I’d like to take the time to apologize for the downtime that occurred around 12:00 AM this morning. This downtime lasted a few hours and effected both Wulf Howl and HowlNET. The downtime was due to an attempted attack against us, which our server host has documented here. This attack knocked us, and other people using the same hosting provider offline for several hours. All services have been restored and are running smoothly. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been contacted to investigate the matter.  I hope you all continue to enjoy Wulf Howl! ~Shiro

(Source: c.wulfhowl.com)

We have made some tweaks to increase performance on Wulf Howl’s site. We’ve also fixed the HowlNET web client.

If you’ve been a member of Wulf Howl longer than a month, you probably remember status updates. Similar to popular social networking sites, you could update your status (which would appear on your profile feed) and other users could comment on your status updates. Back on January 29th, we were forced to disable this feature due to a bug that would cause the site to slowdown for all users whenever a user with a large friends’ list updated his or her status. This bug has been fixed and we have restored the status updates feature. Thank you for being patient with us while we got this sorted out.

To update your status, go to your profile, and then click the “profile feed” tab. You will now be able to post status updates to your profile feed again. Thank you for being patient while we fixed this problem!

(Source: c.wulfhowl.com)

We have successfully changed hosting providers from Amazon Web Services to Tortoise Labs. Scooby has been shut down and our new server is called Daphne. The new server should be faster and have less hiccups when you are browsing the Wulf Howl and HowlNET sites, and when you’re connected to our IRC server. At this time, for most users, full access to our sites have been restored. It may take up to 48 hours for all users to have full access to Wulf Howl and HowlNET while the DNS change propagates.

Thanks for being members and/or lurkers of Wulf Howl & HowlNET. We hope you continue to enjoy our sites!

Server move in progress, site may be down for a bit.

As part of our efforts to deter spambots, we have employed the use of CAPTCHA. A traditional CAPTCHA challenge requires users to type the text that appears in an image. The idea is that humans can read past the distortion of the text, and bots cannot. However, some captchas are downright confusing and some are literally impossible to solve.

Traditional RECAPTCHA

We understand that users hate these, and we have been working to eliminate them, while still keeping bots off of Wulf Howl and HowlNET. We have moved away from traditional CAPTCHAS and are using AYAH PlayThru on Wulf Howl and KeyCaptcha on HowlNET.

Instead of typing words from an image, PlayThru requires that users complete a really simple game to prove that they’re not a bot. This approach is easier and sometimes even fun.

AYAH PlayThru

KeyCaptcha works in a similar way, requiring a user to complete a puzzle to verify their identity. This normally involved a small jigsaw puzzle with two or three pieces, or a short sorting exercise. These technologies allow us to quickly verify that you’re not a bot, without causing undo inconvenience on you.

KeyCaptcha

We hope this change is welcome. You will see the new verification challenges on our registration and contact forms from here on. Thanks!

The Thursday night weekly eHowl will begin in approximately 5 hours at 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Click here to access the chat using our web client

OR

You may connect with your own IRC client using the following details:

Server: irc.howlnet.org
Port(s): 6667, +6679 (ssl)
Channel: #ehowl

Hope to see you there!

The Thursday night weekly eHowl will begin in approximately 9 hours at 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.

Click here to access the chat using our web client

OR

You may connect with your own IRC client using the following details:

Server: irc.howlnet.org
Port(s): 6667, +6679 (ssl)
Channel: #ehowl

Hope to see you there!