Cipher

Huge thanks to the team and everyone involved throughout this whole process. Looking forward to what the future holds.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Holiday Support Closure Homecoming will be suspending all non-critical support from December 23rd to December 27th to give our wonderful volunteers a well-deserved break for the holidays. During this time, response times for support requests will be longer than usual, and we’ll be heavily prioritizing time-sensitive issues. Last Month: December 2023 Last month we accepted $4,662.79 in donations, $2.25 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in December: $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $350.00 for GL insurance from Hiscox Included in January’s donation target $120.64 for our Google G-Suite services $105.00 to renew our forum software license $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.81 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: January 2024 The donation target for January 2024 is $4,935.74. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $350.00 for GL insurance from Hiscox Included here as it was not in the target for December $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,935.74 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

The winter event should be live with this maintenance.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Holiday Support Closure & Donation Window Homecoming will be suspending all non-critical support from December 23rd to December 27th to give our wonderful volunteers a well-deserved break for the holidays. During this time, response times for support requests will be longer than usual, and we’ll be heavily prioritizing time-sensitive issues. Additionally, we will be opening the donation window for January on Saturday, December 16th for the aforementioned reasons. We thank everyone for their patience and wish you a Happy Holidays! Last Month: November 2023 Last month we accepted $7,123.13 in donations, $36.62 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in November: $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $120.64 for our Google G-Suite services $137.76 for domain renewals $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $20.48 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: December 2023 The donation target for December 2023 is $4,660.54. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $105.00 to renew our forum software $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,660.54 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Brainstorm and Aeon are online again now.

Two of our physical hosts went offline and required intervention by OVH (our hosting provider). All servers should be accessible again now. Thanks for your patience.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Important Update Beginning this month, we’re going to be increasing our contingency fund to cover a full month of our average operating expenses, or around $4,600. This number may change with our monthly expenses as we’re looking into consolidating some of our physical hosts to reduce our infrastructure costs, but for now this will cover our average/scheduled expenses +/- $10. For those unaware, Homecoming has held $2,250 in a contingency fund month to month in order to cover unexpected expenses or overages. We have dipped into this fund a number of times over the past few years, and when this happens we usually just include the overage in the upcoming donation window to cover the difference and bring our balance back up to $2,250. This worked well when we were reaching our donation target within one or two days, but has started to become an issue as our donation windows go on longer. Using October as an example, we opened the donation window on Saturday, September 30th, then Google, Paperspace, AWS, and OVH billed us on Monday, October 2nd, before the donation target had been met. Fortunately in this case, our contingency fund did cover the difference until the donation window closed, but it’s clear that we need to make a change now and ensure that we’re covered for at least a full month going forward. On a final note, it is worth mentioning that Homecoming’s accounts are set up to fall back to my personal account as a safety net. While this isn’t great for a number of reasons, it does ensure that we always have a fallback for disaster recovery and continuity. Last Month: October 2023 Last month we accepted $4,984.78 in donations, $11.95 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in October: $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $300.00 for our annual DocuSign renewal The invoice for this will bill on November 1st $121.18 for our Google G-Suite services $87.26 to pay our legal counsel for work completed up to August 31st Shown as Wise on our invoice, this is the service we used to facilitate the wire transfer $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.78 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: November 2023 The donation target for November 2023 is $7,086.51. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $2,350.00 towards the contingency fund (see above) $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $137.76 for two domain renewals from NameCheap $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $7,086.51 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: September 2023 Last month we accepted $5,070.07 in donations, $6.12 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Update: OVH has increased prices on our additional IP addresses by approx. $0.60 per address. They invoiced us for an additional $18 this month, and the change will be included in our main invoice from them going forward. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in September: $4,398.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH + $18 due to price increases for our additional IP addresses $473.59 to our legal counsel for work completed up to July 31st Shows as transfer to bank account for wire transfer $121.19 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $20.82 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $17.00 for one 1-year domain renewal IONOS has renewed the domain but has not generated an invoice for this yet, I’ll update the post when we’ve received an invoice from them $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: October 2023 The donation target for October 2023 is $4,972.83. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,416.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $300.00 for our annual DocuSign renewal $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $85.37 to our legal counsel for work completed up to August 31st $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,972.83 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hey all, We've identified an issue causing the copy tool to read old data from the servers when building your character list. We're planning to fix the underlying issue with the next maintenance on Tuesday, and until then you will be unable to copy new characters to the test servers. Apologies for the inconvenience here, and thank you for your patience.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: August 2023 Last month we accepted $4,646.02 in donations, $27.69 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Update: OVH has increased the price of one of our Advance-4 servers by $26.56/mo without notifying us. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in August: $4,398.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.16 for our Google G-Suite services $98.40 for 3 1-year domain renewals $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 to renew some of our website assets $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: September 2023 The donation target for September 2023 is $5,063.95. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,398.99 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $474.05 to our legal counsel for work completed up to July 31st $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $17.00 for one 1-year domain renewal $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $5,063.95 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Beginning next month, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be updating their pricing and limitations for SES which we are currently using for outgoing email. We suspect that this will increase our AWS bill by around $3.00 - $5.00 per month, but the exact amount will vary depending on usage. Last Month: July 2023 Last month we accepted $4,521.75 in donations, $37.07 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in July: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.26 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: August 2023 The donation target for August 2023 is $4,618.33. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $98.40 for three 1-year domain renewals $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 to renew some of our website assets $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,618.33 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: June 2023 Last month we accepted $4,744.88 in donations, $72.78 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in June: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.26 for our Google G-Suite services $105 to renew our forum software license $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.82 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 for domain renewals $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: July 2023 The donation target for July 2023 is $4,484.68. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,484.68 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

