So what does the future hold for WyldRyde?  I have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic and have gone back and forth in my head several times, but I’ve come to a decision that I feel is best.  Before I go on and explain the plans, let me just say, I came to this decision after thinking about what would be most fair to the users of the network.  I do not have the time anymore to devote towards running a full service IRC network and I do not want to let anyone down in the future — I don’t think that would be fair to people who may want to host their channels on WyldRyde.

So here is what I plan to do:

WyldRyde will remain a (limited) public IRC network.  

What does that mean?  It means WyldRyde will be open for anyone to connect to but will not be open for new channel registrations.  We will allow channels registered before November 25th, 2011 to remain as active channels on WyldRyde if they so choose.  However, we will not be allowing any new channels to be registered.  If you wish to keep your channel on WyldRyde that is perfectly fine.  If not, that’s fine too and we will help you move your channel over to the network of your choice if you need help.

I plan to focus my time in the channel and communities of #besttechie and #textual.

WyldRyde will only be providing limited support to channels.

Again, I do not have the time to devote to providing full service support to every channel.  So if you decide to keep your channel, you should have a good understanding of IRC and the commands.

WyldRyde has plans to lower server capacity in the future.

We have servers paid for through some of 2012 and into 2013, however, when the contract’s are up we are currently thinking about dropping 1 or 2 of the servers.  This of course depends upon the user base at the time, however, it should be known and factored into your decision when it comes to keeping your channel on WyldRyde or not.  If you are willing to donate a server in the future we may consider it at that point in time.

Regardless of whether you decide to keep your channel or not we would love to have to stick around in any of the channels that remain.  You are welcome to join #besttechie, #textual, #textual-offtopic, and #thelounge.  All four channels are great for talking about all types of topics from tech to movies to general chat.

Thanks for riding WyldRyde! We hope to see you guys around.

Bug Fixes, Better IPv6 Support

First and foremost, the decision to update our Unreal installations was based predominantly on a known bug with older versions of the IRCd where CGI:IRC (the mechanism that allows services like Mibbit and our own QWebIRC installations to serve as a proxy to connect you to the network) was extremely flawed with IPv6.  While this in itself was very critical in our ongoing effort to implement IPv6 support, there were also a number of outstanding issues with the version of Unreal we were running (albeit most of which very minor), so it made a great deal of sense for us to go ahead with this update to better our stability and performance.

Extended Ban Options

As part of our updates, users can now take advantage of new extended ban options (very similar to the word-blocking ban system that we loaded last month) that allows for them to better control their channels.  Below is a brief explanation of these extended ban options:

The use of “~c” in a ban or channel ban exception will allow a channel owner to disallow or explicitly allow members of another channel into their channel.  For example, if I wanted to disallow users from joining my channel (#mike) if they were in the #help channel, I would use the following command;

/mode #mike +b ~c:#help

Likewise, I could opt to ban all users from my channel by default and add an exception to only allow users inside the #help channel to join my channel by using the following command;

/mode #mike +be *!*@* ~c:#help

I can also add a mode character to a ban (or exception) statement so that only members of certain channel statuses could join my channel.  For example, I could add an exception to always allow half-ops and above from the #help channel into my channel;

/mode #mike +e ~c:%#help

Channel operators can now place bans on user “real names” in order to ban users of certain clients, scripts, and IRC embed services (those that use a static “real name”) from a channel.  For example, Mibbit sets the “real name” value of all of its users to “http://www.mibbit.com”.  To ban all users with this real name value, I would use the command;

/mode #chan +b ~r:http://www.mibbit.com

Likewise, because my “real name” value is always set to “Mike Mansell”, you could ban me from your channel – regardless of the nick, ident, or hostname I was using – by using the following command;

/mode #chan +b ~r:mike_mansell

As you can see, I replaced the space with an underscore (“_”).  Because underscores match both spaces and actual underscores, this ban would disallow anyone with the real name of “Mike Mansell” or “Mike_Mansell” from joining the channel.  Of course, you can also use this as a channel ban exemption as well simply by replacing the “+b” with “+e”.

Last but not least, the addition of the “~R” extended ban-type, while only of use for ban exemptions, allows you to ban or exempt users only if they are registered and identified.  For example, if you wanted a ban exemption to only apply to me when I was identified, you would use the command;

/mode #chan +e ~R:Mike

Sure, this could very well be used as a ban as well, but it really would be somewhat pointless.  On a side note, channel owners may wish to ponder using the “restricted” option with ChanServ to kick and ban any users who attempt to join a channel without being on the VOP/HOP/AOP/SOP list or a channel owner.

