BT's service packages were (and probably still are) incredibly confusing. I once asked about ISDN options and it took the salesman 15 minutes to explain the differences between 'Friends Surf-n-Turf 24 'and 'Anytime 24/7 Surf and Friends' or whatever they were called. Even after studying the options I still had no clear idea what restrictions applied or what the benefits were.

Based on yesterday's experience, as far as customer care is concerned, having the word 'Business' in your account appears to count for very little, except a higher bill.

I have only started researching this today, but I believe you can use port 26 or 2525 to get around ISPs blocking 3rd party SMTP services, but I don't know if this would work with BT.

What is laughable is that BT would insist that their Broadband customers use their SMTP server, then stop people from using it. Then they tell customers how to get it working again... then they stop them from using it again because their domain is blacklisted. Then they tell customers how to get back on the 'white-list' in 5 days time... maybe.

I suppose most companies paying for BT Business broadband can wait 5 days without sending an email, can't they?.

One of my client's outgoing email service stopped working today. My web design business provides the POP3 (incoming) service, but it appears that BT are now enforcing a requirement for authentication of outgoing mail if people use their btconnect SMTP server.

They sent my client a BT Yahoo! warning email - which the client couldn't understand - then 3 days later her attempts to send outgoing mail began generating an alert to enter a username and password.

I set up the authentication for her this morning, which is simple enough, but it appears the domain, which is not hosted by BT, has been 'blacklisted' because she missed the authentication deadline. After an hour on the phone on her behalf, BT say the domain has been put back on their 'white-list' but she still can't send email. I'll see what happens tomorrow.

More distressing for me was that it appears all my BT broadband clients must notify BT if they send mail from a domain for which BT are not the registrar, so that the domain can be 'approved' and outgoing email will be sent. The BT website where this notification is supposed to be made:

http://www.btconnect.com/maildomain/

says domains will be approved within 5 working days.

I appreciate that SMTP relays get abused, but sending paying customers an unclear, technical email and then pulling the plug on their email service is astonishingly bad customer service, even for BT!.

I just wondered if anyone knew of a reasonably priced commercial SMTP service that works with BT Business broadband and was easy for clients to set up?

Try changing permissions to 777, then delete. If that doesn't work, upload a blank text file with exactly the same name and extension (to overwrite the original), change to 777, then delete it.

I have also come across a couple of modules that have hidden files in folders that don't show up by default in some FTP apps. You then get the 'folder not empty' error when you try to delete the folder.

It's all good fun...

If an upgrade to a login name plus display name membership system is transparent to existing users, I can't see a problem.

For example, I currently log in as Peekay. Ideally, if Xoops.org upgraded to 2.2, I would expect nothing to change. My posts (in forum, news, comments, etc.) would still displayed as being from Peekay. This is because the upgrade would by default set my display name to the same as my login name.

When I then get a PM from admin saying I now have the option to change my 'display' name to something else - to protect my login name from being seen - I have the choice of doing so, or leaving things as they are.

Seems simple to me. If that's how it was intended to work.

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Sorry addicti1, the emphasis is on *if you could*. Unfortunately, I don't think you can.

Membership data must be stored in tables in the database, but I suspect the structure has changed for this version which would make exporting and importing that data something of a task.

Out of my depth I'm afraid. I would post a specific request for help in one of the Q&A or Troubleshooting forums.

For intranets (where business folk like to show their real name) I think separating login name and display name is a good idea. I look forward to seeing how this evolves.

Oh.

I guess you could hide the problem blocks, but that doesn't solve the profiles issue.

I know that some forums allow you to export user data alone, but I don't think you can do that with Xoops. I was thinking that if you could, you could roll back to an older version and copy any image files/uploads manually.

In the meantime, to protect your members' personal info, I would locate the 'Site closed for maintenance' feature PDQ!.

@addicti1
I understand your concern, but can you clarify where user's real names are appearing?. I got the impression that an existing member with a login name of 'poogle' would automatically get a display name of 'poogle' when you upgrade. I thought their real name would only be shown if they entered it as a 'display name' as a new user (or changed their profile)?

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Have to agree with that. Once hackers have the username they are half way there. However, does XOOPS 2.2 check for duplicate display names?