The donation window opened so early because I had to head out of town early Saturday morning and needed to get it taken care of before then. Usually when we open the donation window each month we do an announcement and ping in-game and on Discord. Because of the time of day that this one went up, I decided it was best not to ping at the time. I probably (clearly?) should have done the ping later in the day, but I don't like excessively pinging people or posting in the announcement channels unless it seems warranted to do so. I was also a little curious to see what would happen if we didn't, to be honest, as this was the first time we opened donations outside of our normal hours. To be clear - we do keep some money in the accounts between donation windows specifically to cover any unforseen expenses that may arise or help smooth out potential issues with a funding round. It's not a huge amount, $1,000 - $2,250, but it does mean that based on past months, we're likely able to cover our expenses early in the month if the donation target isn't met by the time we are billed. This donation window has shown that we may need to increase the size of this fund, though, as the bulk of our expenses are billed at the start of the month, and the contingency fund isn't enough to fully cover us if it was ever necessary to do so. In a worst-case scenario, it's important to know that Homecoming is financially backed by myself, and if at any point we didn't have funds to cover our frontloaded expenses, I would be providing whatever is necessary to get us past the hurdle until donations have finished for the month. It's not ideal, but I hope this offers some peace of mind.

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: May 2023 Last month we accepted $4,692.52 in donations, $2.36 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in May: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $125.00 for our annual Registered Agent fee $121.26 for Google Workspace $27.00 for domain renewals earlier this year This is showing up now due to a billing delay on IONOS’ side but was included in an earlier donation window $25.00 for a Paperspace Air instance $19.25 for an AWS EC2 instance and SES $9.73 for security / administration software (redacted) This Month: June 2023 The donation target for June 2023 is $4,672.10. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for Google Workspace $105.00 to renew support for our forum software $25.00 for a Paperspace Air instance $19.25 for an AWS EC2 instance and SES $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,672.10 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: April 2023 Last month we accepted $4,922.96 in donations, $6.50 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in April: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $464 for our annual tax and filing fees Shown below as separate $300 and $164 transactions $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $34.00 for two 1-year domain renewals These will be billed in may due to billing delays with IONOS $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: May 2023 The donation target for May 2023 is $4,690.16. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,372.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $125.00 for our annual Registered Agent fee $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,690.16 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. We’re hoping to have more to share about our efforts to reduce our ongoing infrastructure costs next month, so keep an eye out for that. Last Month: March 2023 Last month we accepted $4,521.48 in donations, $60.57 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses in March: $4,351.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.47 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $18.08 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: April 2023 The donation target for April 2023 is $4,916.46. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,351.43 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $465 for our annual tax and filing fees $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $34.00 for two 1-year domain renewals $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,916.46 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: February 2023 Last month we accepted $4,896.82 in donations, $83.25 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses for February: $4,369.03 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $286.97 to pay a legal invoice (incl. transfer fees) related to obtaining our Code Signing Certificate $121.25 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 to renew website assets $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: March 2023 The donation target for March 2023 is $4,460.91. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,398.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,460.91 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team

This is an issue with the bbcode that Mids generates containing bad characters or sequences that cause bbcode parsing to fail on the forums. Unfortunately, without making direct modifications to the forum software's parser, this is out of our hands. We did notify them of the issue back in 2019 or early 2020 though.

Hey all, There's a few bugs related to the Calendar system in the latest update to our forum software. Unfortunately, without making direct modifications to the IPS source, we'll have to wait for Invision to address them.

