It was a few days ago now when I promised that some exciting new features would be coming. It’s taken longer than planned and we’ve done a lot more than we were originally going to, but I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

So, what have we got in store for you?

Because all these new features are custom made we don’t really want to put anything live on the mainsite without some testing first. This is where beta.zerosec.ws comes in.

We just need you to go there and have a play around, try out the new features and let us know if you find any bugs. We are expecting bugs to be found, and if/when you do find them we ask that you either post them in the comments to this post, or email them to untamed&zerosec.ws (&=@).

Once we feel it’s all running like clockwork we’ll be adding the features to the main site, so if you like the features listed below get beta testing!

I know what you’re asking now: “What’s been changed on the beta site?”

Major Updates/Fixes

DONATOR ACCOUNTS
We try not to run too many ads here, as we know they can be a bit intrusive but that means we are often behind on server payments. Every time we’ve come to our readers for help you’ve been amazingly generous, and so we wanted to say thanks to those who’ve been really supporting us over the last year or so.

If you’ve donated in the past and want to get your hands on an account, drop an email to info@zerosec.ws with:

• Your requested username
• Paypal receipt from your donation

We’ll then check it all matches our records and email you back with your login details.

Comment Reporting
Another killer feature, and one which many of you have been asking for of late is a way to report comments which break our rules – such as fake, or virus infected links etc.
Well Untamed our coding God has delivered this wonderful feature, and we can’t wait to get it running live on the main site.
It’s currently set to only allow those with Donator accounts to report bad comments, so we don’t get lots of fake reports coming in. One of the caveats of having a registered account is if you abuse it, we’ll remove it

Captcha v2
Something else we heard a fair amount, was that our current captcha system has a few bugs and caused issues for some of our readers. This has now be completely recoded – every known bug has been squished!

ihateTV v0.2
A lot of you really love our ihateTV feature, and we’ve done some work on it. On the mainsite, it now uses cookies so it should store your last settings.

Something that’s been requested ever since ihateTV came along was an ihateTV RSS feed. Well ihateTV now works for RSS, and used the GET method so its compatible with all common RSS readers. Many thanks to all those who requested (and reminded us on IRC) about this feature!

More minor updates/fixes

Updated to the latest WordPress version
This gives most benefit to our editors, with updated admin panels, easier comment moderation, bug fixes and more.

Restricted Names
We noticed some people were setting their comment names to things like “Admin” which is obviously misleading so we’ve coded a system which won’t let you comment if your name contains words like “admin”, “staff” etc.
We’ve also added a function to remove any special characters from usernames (other than the common ones such as &!$£ etc.), and on top of this there’s also a 50 character limit for names.

Anonoymous Comenting
We noticed a few of you don’t really like the username being a requirement, so if you don’t enter a username anymore you’ll be called “Anonymous”

Added post count next to editors names
Something the editors have long been asking for is a post count next to the authors name. Well now we do!

Added scroll bar to long comments
Some comments with hundreds of links take up a lot of space. We’ve set it so that comments over a certain length will have a scroll bar.

Fixed the @reply feature for non logged in users
The current reply feature in the comments has a few bugs, especially if a comment high up gets deleted as it messes up all the numbers. Untamed’s now recoded this feature to work more smoothly (especially for users without accounts), and has a work around if a comment is in the moderation queue.

“Posting comments too quickly” bug should now be fixed
We’ve got out the fly swat and this bug should now be splatted all over the wall.

Tons of backend tweaks and edits
As mentioned with the upgraded WordPress, we’ve also done some other tweaks and edits behind the scenes to make this run a little smoother.

Updated CSS tweaks
There’s been a few little bugs in the CSS which have been bothering us, so we’ve cleaned it up a little and fixed the odd thing here and there.

This post is a 3in1, parts written by all 3 admins, please read it in full as there’s lots of news about the site.

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Donations (ReeGed)
You may have noticed the Donations widget which we’ve added to the sidebar. I’ve decided I don’t want to add it without an explanation, so here it is. The number one priority for the ZeroSec crew is the user experience. To make the user experience as quick, pleasant and awesome as possible, we’ve made the active decision to pay for secure and great servers that don’t compromise on speed, uptime or would cause possible legal issues due to their location.

We also don’t want to spam you with unnecessary ads, which is why we only use ad banners (no popups/unders, full-page ads or otherwise intrusive ads). We are also constantly in contact with the ad “agencies” we use if there is an issue and we listen to every single piece of feedback or complaint we receive. This means we remove our ad banners as soon as there’s an issue, which lowers the possibility of revenue during the relatively extensive time it usually takes to get an ad issue resolved.

All of these things pile up to make it economically difficult (especially during these times) to run a site like this while trying to adhere to the standards by which we stand and constantly trying to improve and better the site. Keeping the site running in its current state is pretty much burning holes in my personal pockets, which I’ve been happy to watch happen as long as I had the pennies to spare. ZeroSec is our hobby, which is why we decide to work on and pay for something which has zero personal, monetary profits.

We’re now in pretty dire need for some donations, something we wouldn’t actively ask for unless it was absolutely necessary. We appreciate any sum you are willing to give to keep the site alive!

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Post Speed (pandaking)
As you will have noticed ZeroSec has been slow over the past couple of weeks, this is because of the time of year. A lot of our editors are either taking exams, are on holiday, or are busy with the usual stuff people do in summer. Exams are now mostly over and myself and a few others are back from holiday, so you should notice the speed starting to pick up again.

Something that should be completed very shortly are the FAQ pages I’ve been working on which answer things like different video types and quality, scene rules/nuke reasons and more. Once in place I’ll need some feedback and suggestions emailed to me, but if you have any requests for FAQ pages you can leave them in the comments here.

