Still here?  Obviously it's been a while (almost a year) since any updates have occurred on the front page.  If anyone would like to take a stab at being a Lurker Lounge content administrator, please get in touch with me.

What makes a good content admin?  Well, here's the Jeff Foxworthy edition:

• If you like reading forums related to your favorite game multiple times a week, you might be a good content admin.
• If you enjoy being the guy who informs your friends about in-depth game issues, strategy, and news, you might be a good content admin.
• If you get a kick out of being "in the know" about current game affairs, you might be a good content admin.
• If you have an analytical bent and get a kick out of reading/writing strategy just as much as playing, you might be a good content admin.

No HTML experience or knowledge is needed.  You also get to put up fun screenshots in our Screenshot That's Somewhat Interesting section.  What you will NOT get by being a content admin are:

• Girls
• Money
• Respect

What you WILL get includes the adoration of your fellow gamers, and thanks from Bolty who will rake in all the ad revenue you generate, especially when he finally sells the site to IGE for $2 million.  Oh, forget that last part.

July 15, 1999.  That's when the Lurker Lounge was born, and here we still are a whopping seven years later.

How far we've come!  Happy Birthday, Lurker Lounge!  And hello to any of you who have been here since the beginning.  Hope you'll be here for the 8th birthday.

The forums are back online now after being hacked yesterday.  Here's the details:

A hacker group used a known posting exploit method on older versions of the forum software to gain admin access to the system.  Their interests were not in damage of the forum system itself, but rather in abusing it to target its userbase to install trojan horse virii.  A mass email was sent to all Lurker Lounge forum users containing a link to install such a trojan, and the forum's HTML code was modified to do the same.

I had removed the inserted HTML code once I heard of the problem; however, the forum itself had to be shut down to prevent the system from being compromised again.  The software has been upgraded (re-installed) to close the exploit.  As far as I can see, no posts were lost and no further damage was done.

It is strongly recommended, if you haven't already, to check your system for viruses if you visited the forums yesterday and noticed odd behavior (window popups, external script executions).

Thanks go to everyone who was quick to alert me of the trouble yesterday, and to all who offered to help.  Enjoy the new forum features and please do let me know if anything is behaving strangely with the new functionality.

The Lurker Lounge forums have apparently been hacked.  Some script appears to run when you go on the forums.  Until Bolty gets a chance to take a look at the problem, I suggest that you avoid the LL forums for now.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE:  Bolty has taken down the forums and is patching a security hole in the forum software.  He expects that the forums will be back up and running sometime on Sunday.  Meanwhile, Bolty writes, "If you visited the forum earlier and noticed strange behavior, I recommend you check your computer for any potential virus infections. Also, any mass emails coming from The Lurker Lounge should be ignored and deleted."

Today the Lurker Lounge turns six!  Starting on July 15th, 1999, this site has garnered a fantastic community that just keeps going strong.  It's thanks to the huge efforts and dedication of so many involved that the Lounge keeps on moving forward, and for those who just refuse to let the spirit die.

Here's to another great year!

Welcome one and all, to the newest rendition of this corner of the web you know of as the Lurker Lounge.  This much-needed overhaul of the site has been a labor of love for me for the last three months, representing over 100 man-hours of design, migration, customization, skinning, and organizing in order to provide for an easily-administered web site that will take us into 2005 and beyond.

To you, the end-user, what is noticed first is the new layout.  What do you think?  I hope you like it.  The forum will be skinned in order to match this look fairly soon.  For the first time since the original, July 1999 site design, we're back to a dark-text-on-light-background look.

To the site administrators, running the Lurker Lounge now requires -zero- knowledge of HTML in order to add content, pictures, articles, you name it.  Control of content is maintained via the Mambo content management system, an open-source program that allows for almost infinite customization and module functionality.  It's been my new toy for months now, and I've had as much fun delving into its inner workings as I do in computer games like Diablo.

If you're keeping count, this is the ninth total site redesign in five and a half years.  As with each previous time I've overhauled the site, I swear this will be the last time.  No, really, I promise.

With this cutover, if you see any problems, broken links, debug errors, etc, please send me an email or a private message on the forum.

At 6:00 pm PST on Wednesday, January 28th, the signup period for the World of Warcraft Beta Test will officially begin. We will provide a link to the beta-test application right here in the news section at that time. Testers are not going to be chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, so you will be able to submit an application and receive equal consideration anytime during the signup period, which will end on Wednesday, February 4th at 6:00 pm PST. Please note that multiple submissions from the same household will result in complete disqualification.