Somewhat related:

Hey everyone, we've been seeing an increase in the frequency of accounts being compromised using information from data breaches, so we felt it was important to provide some resources for keeping your accounts safe and update the community on what we're doing to help. Firstly, over the past week or so we've seen a significant increase in unauthorized account access on the forums. The primary goal of this unauthorized access has been for the purpose of spamming, and some of the spam posts you've seen from older accounts fall within this category (although it is worth noting that the huge majority are from new registrations). Most of the time, this is done through automated scripts which associate email addresses and usernames shared across different services with passwords that have been breached and leaked to the public. Unfortunately, many people use a common / shared password for multiple services, so when a breach occurs, they'll often find that an attacker is able to gain access to their accounts on other services too. While it may seem convenient to use a single password online, it puts you at risk when any service or website experiences a data breach. Instead, you should aim to use strong passwords, containing a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters in addition to numbers and symbols, and use a unique password for each account or service. Alternatively, you can utilize a password manager such as 1Password to automatically generate and manage randomized passwords for you. If you believe that a service that you use has experienced a data breach and you use a shared password, then I would highly suggest changing your password for Homecoming. To manage your password for Homecoming, access your Account Settings in the user drop-down (see below) or click here. Another thing you can take advantage of which should be offered by most websites, including our own, is multi-factor authentication (AKA 2-factor authentication). This helps secure your account by requiring an additional step after providing your password to verify your identity. This can include anything from TOTP apps such as Google Authenticator or Authy to receiving an SMS message or email with a code. To manage your multi-factor authentication for Homecoming, access your Account Settings in the user drop-down (see below) or click here. How to find Account Settings Finally, in order to help combat unauthorized account access, we've created a new device authorization system which is layered over top of Invision's existing login and multi-factor authentication systems. As of the time of this post, any time you attempt to sign into your Homecoming account from a new device, you will be prompted to authorize your device via a link sent to your registered email address. Once you've authorized a device for your account, you will be able to sign out and back in without going through the authorization process again. Here are some additional resources regarding account and cyber security I would recommend: Cybersecurity 101 - 1Password Tips to Stay Safe & Secure Online - Google Tips to protect your data, security, and privacy - Malwarebytes If you have any questions about anything, please feel free to reach out via support or even message me personally on the forums. Thanks

Support features on the website have temporarily been restricted for 24 hours for all new registrations. If you are new and need support, please reach out to us on our official Discord. Unfortunately, due to the posting restrictions introduced yesterday, the spam has now moved from the forums to our support system. I'll be bringing the forums down at some point today to both update the forum software and introduce some additional security features.

Hey all, I wanted to take a moment to address the wave of spam we've seen on the forums over the past week or so. Unfortunately, it seems that a large number of Invision-based forums, our own included, are being targeted by an influx of spam registrations and posts with very similar content. While our amazing GM team has been diligent in watching out for and removing the spam as it comes through, it was clear that we needed to take additional action to combat it. As of the time of this post we've done the following to try and put a stop to the spam: Enabled stricter anti-bot settings within Cloudflare Changed our registration bot challenge from reCAPTCHA to KeyCaptcha Updated our registration challenge questions Restricted new users from posting for 24 hours from the time of registration I understand that this may prevent some newer users from receiving support on the forums as easily during the registration and installation processes, and in the mean time if you require support as a new member, I suggest opening a support ticket or reaching out to the community over on our Discord server. We appreciate everyone's patience while we figure out a solution. If you encounter any spam, please continue to report it as such. Thanks

Hello everyone! As always with these posts, I’d like to drop a quick reminder that there are more ways to support Homecoming than just through donations. For a general overview of the different ways you can help Homecoming, check out this thread. Last Month: January 2023 Last month we accepted $4,095.63 in donations, $22.97 over our target for the month. As always, any additional funding remaining at the end of each month is put towards our operating expenses for the following month or additional expenses for the current month. Here is the breakdown of our expenses for January: $4,369.03 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $286.97 to pay a legal invoice (incl. transfer fees) related to obtaining our Code Signing Certificate Included in February’s donation goal, but mentioned here for clarification on the charge in the screenshot below. $121.25 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $20.00 to refill our Twilio balance used for programmable SMS $19.83 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $9.73 for security / administration software This Month: February 2023 The donation target for February 2023 is $4,813.57. Here is a breakdown of how the funds are allocated: $4,398.45 for our hardware infrastructure from OVH $286.97 to pay a legal invoice (incl. transfer fees) related to obtaining our Code Signing Certificate $121.57 for our Google G-Suite services $25.00 for our Air instance from Paperspace $19.25 for the AWS EC2 instance serving our email $10.00 to renew website assets $9.73 for security / administration software Our donation system will be open as of the time of this post with a donation target of $4,813.57 and will automatically close once that target is met. - The Homecoming Team