Topic: Epochtalk is ready, theymos wants us to test it. C'mon... (Read 2302 times)

There is already a small progress with the Epochtalk, I think this thread deserves a bump as more testers are needed.
As mentioned above, there is one testing ground created by Cyrus and his team, keeping it up to date and reporting bugs and issues. Check it out here

I know two sites:
www.cryptos-currencies.
https://coinbistro.com
There are announcement threads for two sites: Coinbistro.com; Crypto-currencies.com
The coinbistro.com is built and managed by Cryptios team.

Bumping this one because If we want to have the new software, we have to start using Epochtalk ASAP.
Let's post here all the sites using Epochtalk (not the scam ones if any) I'll update the OP.

Checked that test forum, frankly just looking at design, I favor old (this) one.

Out of various forum softwares out there, I favor discourse, like

https://meta.discourse.org/

I’m afraid you might have misread the situation:

-   There is no new forum (yet). This is the only Bitcointalk official forum.
-   Epochtalk is the software which will (/may/should) implement Bitcointalk at some point. Rest assured that we’ll all know when the time comes.
-   Epochtalk is not only designed to implement a single forum (Bitcointalk). Anyone can download Epochtalk and create or test their own forum.
-   @lulucrypto downloaded Epochtalk, and created the cryptos-currencies website. That is his site. Is is open to anyone (not by invite), but it is not a Bitcointalk implementation. @lulucrypto decided to create it similar to Bitcointalk so that we could test it in a similar context, but he could have decided for the matter to create it about g-strings.

Hopefully that theymos will going to announce it here that the new forum will be officially open to all the users in the bitcointalk forum. For now, I am still using the bitcointalk forum but will probably will going to change if theymos wants every user to move in the new forum.

Anyway bump for this thread so that other users may visibly seen this post and can try the new forum, the future of bitcointalk and the cryptocurrency forum.

Hello

Oh, yes sorry, I didn't know that.

Currently, it's not possible to manage Guess permissions. But I posted a suggestion on the Github :

https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/issues/575

Just because something is publicly blocked does not mean there are not ways to get around it.

An authorized connection that redirects your connections, requests and packets back and forth, to and from an unauthorized connection, can serve as a means to avoid The Great Firewall.

If only there were a term to describe such a concept.

does china really block bitcoin related websites? is mining totally banned there? because i have a friend who do mining at the moment.

Unfortunately this message Show only for registrants @lulucrypto I think it is better show  same msg/quote  for visitors

I'm out of free time for the last couple of months and seems that this trend will continue until the fall, but anyone willing to continue our journey trough this exiting,expensive but really nice looking software is very welcome.

So this new forum software can test anyone. I would like to try this for weekend and see in local how this works. If i spot something will report if think this can be bug or some issue. Have both systems and will try then on both to see is there any differences or something else.

I will report if find any bugs and issues here.

Hey Jet Cash, i had the same problem ones and i realized most of those intrusion attempts comes from china, for me the solution was on iptables (for linux VPS), you could try modify those tables to block the IP after X number of attempts or to block IP ranges... i would recommend you to read the next answer on askubuntu:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/868334/block-china-with-iptables?answertab=votes#tab-top

Hope it helps to make your VPS more secure.

I am not a developer, so I am not able to test the Epochtalk forum.
However, I revisited the site today, and realised that the color in green (let say it is green color) is a little bit blur or light.
That kind of color is hard to see, and might be harmful for viewers if they stay in front of computer and joined the forum, read and write for consecutive hours.
So, I suggest to adjust the color a little bit darker.

This is why I started this thread. Thanks to lulu we have a stable forum running and I'm happy more and more people are joining it to test it.
I wish beta was still up and running but...
Anyway, I made a list with the "bugs" i found but due to the lack of free time lately I haven't uploaded it to github yet.

I don't want any rewards or anything... if the new software is up and running flawlessly here in the forum is enough for me

It started years ago, since 2016.
In the Epochtalk's roadmap, I like the one at most in its intermediate goals:
This is highly expected in bitcointalk.org forum for too long.
Community asked this security option, however it is not essential thing because we already have other good options to help secure our accounts, such as Staking bitcoin address, signing message.

