• Respect staff limitations: Avoid overwhelming staff with excessive workload or overly ambitious site expansions.
• Active involvement: Maintain active involvement in overseeing staff activities and ensuring their effective functioning.
• Open communication: Engage in regular communication, providing feedback, addressing concerns, and recognizing achievements.
• Foster teamwork: Encourage collaboration and information sharing among staff members.
• Lead by example: Ensure staff adhere to community rules and demonstrate expected behavior.
• Empowerment and trust: Grant sufficient freedom and control to enable staff to excel in their roles.

• Genuine interest: Look for members passionate about the community and its goals.
• Available time: Ensure potential staff can dedicate sufficient time to fulfill their responsibilities.
• Relevant skills: Prioritize skills and experience aligned with the specific role requirements.
• Maturity and discipline: Seek individuals who demonstrate responsible behavior and commitment.
• Recruitment methods like directly approaching active community members or allowing the Composr points system (or the karma non-bundled addon) to identify dedicated contributors can be more effective than traditional advertising.

• Report links: "Report this" links embedded throughout the site enable users to flag content for review.
• Custom reporting interface: Forums offer a dedicated interface for reporting individual posts.
• Anonymous reporting: Logged-in users can choose to report content anonymously.
• Ticket-based management: Reports are automatically created as support tickets, facilitating staff collaboration and record-keeping.
• Comprehensive report details: Tickets include content title, type, ID, submitter information, an embedded rendering of the reported content, and the reporter's explanation.

• Private forums: Dedicated forums with restricted access enable staff to discuss site operations and coordinate activities. Composr installs a staff forum by default in Conversr.
• Conflict detection: When multiple staff members attempt to edit the same resource simultaneously, Composr displays warnings at the top to prevent accidental overwrites.
• Staff checklist & dashboard: The Admin Zone dashboard provides a shared checklist for task management, along with space for notes and links.
• Staff notifications and tickets system: Staff receive notifications about various site events, including support tickets from the "Contact Us" page, allowing for efficient issue handling.
• Content notes: Staff can embed notes within Comcode or use dedicated "staff notes" fields for various content types to share information and context.
• Validation and workflows: Content can be intentionally left unvalidated even by staff, enabling secondary checks before publishing. A dedicated workflows addon allows for complex approval processes with multiple stages involving different staff groups.

• System-defined staff: This includes administrators and super moderators who have specific privileges within the forum/member system (Conversr).
• Privilege-based staff: Anyone granted the necessary permissions for a particular situation is considered staff for that context.

• Identify the Cause: Analyze access logs for suspicious activity and pinpoint the vulnerability.
• Clean and Restore: Restore your website from a clean backup and thoroughly remove any malicious code.
• Address Vulnerabilities: Patch security holes, update software, and strengthen security configurations.
• Seek Expert Help: If needed, consult security professionals for assistance with cleanup and prevention.

• SSL: Enable HTTPS for encrypted communication and improved user trust.
• Secure Zones: Configure sensitive zones to require confirmed sessions.
• Restrict Logins: Enforce IP address confirmation for enhanced account security.
• Maintenance Scripts: Restrict access to maintenance scripts like upgrader.php via IP restrictions.
• Server Hardening: Disable unnecessary services, change default ports, enable automatic updates, and more.
• Robots.txt: Use the robots.txt file to prevent search engine indexing of sensitive areas.

• XSS Attacks: By restricting inline scripts and limiting script sources.
• Data Injection Attacks: By controlling the allowed origins for data requests.
• Clickjacking: By specifying allowed framing sources.

• Confirmed: When you actively log in with your credentials.
• Non-confirmed: When you return to the site and are automatically logged in via cookies.

• Choose a Secure Host: Opt for hosts that offer suEXEC and open_basedir for better account isolation.
• Test Security: Verify the host's security measures with the provided filesystem_browser.php script.
• Restrict _config.php: Remove world-writable permissions from _config.php after installation.

Ran some of the early websites where ocPortal came from

Technically the original developer of ocPortal, in that he wrote the first few lines of code

Heavily involved in the feature design process

Hosted some of our early meet-ups

Original developer of ocPortal, former lead developer of Composr CMS

Masters degree in Computer Science from The University Of Sheffield

Undertaken work for over 15 FTSE-100 companies, as well as many small and mid-sized organisations. Includes a number of banks and major brands.

gameRevolt (@[email protected]) - LinuxRocks.Online

That depends on several factors. Here are some pros and cons of each:

It is not recommended you do this because you may run into issues. For example, some changes were made in crypto_master.php and data/upgrader2.php prior to the first v11 alpha. These changes will result in a broken upgrade unless you already pulled these changes from git. Similar situations could happen in the future as well.

It is recommended you either discard the git install and use a fresh install from the Downloads, or to maintain a git install and a bleeding-edge release install separately. Do not combine the two.

Absolutely! Frequent changes may be made to both bundled and non-bundled addons. Bundled addons will be updated via the upgrader. For non-bundled addons, you will have to update them through the addons management screen (Admin Zone > Structure > Addons). You will be informed which ones need updated.

Once version 11 reaches release candidate, we do not expect frequent updates to non-bundled addons anymore. But it is still good practice to check after every update.

Yes, for basic non-custom v10 sites. However, expect some issues to arise in the process. And please report those issues to the tracker.

For v10 sites with non-bundled addons or customisations, upgrading to v11 will likely break the site until you update the non-bundled addons or temporarily remove the customisations.

We aim to have the upgrader fully functional for a large majority of types of sites and for sites using non-bundled addons by the time version 11 reaches release candidate stage.

We do not recommend upgrading production v10 sites at this time until v11 reaches stable.