Hiya all,

I am glad and proud to write this little service announcement. This is meant to inform you about the services we at sharethefiles.com provide for all our users.
I'm actually going to talk about 3 services in particular stfimages.com,stfnews.com and our Encrypted IRC chat service.


First off i would like to inform all of you that the stfimages.com image hosting service has been reopened and is working as a charm. Everyone can upload images to this host and be sure that your images are safeguarded.
It's a very basic version that allows MULTIUPLOAD and hotlinking, meaning you can use the images you upload on whatever site you want.

here's a little something of what we have planned for the future:

Current version= 2.0.18

Code: Select all

3.0
- Full dB implementation (MySQL; PG, etc)
- 3 sizes implementation for each image (discussion)
- Statistics
- User registration and upload management

2.3
- Twitter API integration
- Multi remote upload

2.2
- API modes for file-manager
- Private mode

2.1
- File manager
- dB (PDO) introduction (filelist, manage, etc)
- id encoder/decoder based on encryption

As you can see improvements to the script are coming and it will only get better and better.
So if you are ever in need of a reliable image host without any limitations you know where to go

---

The other service is without a doubt a very practical service and that's why we need to get the word out about it.



STFnews.com is a P2P news aggregator. We created this service to give you up-to-date news about what's going on in the world of internet filesharing. It has newsfeeds from every reliable and respected P2P news site and even keeps you updated about new verified scenereleases (vcdquality).

There isn't much to say about this service, you just need to find out for yourself, so go take a look.

---

And lastly this last service we provide is the least known of all yet it has been here the longest.
We provide our users of this board a means to get direct support by using IRC to chat to us in realtime. Lots of users however do not like fiddling with IRC chat clients and setting up secure environments for it.

That's is where we come in.

We provide you with a no-download java IRC client. It's as easy as clicking a link.
You automatically are connected through a 128bit SSL connection and get a random name.

Here's what you need to do to get in the chatroom:

1)Click this link



2)You will see this screen pop up



3)Check the BOX and click RUN



5)Proof of secure connection



Come join us in the channel and chat with the staff and other members.

We are now flying at Mach 3.0.10!

Please report any problems you might have here.

UPDATE: Foreign Language Forums should be fixed now - finally

Thanks for bearing with us on this one. We finally found a way to fix all the old posts without breaking any new posts in the process.

The problems with the Unicode characters should now be fixed.

If you come across topics or posts that seem not to be fixed correctly, please use the "Report post" button to alert us about the problem and we will try to correct the it.

Thanks for your patience,
Stoepsel

-------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE: Foreign Language Forums no longer locked

The Foreign Language Forums have now been unlocked again. But before you start posting, please read the following:

IMPORTANT:
DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT fix topics and posts with incorrectly displayed characters. These posts will automatically be corrected at a later point in time. But the automatic correction will only work, if the posts remain as they are now. You will not be doing yourself and others a favor by trying to fix posts manually. You will be wasting your time and will be making the automatic conversion a nightmare for myself. And you don't want that. Trust me.

If you post in the Foreign Languages Forums, you must use normal Unicode characters. DO NOT try to use the incorrectly displayed characters from older topics and posts. Simply post as you would, if nothing had happened.
Feel free to use any of the w€Ï®d ©hārąçŦeƦƧ your language has to offer.

-------------------------------------------------------
I have decided to lock the Foreign Language Forums for the time being. The reason is that since our server move, we are experiencing problems with Unicode characters being displayed incorrectly in posts made before the server move. Posts made after the server move, however, are displayed correctly.

Unfortunately, to fix this problem for the many old posts done over the past years, the new posts will become corrupted. Since this mainly affects the Foreign Language Forums, I would like to minimize the impact and frustration of losing posts for those people posting there. For that reason, I prefer to stop you from making new posts that will only get corrupted in a few days time.

I apologize for any inconvenience this will cause for our members that have contributed to the Foreign Language Forums since the server move, but I see no other way to fix this problem.

Hello,

It has recently been brought to the attention of the team that there is a sudden increase of "login verification" codes having to be entered to be able to sign in to the forum.

After some investigation it appears this is occurring on many high profile/high traffic phpBB forum powered websites, so it is not unique to our forum.

The reason this is happening is that an automated script is being run on infected computers scanning for phpBB forums, and then attempting to log in to them by using brute force dictionary attacks. In other words, the scripts are scanning memberlists for usernames and trying to guess people's passwords by running through huge lists of common words to see which work.

Any accounts that do have such insecure passwords and could be successfully logged in to will be noted by the crackers, and probably used to spam the forum later.

We highly recommend changing, or even making your password more secure than before, to prevent anyone from accessing your account. Click here to change your password in your profile now.

Unfortunately we can't stop the forum from asking for verification codes to sign in, as this is the forum doing its job to try and combat the cracking attempt.

We'd also like to make it clear that no passwords or user data has been exposed by us, and that the only way any personal data could be accessed is if your account has an insecure password.

Here's some tips for your account passwords and what you should choose:

• Avoid single word passwords that use a word found in a dictionary. These are extremely easy to crack by these automated attempts.
• Avoid using common names or phrases, because they are easy for people visiting or some unscrupulous friend to guess.
• Do use a number, or even better, a number and a symbol in your password - e.g. bett#69.
• Try and mix the cAsE of your PaSswOrd to make it harder to guess - e.g. Dur@c3LL.
• Change your password regularly if you share or use multiple computers to sign in.

