United Christian Chat Network

News is now being displayed in chat! Whenever a new article is posted online, TheLight will notice and announce the fact to #UCCN. For the most part, this isn’t incredibly useful, but for those of you who don’t keep up with the things being posted on the site (particularly downtime), this will enable you to at least see that something has been posted.

We try to keep everything up to date as much as possible, posting known downtime, and informing when we are informed of reasons for recent unscheduled downtimes.

There are also the occasional miscellaneous postings. So sit back and enjoy hearing of the news without having to leave chat!

Our host has advised that due to server hardware problems earlier today, our network hub and services were offline while the server rebooted itself. They are planning to change the faulty unit as soon as possible to prevent further issues.

Please note this is unrelated to the scheduled outage posted previously.

One of our providers has advised of scheduled downtime on Sunday, which will affect 3 of our servers.

Hub01, Israel and Romans are all affected by this. The present network configuration should allow the remainder of the network to be complete via Kings. Network Services (NickServ, ChanServ, etc) will be unavailable during this time.

From the provider:

Window 2:00am-3:00am EST  SUN 09-28-2008
This notification is to inform you that we will be performing maintenance on our core network.
This maintenance will affect network connectivity during the window.
Expected reload times are approximately 10 minutes.

Last night saw 3 exciting things happen.

Firstly, we saw the return of HostServ, and vHosts can now be requested by using /hs request host.name.com, and will be accepted if they are within the vHost rules.

Secondly, we were provided with a bot in #Help to answer common questions about registration, what an op does, etc. If you are in need of any kind of technical assistance on UCCN, /join #help and we’ll try and help as we can.

Finally, and this is the most exciting, is a new form of webchat. Until recently we had Java, with or without smiley faces. That was all, and it worked. But not everyone can use Java for whatever reason may be, and so we present the Mibbit client. With thanks to Mibbit, we are now able to provide, for your enjoyment, a 3rd option under the Chat Now page. Enter a name you’d like to use, select “Mibbit” (or Java if you prefer) and click the button.

Don’t worry, Java-lovers, Java isn’t expected to be going anywhere any time soon, and we’ll likely keep both options (or even add more) in the future. If you have any questions, be sure to join #help and ask one of us!

Some time ago, HostServ was removed from the network for multiple reasons, including abuse, lack of use, and a lack of need.

Recently, requests have been made for its return, and so it will - under the following rules:

• vHosts being requested must be clean and appropriate, falling within network rules.
• IP addresses cannot and will not be used as vHosts.
• If a vHost is requested, we need proof that you either own, or have permission to use the domain it falls under (example, we will not permit anything.microsoft.com). Proof may be provided in the form of a webpage being displayed, or any other suitable verification.
• vHosts are not for ban evading. Anyone caught using HostServ to evade bans or otherwise escape disciplinary action will at minimum lose their access to HostServ.

vHosts can be requested by joining #Help, and talking to a staff member. Note, your nick MUST be registered, and the vHost will be in place until rules are broken, it is requested to be changed, or until the nickname expires.