Implementation of “~” and “&” Characters for Channel Owners and Admins

The implementation of “~” and “&” channel-mode characters for channel owners (mode +q) and channel administrators (mode +a) has likely been one of the most requested features here on WyldRyde over the last couple of years.

While the old version of Unreal that we were running did indeed support these characters in channels the option had to be configured during the compiling stage and was not something that we saw as justifiable to re-compile and re-start our servers.  However, with the popularity of this request this feature was enabled as part of our updates.

Now, channel administrators (members of the “SOP” class in ChanServ, or users with level 10 access in a standard non-XOP level configuration) are represented with the “&” character instead of simply the “@” character given to normal channel operators.  Likewise, channel owners (either the person who registered/inherited a channel or a user who used the owner password to identify as the channel owner) will now receive “~” characters in their respective channels.

Ident Verification

For a bit of extra precaution, we have also enabled ident checking in our new configuration.  Our recent implementation of this setting attempts to verify the “username” or “ident” (not to be confused with nickname) with an identd server on the client’s computer in an ultimate goal to validate the identity of users connecting to WyldRyde.

While this is a great feature to validate users, the fact of the matter is that many users do not have identd services running on their computers or shells, and many of those who do have firewall configurations that block us from validating the ident.  This, however, isn’t a big deal as users with un-validated idents simply have their idents prefixed with the “~” character (not to be confused with the channel mode character assigned to owners).

I myself do not have an ident daemon running on my personal computer, so even though my client is configured to use the ident/user “mike” (which would later become part of my hostmask “mike@wyldryde.org”), my ident is changed to “~mike” when connecting and my hostmask becomes “~mike@wyldryde.org.”

For those of you wishing to have hostmasks without the “~” in your ident, you can join the #help channel and request that a virtual host with a virtual ident (an entire virtual hostmask instead of a only a virtual hostname) be assigned to your registered nick.

As always, if you have any questions or notice anything that we’ve missed we ask that you don’t hesitate to contact us in the #help channel.

As part of these updates, WyldRyde will be restarting Unreal on all of our servers, meaning that there will be but a few minutes of downtime.  Because we have been working to make this update as smooth as possible the actual downtime for any given server should only be a few minutes.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause but assure you that this update is well worth the short downtime.  Any questions or concerns regarding this update can be directed at our #help channel.

As IPv6 is a complete overhaul of the Internet Protocol, users with only an IPv4 connection cannot communicate with other users and servers that operate only on IPv6 and vice versa.  Again, this is not a huge issue as of yet because there are very few people or servers that have IPv6-only connections.  In fact, it has been estimated that the number of users who have IPv6 connections (even those who have both IPv4 and IPv6) is less than one percent.  But as the number of IPv4 addresses diminishes and the number of IPv6 users increases, this is becoming a growing concern for many.

On top of this, the vast number of IPv6 addresses available means that each and every compatible device will be able to have its own IPv6 address, eliminating the need for NAT (Network Address Translation) behind routers.  Because of this, the widespread implementation of IPv6 will lead to speedier connections with less latency as well.

Here at WyldRyde we’re always taking concern in how our network will fare with the latest technological innovations, and IPv6 is definitely not an exception.  So how are we handling the implementation of IPv6?

As of right now, Nikon.WyldRyde.org has an IPv6 address assigned to and configured for it.  This means that users connecting to Nikon.Wyldryde.org, IRC.WyldRyde.org, or our newly-formed IPv6.WyldRyde.org round-robin (over an IPv6 connection, of course) will connect to WyldRyde via IPv6 if their client is configured (or capable) of doing so.

But one server isn’t enough.  All of our other servers are currently in data-centers that are in the process of rolling out IPv6 support and we currently estimate that all servers will be IPv6-ready by the end of this year.  And as each server gains IPv6 support, the appropriate AAAA (IPv6) DNS record will be added to the IRC.WyldRyde.org round-robin, in addition to our IPv6-only IPv6.WyldRyde.org round-robin.

Those currently on IPv6 connections are more than welcome to connect via the new protocol.  Of course, we’re not phasing out IPv4 support anytime soon as it’s still a standard on the Internet.

