikis on EDI, upload a few images, and then stop using the site. This will make it so those users don't have an impact on the usage, and the more heavier users most likely won't mind paying a few bucks to host their images.

As always, if you ever want you can host images elsewhere, and then include them in your pages. You simply put the url to the image in your page, and it automatically shows up there.

Transfering old wikis

Some of the wikis still reside on the previous server. There is now a transfer system in place. Simply go to your wiki's url and it will ask you if you want to transfer. Click the link and it will add you to the transfer queue.

If the transfer queue gets stuck (no wikis are disappearing off the queue after an hour) feel free to send me an email (account robkohr and I use gmail). It was hacked together the other night, and sometimes needs a little push.

Wiki Creation back up and running

Create a new wiki today!

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UPDATE: Ok, not quite working yet. Debugging...


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Updated update: didn't really do anything, but it seems to be working now.