» Click here to change your password in your profile now.

If you have any problems trying to sign in, please feel free to reply to email me at stoepsel101 (at) yahoo [dot] com.

Thank you.

Stoepsel
STF Forum Administrator

AD FREE STF FOR JUST 1 $

Fellow STF members,

I am posting this to you all for 2 reasons. The first one is simply because the entire STF staff would like to thank you for your support and trust you give to STF every single day and hopefully for many more days to come! The staff prides itself in keeping STF accessible and clutter-free for everyone that visits this fine site.

We can stand proud and say that STF is one of the biggest ED2K communities out there, connecting ED2K users from all across the globe. With 80,000+ members and over 496713 posts, this community contains a treasure of information, allows to create friendships and still keeps room for debate. We appreciate your visits and we hope we can look forward to lots more !

This seamlessy brings me to point number 2 of this email.

Because of the increase in users and information on this board, the server can't stay behind, and in order to keep the STF experience smooth for every user upgrades are necessary! Nobody likes a slow site or a site with daily downtime! So dear user, this point is where we at STF would like to ask you for something, nothing too big but still significant. This is the part we talk about helping out as a community.

Me and the staff have seen the costs of the STF server climb wit a steadily pace and by the looks of it, there is no stopping it yet! We keep adding new services, new hardware, software, etc.... so the costs will undoubtedly keep rising. We get an average of 50 new members, 200 new posts and 60 new topics per day every single day.... Meaning if we keep this up (and nothing says we won't) we will end up with 14000 new members, 57400 new posts and 17200 new topics by the end of the year. This steadily growth is very much welcomed by the staff here at STF as it reaffirms the fact that this site and our hard work is loved and appreciated throughout the world.

We do our best to keep you all satisfied and as you may already have noticed we periodically update or renew this board with new features and services (one of the recent free services being http://www.stfimages.com) we add new hardware periodically, etc... We hope we get to keep doing so for years to come ! (we are already testing 2 new exciting free services...)

So in order to cope with this increased stream of data we show ads on STF, however recent calculations have shown that the costs of the server will soon surpass the revenue we get from advertisements on this board.
That's where you come in.

As a user, as a dedicated community, you can help us with present and future costs.
Here's how: If you decide to support us by donating, we at STF have decided to give something back ! (We are generous that way)
By donating as low as 1$ (or whatever currency you have*) you will be awarded with the 'DONATOR' title and as an extra benefit, you will get to experience STF completely AD FREE. You heard us right, once you have become a donator, we will strip the ads from STF and you will never see them again**.

How's that for a deal? For as low as 1$ you get the ad-free STF experience and as an added bonus you can be confident you helped us cope with server costs...

If you have a few dollars to spare (donations can range from 1$ - XXXXXXXXXXX $) please consider donating to STF to keep this awesome community alive for years to come !

If you already are a donator, we thank you, but please considering donating again (every little bit counts) over the course of time. We will begin to roll-out the ad-free STF to DONATORS today, so if you still see the ads don't panic just give it time. It can take up to 2 days until you notice a difference !

from the entire crew here at STF, - Thank you!


*to be automatically switched to the Contributors group, your donation needs to equal 1 US dollar
** the popup ad every 72 hours will still be visible

Following up on the recent discussion on how to better stay informed about recently posted ed2k links, I have added a new Atom Feed called "Recent ed2k links" to the site. It is similar to the other Atom Feeds we already have, with the main difference being that it only contains recently added posts from the Movies, TV, Games and Software sections that contain at least one ed2k link.

You can access the feed either directly through your browser (if your browser supports Atom/RSS feeds) or via this URL:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/StfRecentEd ... format=xml

You can add this feed to your favourite RSS reader and thus stay informed about new posts that contain ed2k links.

Apart from browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer, other popular RSS readers include:
Thunderbird: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Microsoft Outlook
RSS Owl: http://www.rssowl.org/

There are also ways to add this feed to your favourite web-based services:



Some things to be aware of:

• The feed refreshes about every 5 minutes. If you decide to use some sort of automatic refresh for this feed, set it to "every 5 minutes", preferrably even less often. Refreshing the feed more often simply doesn't make any sense. I will also be monitoring usage of all our feeds. If I see any abuse of the feeds we have installed, they will all go the way of the Dodo. If you abuse it, you lose it.
  
• The feed contains (most of) the post contents and the ed2k links themselves. To visit the post in all its glory, simply follow the link back to STF. Your RSS reader/browser should make it quite simple to do this. After all, we still want you to visit our forum, perhaps to leave a "thank you" for the poster.
  
• There are situations where this feed will miss a post containing ed2k links. One such case would be, if the post with the ed2k link was added after the last feed refresh and then was edited (e.g. by a moderator) before the next refresh. This could potentially happen in the TV and Anime sections, where the topics are heavily moderated to keep them tidy. Another (less likely) situation is when more posts with ed2k links are added for a given forum between 2 refreshes than the feed is configured to look for. The current configuration is set at 10 posts per forum section.

So please feel free to subscribe to this new feed. Any feedback is welcome.

Stoepsel
STF Forum Administrator