---

I like the green theme color of Epochtalk site. The theme looks similar to Poloniex's background color, which I am a big fan of.
There is a link to see advices on which colors are healthy for our eyes when using computer.
https://iristech.co/what-screen-color-is-best-for-eyes/
https://image.ca/best-colors-for-computer-screen-on-eyes/

It would be great if beta.bitcointalk.org was back, but perhaps with incentives to encourage people to QA the new software. Maybe for each successful bug report, the reporter can get a chance to roll a dice with 0.25% (or smaller?) odds of getting their account instantly promoted to "Legendary"? We would get an army of QA testers overnight. Or people that submit ~100 bug reports can be entitled to a share of forum ad revenue for X amount of time after the new forum goes live.

I think the coolest thing about Epochtalk isn't really all the features, but more so the fact that it's built on a modern stack and the code is reasonably well structured. When it goes live, the rate of features and change on the forum can increase quite dramatically since users can create pull requests to fix bugs or improve the forum with new features themselves. It would turn bitcointalk.org into an open source project. It's unlikely a single user will submit massive changes, but we could get many little improvements here and there from many people, which adds up to a lot.

No doubt some people are convinced SMF is better than Epochtalk, but even if it is (it isn't), millions of dollars has been spent creating Epochtalk, so to pay that much and not even adopt it seems crazy. People always fear the unknown, but SMF looks so dated and has so many quirks, it's really time to let it go. Even more so when people browse with mobile devices lately. This forum is approaching its 10th year of operation, and we need change now more than ever.

Hello,

I need to take the time to sort through all the bugs found. I'm trying to do this as soon as possible ^^

I will return to the forum that I want to start, but I'm a bit discouraged by the lack of activity that seems to be in most of my projects. I'm evaluating those yet again. It's also a bit of a struggle in Bitcoin Talk as well, but that may just be me, and my distraction as a result of Brexit  (non) activity.

@ddmr well its probably best to wait for more people or run it a larger community of testers and several instances of the same code are much better than one on its own.

The more people who run it with a genuine forum, the better (as in having an idea behind it and something for people to discuss).

As far as I’m aware, only cryptos-currencies.com was successfully set-up after the OPs call, and although there are 42 registered accounts on the test site, activity seems to be dying down now. The idea was to post the bugs(*) on Github (https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/issues), but it looks like only a few have eventually been reported there. Not sure how this should move on from here.

(*) Bugs may be false positives, since they could perhaps be resolved on the instance’s admin configuration panel, or they could be a functional approach that is deliberately different from the one on Bitcointalk.

Just a bump, so more people can join and explore the new bitcointalk world which is coming hopefully soon .. and maybe find more bugs and errors.
It's for a good cause.. c'mon.

I've had to back off this a bit. I'm getting up to 3,000 intrusion attempts per day at the moment on the VPS, It's unmanaged, so I'm having to teach myself about VPS security and management before I can move ahead.

I'm still spending too much time looking at Bitcoin trading stats and prices, but I believe that now is the time when we should be accumulating.

I think that's the same thing as cloning the repo so you may as well just do that with
git clone https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk.

I tried that guide and fell over at step one. It didn't find the repository.

I gave up as I was suffering from brain overload after trying to install a control panel over spotty WiFi. In the end I used the Centos panel, and that seems to do everything I wanted. I've resolved the dns for Crypto Hints and set up an ftp account. I just dumped the first index page on it that I found on my machine.

I tried to install the Epoch software through a terminal on the Ubuntu machine, but had to give up almost immediately to sort out some other problems.

My difficulty stems from the fact that I've always used managed servers with Softaculous. So I've had to set up the VPS and the DNS server. I also had some problems with Webmin which wouldn't start, but I switched to the Centos panel, and that is working well. I'll have a go at the actual installation tomorrow.

