A brief summary of what TECH has been doing since our last report.

Static Pages
TECH assisted in the creation of the fantastic zoo page done by Louis Harvatt. We looked into whether it would be better as a page in the new Library, but determined that a static page would be better due to the way the Markdown processor handles HTML taking some control of layout away from the designer; and helped with some layout as well as providing the page menu, etc. If you haven’t had a chance, take a look at Louis’s handiwork. If you have any updates for that page, please send them to Louis.

We updated the In Memoriam page following the sad passing of Kendra Kerr.

Discord Updates
A new channel for the Engineering Department was added, similar to the existing channels for the Gamemaster and Personnel Departments. It is opt-in using the same reaction role system as other channels do in #starbase.

With the commissioning of the IRW Rovarran, at her CO’s request, a new #rovarran channel was created, opt-in, using the same reaction role system.

Email Forwards
I missed the Academy course tutor forwards when setting up the new system, so my apologies for that. They were still set up using the old system, so mails were still being forwarded but were susceptible to the same delivery failure issues plaguing us before. They have been fixed now; if you run in to any issues with them please let us know.

We received some complaints about the amount of spam being received on the forwards. As a brief explanation, every email that comes to the server is scanned and given a score using SpamAssassin, which has hundreds of scoring rules. We had previously tightened the system so that it filters every email with a score higher than 7, which cut the spam by a significant degree. Lowering that further could risk identifying valid emails as spam. We suggest liberally using your email provider’s “Mark as Spam” functionality to help it learn what is valid and what is not. Unfortunately, spam comes with email, especially having a domain that is as old as ours and that many of our government emails have been available on public web pages for so long.

Edict Archive
We have updated the edict archive through the most recent edicts. Presidential edicts will be added to the new Library as well, going forward, making them much easier to update. We will be loading these into the new Library as time permits.

Suspicious Connections
We have noticed some attempts at sniffing out vulnerabilities in the connection logs recently, so have been blocking these suspicious IPs. This is one of the benefits of having our own custom software - the endpoints they were attempting to attack don’t exist in our infrastructure, making it easy to tell these are attack attempts.

Server Move
To start with: yes, we have been planning a server move for a long time. This initially started as simple dissatisfaction with our current vendor for a variety of reasons, but became an opportunity for us to plan for STF’s future in choosing architecture and infrastructure. This will be a change in OS, an upgrade of several backend software packages, a database migration, as well as an update to our Exodus software. Because it is a physical server move our DNS entries will change, which can take up to 72 hours to propagate (though it will be much sooner for most people), so it may take that long for us to be aware of problems. For that reason, we want all of TECH available, which means a standard three-day weekend, or someone having to take time off from work. That is what has made this take so long - getting the schedules of multiple people lined up.

We currently are aiming for Labor Day weekend, September 2-4, for the move.

Let me also clear up some confusion: the delay of this move does not prevent 99%+ of changes to the site. Material can continue to be added to both the old Library and the new beta Library. Static pages can be added/updated. The only changes that cannot be made are things that would require code changes (like potential custom ranks) and database schema changes (which a previous request about changing the structure of the Awards would have required).

TECH Tip
With the changes made in Discord for a ship channel having its own role to opt-in, we have made these roles mentionable. This makes it easy for COs to ping/notify everyone with that role about updates, or GMs can notify of important main sim posts, etc. To use this, you would simply add @rolename to your message. To notify everyone in the Ark Angel channel, for instance, you would use @arkangel. If you aren’t sure what the role name is for your ship channel, you can check #starbase, where they are all listed.

Suggestions/Assistance
If anyone has suggestions for TECH, we may not always be able to implement them, but we are always open to them! The same if you need help with something - always feel free to email the TECH email forward (tech at star dash fleet dot com) or DM me on Discord.

Sincerely,

Nathan