We have ultimately opted to implement qwebirc because we believe that it is one of the most stable and well-supported clients out there, and its long history with larger IRC networks has time-proven it enough for us to comfortably implement it for our users.

Being AJAX-based qwebirc is able to run within any modern web browser – inclusive of the ones commonly used on mobile phones and tablets – all without requiring the use of the somewhat resource-intensive Adobe Flash platform.

Having said this, WyldRyde will not be completely abandoning Flash-based IRC access to our servers.  We will continue to host the lightIRC client for those who have existing embeds on their websites and we will continue to run the Flash policy daemon (on the flash.wyldryde.org round-robin, port 8001) for lightIRC and other Flash-based clients to be able to connect.  However, from this point forward qwebirc will be the preferred and supported embed for those looking to implement our chat services on their websites.

In preparation for our qwebirc implementation, we recently installed and loaded the ns_ajoin module which allows our users to automatically be joined to channels they select whenever they connect and identify to our services.  What this means is that one can now use whatever IRC client (be it web-based or desktop-based) to connect to WyldRyde without having to worry about synchronizing, moving, or duplicating their client’s auto-join list.

To connect to our servers using qwebirc you can use the chat page here on our website or connect directly to irc.wyldryde.org in your web browser for a full-screen alternative.  Additionally, we have updated our chat embed generator so that channel owners can generate new embed codes for their sites.

As always any questions or comments regarding our new qwebirc implementation can be directed to our help channel where we will do our best to assist you.

A screenshot of the qwebirc client connecting to the WyldRyde IRC Network without a pre-specifified channel

A screenshot of qwebirc connecting to a pre-specified channel on the WyldRyde IRC Network

Additionally, we should note that you may need to update your bookmarks or links to specific articles as the URL’s have changed and unfortunately it was not possible to completely redirect all of the old link structures to the new ones.

For example:

The following URL used to explain how to register a channel on WyldRyde:

http://www.wyldryde.org/a/000576.php

The same article is now found here instead:
http://www.wyldryde.org/2006/12/how-do-i-start-my-own-chatchannel/

The following URL used to provide the WyldRyde vHost policy:

http://www.wyldryde.org/a/000708.php

The same article is now found here instead:
http://www.wyldryde.org/2005/12/can-i-get-a-vhost/

We love the new design and we hope you do too!  Thanks for being a part of our community and we hope to see you continue to ride on WyldRyde.

The acquisition of the WyldRyde IRC Network will allow BestTechie to expand its web properties which will now include three (3) websites and one (1) IRC Network. Under the ownership of BestTechie, WyldRyde will continue to grow and foster the special community that has made it what it is today.

“As a long time WyldRyde user and Global Network Administrator, I have come to understand what our users like and don’t like. I plan to make the necessary changes to create the best and most friendly environment so all of users can call WyldRyde their home.”, said Jeff Weisbein, President of BestTechie Holdings, Inc.

Unfortunately, with all of this exciting news, BestTechie is resetting the NickServ and ChanServ databases and requiring all users to re-register. What does this mean to our users? Well, it is a slight inconvenience and we are deeply sorry that it could not be avoided. However, we encourage everyone to re-register your channel(s) and nickname(s) and use a new password. Also, until otherwise noted, you will need to replace the TFlash chat embeds on your websites with another web chat service such as Mibbit (which can be configured to point to your channel on WyldRyde). We hope this will be only temporary while we attempt to find a better and more effective web chat client. If you need help with any of those tasks, please /join #help and request assistance.

In order to help smooth the transition process we have registered a number of the larger channels on WyldRyde for the channel owner’s convenience and will transfer ownership of the channel upon the owner’s request. Additionally, any nickname or channel registration disputes should be brought to the staff’s attention in #help. We ask that everyone act civilly and that you do not register a channel or nickname that belonged to someone else previously.

Lastly, please be aware that since we are changing our DNS servers it may take a while (anywhere from instantly to 48 hours) to propagate (update) on your end. You may want to consider using OpenDNS (sign up for a free account) instead of your regular ISP’s DNS servers if you do not feel like potentially waiting up to 48 hours. That being said, if you are unable to connect to the new WyldRyde servers via irc.wyldryde.org for any reason, please use one of the following IP address to connect: 76.73.58.213 or 67.223.254.182

We would also like to ask that our users please have a little more patience than usual while we have a chance to work out all of the bugs and any issues that may arise within the initial weeks of operation. We hope to see all of you continue to ride the WyldRyde!