Epochtalk is not the name of the forum, but that of the software upon which you can roll-out multiple distinct forums, one of the instances being Bitcointalk.

If you are eager to try, read the OP, which references @lulucrypto’s website (cryptos-currencies.com). It has been up and running for test for some days now, and on which 35 people having created an account there to try things out in multiple languages.

Also see for further details Cryptos-Currencies.Com : First forum using Epochtalk.

Up for this thread hope that I could be able to help in my little way. We know that theymos wants the new forum to have exposure and for everyone to try it out. Though the name of the forum may not sound good to me but still it is the features that matter and not the name.

Let's give a try!

Here's the simple guide for ibstallation: https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk/blob/master/README.md

Probably as simple as it gets.

Did you not work out how to make another private key 😂?

I've reconfigured the server, and installed the Centos control panel, and enable ftp. I tried to trad from the epoch repository, and it isn't recognising it.

Are there any simple installation instructions anywhere?

I'm quite interested in the project. Especially if there are ways to monetise a forum that is using the software. I need a CMS for my off grid living support forum, and I'd like to earn a bit of income from it.

Epochtalk is not optimized yet, but I think it's much better than the SMF. I like also the old style of this forum but as everything is as advancing and developing its about time the forum to do the same.

There are some aspects of Epochtalk which I don't like,
for example there are no more numerical user IDs but I guess these things can be changed/fixed later if needed.

SMF is better than epochtalk or I am in love with SMF or just because I am used to using SMF.

Yeah I can't help you get a private key unless I'm stood with the server lol or have some other access.

That's quite funny I don't know how neither of us anticipated that to happen 😂.

Sorry about that, I messed up.

I accidentally enabled 2nd level authentication without any keys, and I managed to lock everybody out. It gives new meaning to a Virtual Private Server.

I'll have a go at sorting things out today. I've made the DNS change at my registrar, but I don't seem to have a name server running on the server. I'm going to have a go at using webmin and virtualmin as control and admin panels.

There isn't a problem with the epoch software, the problem is my paucity of knowledge about VPS management.

This site can’t be reached The webpage at http://cryptohints.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.

I can probably get more if it is needed.

It looks as if Centos may have updated - do you want me to install the panel

Should we move this chat to blab to save hijacking this thread?

I messed up redis anyway, this may well not be the first reinstall of the os 😂.

What's the disk space like do you know? I imagine 2gigs is sufficient and just want to check its not lower.

I missed you pm, and I thought you wanted the OS to be reinstalled. I'm reinstalling Centos 7 at the moment. I'm thinking of using Virtualmin as a control panel, and that might make maintenance easier.  Sorry if this messed up whatever you have done. Maybe we should coordinate through the blab chatroom.

@jetty, a vps is really similar to a vortual machine type instance but where data stays once you turn it off (and sometimes the session stays too).

I'm happy to keep running the installation although you might want to think about how you're going to set up the forum and you also haven't changed the name yet, did you want to?

Things have changed a bit for me today. I haven't received my gear pulling set yet, so I'll put off changing the bearing. I'm trying to work out what Bitcoin is going to do, and I think it may drop a bit over the next couple of days. I'm also reading about the Coinbase acquisition, and I may empty my Bitcoin account there, and move the coins into one of my long term holding wallets. I can move a bit of fiat into my Sterling wallet at CB, and try to grab some Bitcoin if it does drop.

I've fired up the Netbook, so I can put that into terminal mode, and see what is going on with the vps. I'll report back later.

If you see the post above yours it's  lulucrypto who made a fresh installation of the Epochtalk, and there is where I played a little with it.
I guess he will cooperate if you face any problems during the installation. I will gladly join the testing if you don't mind

Sorry for the delay in putting the forum onto the CryptoHints.com domain. I gave JackG a half setup VPS to experiment with. I'm thinking of putting Virtualmin on the server to simplify the maintenance, and maybe expand the project in the future. If anybody has used this, then I'd be grateful for some tips or hints for the installation and setup.

