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Dawn Patrol Official Website News
The Dawn Patrol website was hacked in October of 2012. The damage to the site and vulnerability of the older version of software we were using prompted me to work on an overhaul of the website. Just a few weeks later, the overhaul was mostly complete and I was ready to bring the website back online. The domain name of dawnpatrol.org was very close to its renewal time. I wanted to renew it as well as finally have the ability to administer the domain name so that I could point it to the new website I had built. I asked Mike Carr to contact the current registrar (Network Solutions) to update the administrator contact information and assign it to me. Unfortunately, Mike was not listed as the administrator, but only the owner. Due to the information for the past administrator being out of date, Mike had to go through a lengthy process with Network Solutions to prove that he was who he claimed to be. Ultimately, after following the process twice, Mike received a notice that his account was suspended due to suspicious activity. The insanity of it all is shocking. It is as if Network Solutions was dragging their feet on purpose because we wanted to transfer the domain. Needless to say, I highly recommend that everyone avoid this company if possible. After being delayed for so long, Mike and I decided to register a new domain name for the website. The dawnpatrol.org name will also point to the website eventually (once Network Solutions stops sucking its thumb). For now, the website can be accessed at: http://fitssociety.com
About the Changes
Good news! Your user accounts are all intact and your passwords will still work. Understandably, you may need to use the password recovery options if you have forgotten your login info.
I was able to recover the entire forum history from the hacked website. It involved writing custom queries and scripts to extract data from one database and plugging it into another. For this reason some of the forum post attachments may be lost, but the content is there. This newer forum tool is more secure and has a good support community.
The downloads section is intact and awaiting new content from contributors.
The new theme and look of the website also supports mobile devices and tablets. You will notice that the home page is very easy to maneuver on a modern smart phone. I am (at the time of writing this) still working out a bug with the event calendar, where the front end tool to add events has some issues with the category button and the styling is off. This is due to a conflict with another plugin that we need so I need to workout a solution.
The Aircraft Stats Module and Pilot Database Tool that I had created are not accessible via the new website, but they soon will be.
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