We dropped the ball on TechEvents.ie

Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 under Apps

TechEvents.ie was created about 2 years ago now. It started from humble beginings of just me posting the latest technical events in Ireland, weekly. The site slowly grew traction and as it did I could step back and allow others to post their events. Leaving me to get back to what I love, writing code.

I never wanted TechEvents.ie to be a revenue generating website. It was developed to help bring the Irish web community together and inform people of local technical events in their areas.

It’s done a great job of that over it’s current life span. However I’ve dropped the ball on maintaing the website recently and I’m sorry for that.

What happened?

About 2/3 days into our Christmas break, the website start to get hit with multitudes of spam. It was caused by leaving the registration form for new users totally open and with no method of robot checking.

If you opt in, every time a new user leaves a comment on your event or registers to attend your event, you get an email. This was, of course, spammer heaven.

While I was indulging in some Christmas dinner and drinks, I noticed the flood of emails and as an interm solution, removed the ability to post an event, comment or register attendance to an event with the full intent I would code a proper solution when I had time.

It’s taken far too long, nearly 2 months in fact and for that I am sorry. As time went on, less and less events stayed on the site as no one could create new ones.

Where is it at now?

Over the weekend I’ve coded the proper solution. Removed all of the offending accounts and brought TechEvents.ie back online. You can now start to post events, comment and register on your favorite events again.

If you can think of any improvements to help the site grow and be a more interactive place for everyone who uses it, please do let us know.

Apologies again,
Brian