Hello,

Thank you to @yogg for the first sharing ^^

If you want, I have opened a topic for the project

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115500.new#new

What an ugly broken quote .

As an extension.

Run
node and a terminal should appear if it is. Installed (at least the shell will have a > at the start of each line)
run npm -version and yarn -version to test those.

/usr/pgsql-11/bin/postgresql-11-setup initdb
systemctl enable postgresql-11
systemctl start postgresql-11

Can test post postgresql11


I have two other commands but you'll have to wait for them

Great, thanks for the script. I have to find some time to take out of service my old FreeBSD firewall and give it a fresh breath of air with some new Linux distro

This is what I have so far quickly adapted from what I had on fedora so some of it might not work properly.

if you run "yarn --version" at the end I think that checks at least itself and probably the ones before it (hopefully).

I don't think the rest of the process can be automated though either.

It goes into the spam section.

Regarding the privacy, I've created email just for this registration, random password and of course VPN this should be just a common sense precautions when you register to a never-heard-before website.

I think lulucrypto had no bad intentions but anyway...

I've tested it a little and I like it a lot.
Here what I wrote as a first impressions :

Anyone using this (or any other "unofficial" test site) please keep in mind privacy and safety implications:

- don't use your bitcointalk username or otherwise link yourself between sites if your don't want to expose your IP to third parties;
- don't use the same e-mail and/or password;
- don't assume other users have the same usernames.

I'm pretty sure there are many other pitfalls. Be smart please.

I seem to have tested the ban side of things pretty quickly: "Error: Abuse Detected. You have been banned from performing this action. Please contact an administrator." ...

I was still waiting for the email account creation confirmation to come through, and since it did not, I tried to login, failed, and tried to reset my password and "voila!". Probably the first to be banned form @lulucrypto's test environment ...

Edit:

Created second account, but still no email confirmation.

I guess it’s on the road map, but I’d say that test should aim at two related but distinct objectives:

1.   Test Epochtalk from a “create and manage” your own forum point of view.

2.   Test Bitcointalk running on top of Epochtalk.

While the former is interesting for the product itself, most people would be more willing perhaps to test the latter, preferably with a decent amount of history transferred so as to let volume have a saying in relation to speed, as well as see how historical posts are displayed, current and new Bitcointalk forum functionality, and so on.

How far have you got, and what have you done? I've got so much on at the moment, that I may not get the chance to look at it for a while. It's a bit of a procedure to get the software re-installed as well.

I'm testing it right now and I can say it's awesome Need some small touches here and there but nothing big. It's like a lambo that needs some polish, that's all.  It's exiting for sure.

Note: no merit system yet

I am confused in some point.

1. Is it the same (exact) software that will be we are using in future or it is some beta/test version.
2. If we put software as open source then phishing  site like bitcointalk.to will not take advantage?
3. Why theymos want user to test it voluntarily only? Is it not good if forum spend couple of grands and user here and hired QA both test it together?
4.Requirement Doc need to be updated first before any testing.

I would love to try it, so if you convert it for debian it will be perfect, my old FreeBSD server is already too messed up and it will be a breath of fresh air with some fresh linux distro on it

@yogg, well you brought it up to me so you both deserve merit

I think it'd be better if you can throw some merits at the user who setup the script.
Here is the link to his post : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.49953152

He deserves merits for that more than I do. ^^

I was going at it earlier but the dependencies wouldn't install correctly so I think I've broken Jet's vps further than he had previously broken it lol..

I'm going to take a look again soon and uninstall and reinstall the dependencies that don't work in turn..

I made a script for the redhat dependency install if anyone wants it. I can convert it to the debian family also if it's helpful.

Wow, thanks man! I'll trow some merit your way when I have some. Out of sMerit for the 5th time in the last couple of months
I'll post that link in the OP so everyone who want tho try it can register

A user active in the French local sub-forum did setup Epochtalk.
Here is the link :


(Registration confirmation email ended up in spams on gmail)

Anyone managed to set it up yet? I'm a bit in a short of a free time these days but I really want to try it.
We can make a test crypto forum so everyone can use and test it. I'm willing to trow a few satoshi that way if anyone has the time for it

I think it is a great name. An epoch is the start of a new period in history, and we are now entering a new era for banking. It shows that the forum has grown with the expansion and adoption of crypto. Bitcoin is still the most important coin in my opinion, but there will be others that will have greater public acceptance. I hope that the forum will be open to all discussions.

