Orchid loving hacker willing to volunteer...

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by isurus79

True, but definitely sounds fun! And think of the great news articles that would be written about the website theft of an orchid forum!! 🤣😂

Go for it, as long as you're the one willing to take the fall and serve the time. Then you can be the star of the news media following. Sure, sounds like great fun.

[isurus79]

Originally Posted by WaterWitchin

Go for it, as long as you're the one willing to take the fall and serve the time. Then you can be the star of the news media following. Sure, sounds like great fun.

I'll post a video to YouTube about the experience

[YetAnotherOrchidNut]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fakename

Simply attempting an action that would lead to a data breach (such as SQL injections), server inavailability (such as DDoS) is highly illegal in pretty much every country.
Stealing a website would be a very involved task that would require obtaining total control over the website and the server hosting it; and wouldn't be very sneaky.

Well, it likely wouldn't actually require /total/ control, jut enough to extract the DB and since this is old school PHP that probably could be done with off the shelf tooling without ever getting shell level access. But that is irrelevant, I'm not that kind of hacker, meaning I would not do that even if it was realistic strategy, which it isn't.

Even if I had a copy of the data then i would still not have the domain name, and not having the domain name would mean that while I could set up a clone of the site, but it wouldn't be /the/ site. Search engines wouldn't have indexed the pages, and all the references around the internet that point here wouldn't point at the new thing. So it would be kinda useless.

So for instance unless the TOS forbid scraping, it would not be that difficult nor against the law to visit every page, copy it, munge it, and then put it up in a new software, but it still wouldn't be /the/ site. Getting access to the DB would mean you could do a lot better, preserve user accounts and whatnot, but unless you also obtained the domain name it wouldnt that useful, most users would still come here, not the new site, etc.

Anyway, i have no intention of doing anything of the sort, I just happened to have some experience in the area and thought i would offer to help out if help was wanted.

FWIW, upgrading something like this would likely be a lot of work. I can understand why a company might not want to expend the effort if it does not present a very significant revenue stream for them.

[WaterWitchin]

And FWIW, my comment about hacking was not directed toward you, and know that isn’t what you were suggesting. Also, I agree with all you just addressed. Yes, it’s why nothing will likely be done unless someone is willing to take on ownership of it and approaches the owner with something palatable to him to hand over the domain, etc. All valid points the admin and mods have discussed. I truly appreciate your volunteering to assist, and wish there was something we could do. Also wanted folks to know that mods/admin are aware the situation exists. Even the janitor is painfully aware, but has no way to make it better.

[Mountaineer370]

Originally Posted by WaterWitchin

Having said all that, my question may appear ignorant but I'm really just asking... isn't hacking someone's forum and taking it illegal?

Yep, definitely illegal. Look up the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. That act was the basis for a criminal action taken against a person who hacked into and caused mayhem on another board I belong to, and the culprit ended up spending about two years in prison. This is not anything to joke about.

[Mr.Fakename]

Originally Posted by isurus79

I'll post a video to YouTube about the experience

Pardon my lack of American culture knowledge, but I thought doing stupid things for the sake of it, was a Floridian thing ? - hence the term 'Florida Man'.
Perhaps moving to Texas was a bad move.

[WaterWitchin]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fakename

Pardon my lack of American culture knowledge, but I thought doing stupid things for the sake of it, was a Floridian thing ? - hence the term 'Florida Man'.
Perhaps moving to Texas was a bad move.

Ooooo, careful! My good buddy DC is a Florida guy!

[Diane56Victor]

Many years ago I was part of the admin of a finch keeping forum that went through several changes of both ownership and platform support.
I started as a normal member, then moderator then when the owner became ill, I and a few others took over the financial responsibility. We set up bulk purchases of finch related items and sold them at reasonable prices and the profit went back into the forum. Along with the occasional user donation and purchases for their finches we managed to fund the platform support quite well.

Unfortunately none of us had the requisite skills to operate the back room stuff of the platform. I fiddled around on the edges and got things to work better but it really needed people with skills like those mentioned in earlier posts on this forum.
We managed to get people on and off to help but it was a huge job to bring things up to date and we had people drop by the wayside.

So if this does go ahead my suggestion would be to have a group of people who understand the forum back rooms who can form a plan and delegate the work.

[isurus79]

Originally Posted by Mr.Fakename

Pardon my lack of American culture knowledge, but I thought doing stupid things for the sake of it, was a Floridian thing ? - hence the term 'Florida Man'.
Perhaps moving to Texas was a bad move.

Shoot, Florida doesn't get to have all the fun!!! We need some here in Texas too!

[My Green Pets]

I think if you just go to the main page and hit Ctrl + C you can just copy the forum and then paste in another website.

Hehe

Well yes stealing is wrong. But would it still be punishable if the owner didn't even care or notice? Such a frustrating situation. Maybe we could just buy a new website and rename every forum and every thread here "Please visit the new orchid board at blahblahblah dot com.
Oh wait, i own mygreenpets.org and haven't really done anything with it yet. This would be perfect! I promise a socially democratic decision-making environment...I feel like I'm running for office...