[font=verdana]We've been hard at work these past few days at a big performance update for the website. As you might have noticed, we have adapted the website to use HTTPS over SSL. This means you will see a green padlock like in the image below:

Afterward, the forum was updated to the latest version, SMF 2.0.14. However, this did not make our Portal (index) page happy. It prevented anyone from logging in and gave back a vague and general error telling the user to go back and try logging in again. This was noticed by other websites and someone had found the fix. We immediately appended and resolved the problem, so that's why everyone was logged out during the course of 3:00 - 4:00 AM EST.

In addition, we've modified the website logo to be more consistent with the other theme XanX added last year, by replacing it with his version of the logo. It has very little difference besides the positioning of the moon but the important thing is that it feels more compact.

Lastly, this morning I noticed every time you would visit the website using a non-secure HTTP version like from your bookmarks, you would be logged out every time! We fixed this seamlessly by forcing you to redirect to the HTTPS version of the website. This way you won't have to log in every time you visit the website and you won't have to worry about updating your bookmarks! You're welcome!!

Enjoy the update, the changelog is featured (for the first time in forever²) below:[/font]

[php] <ul class="update_list"> <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>The Christmas emoticons are now hidden - They can still be used but won't be available to select when posting - You will have to type them yourself and remember them</li> <li class="red"><span>UPT</span> Updated website to use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS" target="_blank">Secured Socket Layer (SSL)</a> over the Let's Encypt certificate to ensure the website is up to date with the latest standards of the web.</li> <li class="red"><span>UPT</span> </li> <li class=""><span></span> <ul>Updated SMF to version 2.0.14 - Changes below are from their site:

                    <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>! Updating session handlers</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span> ! Adding HTTPS</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span> ! fetch_web_data now uses cURL, falling back to sockets</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span> ! Ported image proxy support from SMF 2.1</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span> ! Also added HTTPS for avatars</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span> ! Added a simple exception handler</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span> ! Check session while logging in</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span> ! Sanitize some fields to help guard against XSS</li>                        <li class="green"><span>FIX</span> ! Validate email addresses with PHP’s filter method</li>                        <li class="green"><span>FIX</span> ! Fix search highlighting to not mangle/expose some HTML</li>                        <li class="green"><span>FIX</span> ! Fix password acceptance when special characters were used in UTF-8;</li>                        <li class="green"><span>FIX</span> ! Correct some random logic errors in the profile area</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span> ! Use ampersands instead of semi-colons for PayPal’s return link</li>                        <li class="green"><span>FIX</span> ! Fix sending multiple MIME-Version headers in notification mail</li>                        <li class="green"><span>FIX</span> ! Fix sending multiple* Content-Type headers in all requests </li></ul></li>            <li class="gray"><span>DEL</span>Removed "Login through Steam" feature as it caused multipl inconsistancies through forum accounts and allowed bad actors to avoid bans.</li>            <li class="gray"><span>DEL</span>Removed "Days since last CS Operation" Referencing the huge gap between Operation Wildfire and Operation Hydra.</li>            <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span>Added a portal widget linking to all about Operation Hydra on CS:GO.</li>            <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span>Added Discord link to the Social Media advertisement portal block.</li>            <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span>Added TeamSpeak link to the Social Media advertisement portal block.</li>            <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>Updated forum rules alert to use HTTPS link instead of HTTP to keep consistancy with SSL.</li>            <li class="green"><span>FIX</span>Fixed various forum avatars using HTTP instead of HTTPS, causing the portal to be marked as "insecure" when logging in.</li>            <li class="green"><span>FIX</span>Updated copyright agreements on the website's footer to use secured links.</li>            <li class="green"><span>FIX</span>Fixed bug where users could not login after SMF 2.0.14 was installed due to interactions with SimplePortal.</li>            <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>Updated ribbon buttons (About, Donate, Servers, etc.) on the website to use HTTPS links.</li>            <li class="green"><span>FIX</span>Fixed external content  the Donate page not appearing due to moving over to SSL.  It was linked using a non-secure HTTP link.</li>            <li class="green"><span>FIX</span>Fixed external content on  the Staff page not appearing due to moving over to SSL. It was linked using a non-secure HTTP link.</li>            <li class="red"><span>UPT</span></li>            <li class=""><span></span> <ul>Updated Servers page:

                    <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>Updated URL's to reflect upon new HTTPS URL's.</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>Clicking a server's banner will allow you to instantly connect to it.</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>TeamSpeak and CS:GO Roleplay servers are now consistantly sized with the Discord server widget.</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span>Added Unturned server banner describing the server's details such as players, map, etc.</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span>Added The Forest server banner advertising the server.</li>                        <li class="blue"><span>NEW</span>Added a widget on the bottom of the page showing the TeamSpeak's server detailed status.</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>Each section of the Servers page is now spaced out</li>                        <li class="gray"><span>DEL</span>Removed TeamSpeak and CS:GO Roleplay servers insecure Gametracker widget</li>                        <li class="red"><span>UPT</span>Replaced TeamSpeak and CS:GO Roleplay servers widget with a banner image describing the map, amount of players, etc.</li></ul></li>

</ul><style>ul.update_list{list-style:none;padding-top:10px;font-size:12px;clear:both;}ul.update_list li{margin-bottom:15px;color:#525252;}ul.update_list li span{ display:block; float:left; font-size:10px; font-weight:bold; margin-right:10px; -moz->-radius:3px; -webkit-border-radius:3px; border-radius:3px; font-size:10px; font-weight:bold; padding:0px 6px; text-transform:uppercase; color:#fff; display:block; min-width:35px; text-align:center;}ul.update_list li.blue span { background:#1fa3e0; }ul.update_list li.green span { background:#6bbd43;}ul.update_list li.teal span { background:#53b9d7;}ul.update_list li.red span { background:#f5252e;}ul.update_list li.gray span { background:#555555;}ul.update_list li.purple span { background:#9900cc;}ul.update_list li.orange span { background:#ff6600;}</style>[/php]