It's the new forum script that's being called "epochtalk", the forum name will probably remain bitcointalk.org. At the moment, bitcointalk.org uses the script "SMF", but the forum isn't called SMF either

Does anyone has the idea that willing to share why theymos and team decided to name the new forum as "Epochtalk". Literally for me it is not a good name for it does not sound good when you read the word. We all know that bitcointalk.org forum is the name of the forum that is suited to cryptocurrency where bitcoin is the highlight.

Ok, I must confess I hadn’t taken much a look into it before, so I assumed that what the new forum software was about was creating a new (with all that it entails) software specifically for Bitcointalk. If I’ve understood it properly, Epochtalk aims at being a forum enabler, thus upping the level of abstraction needed to develop the forum, and exponentially making the development tougher to implement that just a single specific instance for Bitcointalk.

If I’ve assessed the above correctly, the focus goes way beyond a Bitcointalk forum implementation, thus the suggestion for people to download the software and setup their own forum environment, being the test oriented to finding bugs, functional problems, usability issues and performance issues amongst others, of the underlying forum generator software (and not just a "mere" instance as I has in mind).

lmk how you get on - I might decide to replace the bearing on my prop shaft tomorrow, so I might be off air for part of the day.

I'm glad that people are interested!


beta.bitcointalk.org was run for a couple of years, but virtually nobody used it. It was too boring. I'd ideally like people to actually try using Epochtalk for various things that they find fun/interesting. Maybe try a more restrictive moderation style, maybe make it more niche-focused, maybe try adding some crazy features, etc. If people actually try to use it for real things, then the real deficiencies will be found.


No, that's very old.

Sure send me the login details and I'll take a look at it.

I might just ssh into it from my phone and then I can keep going at it. Is it running something debian based (debian or Ubuntu)?

I don't think domain matters too much at the moment and if it does we can take a snapshot and change it later.

The domain is dnsend.com and the name servers are ns1.xohc.com and ns2.xohc.com

It's a a domain name project that I was going to start, but didn't ever get around to doing much more than looking at the server.

There is SSH access, and I went in using a terminal on my Ubuntu machine. We could probably use another name for the forum, but I would have to delete the server and start again if we wanted to use something other than dnsend as the main domain. Do you want me to send you the access info?

[++]

It looks pretty messed up at the moment. The URL http://xohc.dnsend.com/ is resolving, but I don't think it should be structured like that. I'm not sure I will have chance to explore the setup to see what I did wrong.

There was a test forum that was disabled
http://beta.bitcointalk.org/

I think that theymos proposal is not just that we test, is that people try to build another forum using the same software. And try to correct and modify what each one finds interesting. It seems a more practical idea than centralizing the modifications and tests in a single version. He does not have so much time to test everything that was proposed. So he could just modify what was already working well and the transition would be faster.

Wouldn’t it be better if Bitcointalk provided a common test environment that was open for anybody to use, without people having to download the software and setting up their own environments? Depending on how the software has been developed, it could be on "debug mode" and trap software errors into a log in it’s own. Functional errors would logically need to be reported by the people who test the software.

Testing the software has multiple perspectives (installation, functional usage under different profiles such as admin, mod, regular user, db admin, etc.). Surely here the main target would be that of regular users (functionality and stress tests), being the other profiles more delicate and subject to perhaps a delimited cherry-picked set of volunteers. But a common forum created test platform would seem the way to go.

Thanks for share the link, they even have an easy step-by-step installation guide.


If you have dynamic ip you could add a domain with no-ip. Give it a try, for me was a nice solution to my dynamic ip.


