My friends: The constant attacks by spam advertisers have made the PHP Forum unusable and are slowing down the entire site. The problems with the BBS have been tracked back to the spam attacks on the Forum. Having exhausted all other solutions, we have locked down the forum and will delete it entirely in early June. The BBS remains the best and most usable place to contact the company and staff. Thanks for all you have done and tried to do, and our special thanks to Mike West who fought the good fight on the forum’s front line against impossible odds.—Stephen V Cole, PE, President and Chief of Design.
PS: If you go to the BBS and get nothing but a blank page, check the address line and manually change https to http. That is, delete the “s.” The Discus software, while hardly modern, remains the most effective software for the purpose. It was written long before https existed and updating it would cost thousands of dollars.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Thursday, May 28, 2026 - 06:56 pm: Edit

Why would anyone waste their time bombarding this website. If they managed to shut it down are hijack the site. They would not get paid any money really sigh

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, May 28, 2026 - 09:55 pm: Edit

There are companies out there that get paid a penny every time they post an ad for their service customer, no matter where they post it. That's why the Forum saw things like women's clothing and household furniture and custom cabinets and pre-fab book cases.

By David Jannke (Bigslowtarget) on Friday, May 29, 2026 - 02:05 am: Edit

That's unfortunate. I hope you'll be able to save the old data somewhere. Losing history sucks!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, May 29, 2026 - 10:30 pm: Edit

Mike West, be sure you get all the FC rules questions and send SPP any SFB errata/questions.

By AgatatClulp on Saturday, May 30, 2026 - 01:45 pm: Edit

Authentication Error

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, May 31, 2026 - 10:14 am: Edit

Is there going to be a replacement for the BBS?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, May 31, 2026 - 12:59 pm: Edit

No, the BBS is fine, and the Forum isn’t needed.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, June 01, 2026 - 02:56 pm: Edit

A few days ago, Albert locked down the PHP forum to prevent anyone from posting. Since that time there have been 141 new posts. Not sure what's going on. They seem to be creating new topics. We need to see if we can lock down the new topic button.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, June 01, 2026 - 03:03 pm: Edit

I called Albert who said he would look into it.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, June 02, 2026 - 03:00 pm: Edit

We're at a loss to understand how they are posting in locked topics and setting up new topics faster than we can lock them. I have told Mike West to get what he needs off of there ASAFP and like Albert delete the whole thing.

By Steve Stewart (Stevestewart) on Wednesday, June 03, 2026 - 09:24 am: Edit

Wow, those people (bots?) are persistent!

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Wednesday, June 03, 2026 - 09:43 am: Edit

Sounds like the security issue with the Forum software that the bots are using.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, June 03, 2026 - 07:10 pm: Edit

Mike West has gotten all he needs and Albert is arranging with the host company to delete the entire forum.