Aliens Exist! - Entertainment Website

AE needs new rank images!

Pilot — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:35:54 GMT

These seem a bit boring and outdated (because if you haven't noticed - we change the rank images once in a few months) and I want new ones, but can't be bothered to make them myself at the moment (plus I'm not sure what I want them to be like).

We have some Photoshop users here...
Be spontaneous! Go wild with the effects and all that stuff - we're the #1 uCoz entertainment portal - we deserve some kick ass rank images!

Anyone who gives it a shot (and if the images look somewhat decent) gets +6 rep
If someone will make the images and I decide to use them - they get +12 rep

So the images needed are for:

Leader (with something red in it)
Administrator (also with something red in it) (on the rank images the text can be "Administrator" or "Admin")
Staff (with something blue in it)
Trusted (with something pink-ish in it)
Board Moderator (on the rank images the text can be "Board Mod" or "Board Moderator") (with something lime green in it)
Publisher (with something yellow in it)
Member (with something light gray or white in it)
Epic Fail (note: this image must include the 4chan smiley in it) (with something white in it)
Banned (with something black or dark gray in it)

All of the images (except the Epic Fail one) must include the alien head: CLICK HERE

The 4chan smiley for the Epic Fail one: CLICK HERE

Try to make the images black/dark gray (so that those are the dominating colors).

Sizes:

Width: no more than 160 px
Height: no more than 70 px

Give it a try and when you have something - just post here.
Take your time - you have at least until the 20th of November.

4th Staff Member

Pilot — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:17:01 GMT

Attention!

Starting from the end of this week and during the next one I'll be watching carefully over the active, trusted & loyal users of AE to select the 4th staff member.

It's been a long while since we've got some new blood in our staff list and since Oggy is extremely busy with real life, he barely appears at all. So, really, we only have 2 active staff members for now.
I feel that it is certainly not enough and I also think that changes on the site are desperately needed, plus the active members should be somehow rewarded.

Now, remember, this is a pretty big site with tons of hits daily so, naturally, the new staff member must be mature and very responsible.

We'll watch over and see who contributes the most (by making good topics on the forum, adding content to the site [games, videos, news articles, pictures and so on]). Remember - the more you contribute, the bigger chance there is for you to get the staff place. Also, post count in the forum is, most definitely, not the dominating criteria.

The new staff member will be approved like the previous ones - by the administration and current staff voting on a private board, discussing and finally deciding who should be promoted.
I advise the active users who will try and get promoted to be on your best behavior, because even if one admin strongly disagrees with the promotion - it just won't happen. Simple as that.

If you have any questions - feel free to post here and I'll answer them.

Guest ability to comment - disabled.

Pilot — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:49:35 GMT

Bad news, everyone. I had to disable the comment option for guests, due to the spam they cause. The comments made by guests are 99 % spam, nonsense and gibberish. I'm usually surprised to see a guest making a decent comment and not spamming with smileys or advertising some crappy websites.
At first, when I enabled guest commenting, I thought it would gain us more comments (obviously), open more ways for visitors of AE to communicate without registering and simply let the guests express their constructive criticism on the entries we have here. Unfortunately there hasn't really been much decent comments.
I got a bit fed up with deleting tons of comments all the time, that often ruin the whole website (since there's the "recent comments made" block on each page of the site, except forum).

I apologize to the few decent guests that we've had, but if you really want to make a comment then just register. It only takes about a minute to do.

Suggestions are always needed! We're not dead!

Pilot — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:13:54 GMT

I realize it has been a long time since we've had some updates and there hasn't been much content added on the site recently, but I just want to make a statement that the admins and staff members are not dead or left the website. We've all just been busy with our lives and each have our own things to do and priorities which need to be followed.
But it's not just that. The lack of updates is also caused by the lack of suggestions for any updates (and I mean like real, huge suggestions, not minor ones). Aliens Exist! has been filled up with content, with sections and boards of all kinds, so we (the staff and administration) don't really know what more to add. This is the part where you, the users of AE, take the main role. We need you to submit your ideas, your suggestions and your help to make the site a better place! So if you have some good ideas you want to share, visit the suggestion board on the forum and submit your suggestion!

Also, remember that we still desperately need Staff members, Board moderators and Publishers who can help us submit the needed content on the site. More info about it can be read here.

If I'll have time, I might add some new content this weekend. But I'm not gonna make any promises. Only time will tell.

Failed attempts to enter the control panel.