Thanks mocacinno, but there are more than 1 user who wants to test this software. Maybe we can make a group and if we give $5 each one for sure we can pay a VPS for this testing propouses.

If you find the name out then I could give it a go straight off that as it looks like it's quite a huge install.

I can probably image it from there too so it can be used much more readily by others.

I've got a spare VPS that I've never used, you can have a go with that if you like. I forget the domain name that is hitched to it, It's got its own dns as well, and I forget that domain name.

I might have a go at setting it up on one of my own servers this week and if I can get it remotely functioning I'll see if you guys are interested in going into a joint venture with it.

(my servers here arent very powerful though and I can't get them a static ip).

I don't really use anything other than ssh to remote into servers also (other than when I had to use something that resembled ftp once).

I've got a reseller hosting plan, so I could set up an account which can be administered using cpanel and ftp.
It has a lot of other stuff as well like Litespeed, awstats, ruby, clodflare, iminify360, 2FA, Jetbackup etc, most of which I haven't used.

[SECOND THOUGHTS]

I also own BitcoinScammer.com , and that might be a more useful project to start using the new forum software. Is anyone interested in starting that as a joint venture?

I've got the same sollution as Jet Cash, i can provide a free VPS to a GREEN trusted member for the sole purpose of testing out epochtalk (a new allocated ip costs me about $4 IIRC, but i'll carry that cost). I'll only provide one to a green trusted member tough, since i don't want to be abused (a VPS can be used for a lot more than simple epochtalk hosting if it falls into the wrong hands). I don't really have the time to get behind this problem right now, but if somebody has the trust, the qualifications and the time for some tests, i'd be more than willing to provide the resources (most popular linux distro's available, 1 or 2 Gb ram, 2-4 vCPU's, a couple gig's of diskspace... OpenVZ). I can even create a KVM VM if i have no other choice, but i'd prefer openVZ...

I can provide hosting for my domain CryptoHints.com if somebody wants to work with me to set up a test forum. I've got too many projects on the go at the moment to do it on my own though.

Being a lone wolf is hard especially when maintaining this kind of forum and the transition phase to a new platform will obliviously harder but a much more thrilling.

A move must happen no matter what, we still have this forum for back up purposes. This would be the 3rd time of moving to a new forum, right?

https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk

I just wish it is not the new Digg v4.

But he wants someone to QA it for free...

Is the requirements doc up to date? Seems quite vague in some parts, e.g. trust.

Ugh. Thank god. I'm pretty sure everyone's been waiting for the new forum software for a while. I'm definitely looking forward into having a better mobile browsing experience.

By the way, is there any reason why Theymos chose to write his own forum software instead of using existing ones that are being sold? (e.g. Xenforo, InvisionCommunity)

I'll install it on my server tomorrow, and give it a go.
I'm also thinking to write a review on my blog and advertise it a bit here and there.

I'll make a translation to Bulgarian & Norwegian if needed.

Meta is definitely suited for this sort of thing. I might take a look at testing it myself, maybe I can host it somewhere and do some runs of it.

It was theymos' vision to make an open source forum software and thus he wants to continue along that stretch I'd have thought. This means that this is on its way to moving it more into the public domain and getting more collaboration on the software. I'm guessing it's still a bit prototypal at the moment though perhaps jet cash would be interested in making his coffee lounge into a forum...

Novel idea Theymos has....  prove you can do something before he hires you to do it!

Since his comment is in the New Forum software section, which is not that popular the last days. Here I post part of his post.

The full update on the development of the new forum software can be found following the quote.

Here all I want to focus on is the testing and popularizing of the Epochtalk.

I think Meta is suitable for this kind of discussion.

Link to their website : http://epochtalk.org/

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You can test it here >
Thanks to yogg for the info


My overview of issues here :https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115500.msg49966665#msg49966665

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www.cryptos-currencies.com Ann > https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/cryptos-currenciescom-first-forum-using-epochtalk-5115500
https://coinbistro.com Ann > https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/coinbistrocom-epochtalk-testing-grounds-5158825


Please post a reply if you know others.