Hi guys. In case you haven't noticed, it's been quite a while since I've been active here. Life has gotten pretty busy for me the last year or so and I've neglected everything. But no longer! Introducing the new and improved Land Before Time social network!
Land Before Time social network! Spam was a HUGE problem on the old site and honestly I didn't really have much of a focus. And when things got complicated in my life, I pretty much abandoned the site (something I thought I'd NEVER do). But I think I've finally gotten it right here.
TheLandBeforeTime.org has an integrated forum and social network. You can "like" posts, share content, and communicate directly with other members. The code has been 100% rewritten from the ground up. No old code. We've got an image gallery that users can contribute to. We've also got group forums (special forums created by members themselves), groups, and a very well-rounded forum (not quite as sophisticated as GOF yet, but I'm working on it). The homepage shows all the recent activity. A member change their avatar? A notification will display on the homepage so every member will know. You upload a video or share a link? It will be displayed across the whole website.
Of course I know that privacy is a concern so there's an integrated Private Messaging system and users can create private "invitation only" groups. Also if you want to post a link/picture/video/whatever and you want to keep it private, you can choose to only share it with your "friends."
The spam problem is 100% solved. I get close to 200 spam attacks per day on this site and I've successfully blocked 100% of them for the last week. It has triple redundancy including a problem solving captcha, blank invisible forms for bots to fill out (these aren't visible to users so if they're filled out, the system detects the user as a bot and BAM, they're gone), and an activity captcha. Combined with email verification, it's a 100% foolproof system. It took me MONTHS to develop it and make it all work together, but now we're seeing the benefits.
An absolute boatload of work has been done with this site, and I'm not done yet! But it's 100% functional the way it is. I'm sure we'll find a few bugs, but I've been testing the site and everything looks great so far! Feel free to register. New features will be released as they're developed. What's nice about this is it's 100% customizable.
One thing I've never liked about GOF is the inability to specify gender in your profile. For the record, TheLandBeforeTime.org doesn't either. But we can add that feature if we want. We can add literally ANYTHING! So any suggestions would be great. Let me know what you guys think and what needs to be done. I think this is the final site I'm going to be making (code-wise that is. I'll update the design and everything in a few years but the code is rock solid).