Pilot — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 10:10:00 GMT

I just checked out the security log from AE (mostly because of boredom and curiosity of what will I find there) and noticed a few interesting actions from IP's that do not belong to any of our administrators. Several IP's from all around the world were trying to guess the password for the control panel of this website (naturally - a stupid thing to do in the first place, since they must have thought we wont have a strong enough password).
So since I noticed these failed attempts just now, I'll add them to the IP ban list of this website and from now on will regularly check the security log for any more of such attempts.

And here are the lovely IP's that tried to do it:

IP: 202.70.77.35	Country: Nepal	Attempts: 1
IP: 79.114.150.8	Country: Romania	Attempts: 1
IP: 78.169.18.163	Country: Turkey	Attempts: 3
IP: 88.72.252.147	Country: Germany	Attempts: 1
IP: 125.161.187.118	Country: Indonesia	Attempts: 1
IP: 94.43.65.208	Country: Georgia	Attempts: 1
IP: 98.17.75.130	Country: USA	Attempts: 5

For users with uCoz websites of their own: I strongly suggest you to check out your security log from time to time and see if anything like this has happened to you, for the safety of your own website.

"Online Games" module installed and entry rating system added.

Pilot — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:24:14 GMT

Finally just finished adding some updates to the website. About time too.
I have installed the new "Online Games" module, which is an update provided by uCoz. The one I mentioned in THIS article.
Basically, it serves the same purpose as the already existing Flash Games section, only this one looks much more professional and has more features to it. However, it has only 199 games added, so if you want to play some more - you'll have to use the previously mentioned Flash Games section.
The Online Games module link has also been added to the site navigation and site menu (the one with the drop-down category lists), so it's easier to navigate. I'll also be adding an informer that will display the most recent games added.

Another update is the new rating system for the entries. I re-enabled the rating feature for the following sections: Flash Games & Fun Stuff, PC Games & Movies, News Page and the Video section.
So if you like (or don't like) an entry - why not cast your vote?

That's all for now.
I'm not sure when will there be any more updates to the website, but make sure you check out the homepage to see if there are any new announcements made. Stay updated.

Summary of the statistics from summer!

Pilot — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:58:30 GMT

Since summer is over and yet another busy and stressful Autumn has started, I decided to make a small summary of the statistics we got in the 3 summer months (June, July, August). The 3 months were very successful for us and we breached new personal records in website hits, user registrations and unique visitors. So it's definitely been a good summer for us.

So some of the statistics that we got during the summer months:

403639 page views	47409 views by "robots"	75812 transitions from other sites
84562 unique visitors	69092 transitions from bookmarks	113450 sessions

Countries from which we received the most visitors: Russia: 11748 Romania: 9298 United States: 8693 Georgia: 6317 Ukraine: 6286	The most popular browsers used to view this website: Mozilla Firefox: 36450 Opera: 17553 Internet Explorer 7: 17164 Internet Explorer 6: 10291 AppleWebKit based: 5677
Operating systems used: Windows XP: 69367 Windows Vista: 18830 Mac OS: 1174 Other: 870 Linux/Unix: 641	Most popular site transitions: Bookmarks: 69092 ucoz.com: 51707 images.google.com: 4752 google.com: 1748 ucoz.de: 1554

And I'm happy to say, that the statistics grew every month - so we receive more and more visitors every month. Hopefully the statistics will keep up like this.

New entry appearances! ( + future updates)

Pilot — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:11:59 GMT

Finally some new updates!
You all have probably noticed that we have updated our appearance of entries, with some dark looking colors. Although me and Hetor ran into a few bugs, we managed to get everything set up fast and everything should look and work properly (however, if you see some glitches, feel free to report them in the forum).
This also means that in the near future, we'll be updating the whole look of the website to more darker colors, might even lose most of the gray color we have here. But those are just some plans - not sure when will that happen, but when we start updating the whole color scheme - you'll definitely notice it.
That's all for now. Stay tuned for any more updates we might have.

Over half a million page views!

Pilot — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 11:12:42 GMT

Good news everyone! Sometime late last night we finally hit the 500 000 page view milestone! And in these first days of August already averaged 1054 unique visitors per day who make 4431 page views per day! Hopefully these statistics will also keep up like this for the rest of the month. So, as usual - thanks for everyone who visits and makes this possible. Next target - 1 million page views.
Over all statistics for the website, since the statistics module has been enabled:

Total page views: 501127
Hosts (unique IP addresses): 108930
Visitors (unique computers): 110293
Views by robots: 51126
Hosts of robots: 5732

The Fluffy Side of Life

Pilot — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:09:27 GMT

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