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Planning ZeroSec v4.0 (Untamed)
I made my last ‘proper’ post in March detailing new features that were being planned, which most of you will probably remember. Unfortunately after most of the code had been completed WordPress 2.8 Beta was released, so I decided to delay the new features until the new WordPress had been released. Now that WordPress 2.8 is out, I’ll be resuming work on the new features. Here are the features currently confirmed, and their status:

I am extremely interested in what you, the visitor, would like to see on ZeroSec. I feel the last post asking for feedback was very successful, if there’s anything else anyone would like to see on the site please comment!

PreDB:
Work safe filter (Hide all XXX releases and category names) [0%]
Improve categorization [20%]
Fix multiple modnukes bug [0%]

Main Site:
Comment Reporting [50%]
Recode CAPTCHA [95%]
ihatetv v2.0 (including ihatetv for RSS) [100%]
Article Audio/Video/Movie rating [0%] (This may be limited to donators only to stop spam ratings of 10 or 0)
Editorals [20%]
Improved/Advanced Search [0%]
Theme Switcher [95%]

Donators: (Previous donators as well as new donators)
Give donators a login to the site [0%]
Category selector for donators [50%] (This may or may not happen, we wouldn’t be able to cache pages for donators so it may overload our SQL server)

Advertisements:
Report system [0%]

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Thanks for reading.

There are lot’s of features and improvements which are in the works, but before I mention them we would love to hear what features you would like to see on the site, as the readers you know what’s needed. Leave a comment with any suggestions you can think of, or email me at untamed@zerosec.ws. Here are a few of the new features I’m currently working on, these should start making appearances in the next couple of weeks:

Theme Switcher
After implimenting our new site design, we have been reading your comments to see what you think, and it seems 95% of you love it as much as we do. However the other 5% weren’t too keen. In an effort to make as many people happy as possible, I’ve been working on a theme switcher. It will allow you to change the background of the main theme, or even go old school and go back to our old theme.

Comment Reporting
I’m also working on a comment report system, to try and reduce spam, phishing and virus links etc. If you feel a comment is breaking the rules you can bring it to the attention of us very easily by a click of a button.

??? Surprise
Some of you clever people have been able to work out what this is . This feature is almost finished and should be making an appearance soon.

ihatetv v0.2
This new version uses a cookie to remember your choice, instead of you having to keep “?ihate=tv” at the end of each url.

New Servers
Undoubtedly most you have noticed that the site has been slow of late, as we are getting more and more users. We’re in the progress of upgrading our servers which will give us a massive performance boost.

CAPTCHA/Flood control Issue
For some of you, the CAPTCHA image didn’t show up, or you got annoying “You’re posting too fast” errors, I’m in the process of recoding the CAPTCHA plugin, which should fix the issues people have been having and I’ve also made some tweaks to wordpress and the flood error should now be gone, or at least greatly reduced.

Wow, 3 posts in 3 days – a record for me. Anyway, I’m pleased to announce that ‘ihatetv’ v0.1 is complete! I’m confident that this will work for everyone, and it is also compatible with page links. Thank you very much everyone who participated in the BETA yesterday.

To enable, click this image that’s on the side bar ->

Once enabled, to disable click the image that replaces it, or remove the ‘?ihate=tv’ from the end of the URL

It’s that simple! If theres enough demand, I’ll add others such as ‘ihatetvandgames’ or ‘ihategames’ etc. If anyone has any problems, suggestions, comments, etc then please reply in this post, not in any of the other previous posts.

Before reading this, make sure you’ve read the previous post, located here. I *think* I’ve managed to fix it for everyone (Thanks to %!). However, I need your help to make sure that it’s bug free, consider this ‘ihatetv RC2′. Please could you reply with a comment, with the answers to the following questions:

Does zerosec.ws/?ihatetv work for you?
Does zerosec.ws/index.php?ihatetv work for you?
Does zerosec.ws/?ihate=tv work for you?
Does zerosec.ws/index.php?ihate=tv work for you?
What is your operating system?
What browser do you use?

Also, please keep discussion to a minimum in this post. If everything goes ok, I’ll make another post tomorrow containing my findings, and a better way of enabling/disabling this feature.

Thanks!

Hello, the ‘Webdev guy’ here – again. Ever since ZeroSec launched, there has been comments and complaints about the vast number of TV posts. A month ago we made a ‘category selector’ plugin which enabled anyone to select their favourite categories and for them to be displayed on the main page, minus the categories that they hadn’t chosen. Unfortunately, this plugin was not compatible with our cache solution, so we had to abandon it. The other day, in a comment someone again commented about how many tv posts you have to wade through. This renewed my interest in finding a solution to the issue that is also compatible with our cache – so I started brainstorming, and I’ve managed to code something that I hope will keep everyone happy.

To enable simply add ?ihatetv to the end of the zerosec.ws url. So: http://www.zerosec.ws/?ihatetv will disable tv posts showing up on the main page. To disable simple remove the ?ihatetv. Once I’m sure that its bug-free I’ll create a better way of enabling/disabling the system.

This is currently in BETA. If it doesn’t work for you, please reply with a comment containing: Your operating system, your browser (including its version) and any plugins on your browser. Thanks!

Greetings, Untamed here. I’ve recently coded a custom CAPTCHA script building upon a different script, as some people were having issues with the math anti spam (it wasn’t very well coded). There doesn’t seem to be any issues with the new script, but I’m wondering; what do you think of it?

Please comment your thoughts, suggestions or criticism of the anti-spam script in this article, so we can make the script better for everyone. I’ve also removed the required email input due to popular demand.

Thanks .