Site statistics

I've been working recently on tallying up all the various "interesting" statistics this site records in to one grand total to get an overall view of the popularity of the sites within the gaming community. I thought it would nice to see just how big this community is and how popular it is to mod the games. I was hoping to use sales figures from the various Bethesda games to come up with a ball-park figure of PC owners who have downloaded and modded their games through the Nexus. Unfortunately...

Multipart upload functionality for large file authors

One of the issues with the Nexus sites has always been the 300mb file size limit for files. It meant that authors with files larger than this amount would have to split the files up in to multiple parts before they could be uploaded to the site. To make matters worse the part names were renamed by the file upload process that screwed up the multipart functionality meaning the end user would have to manually rename the files once they were all downloaded. There was no way of grouping up the parts...

Seattle and Dallas file server down-time

The Seattle and Dallas file servers will be taken down in-turn over the next couple of days while the hard drives are re-jiggled (that's the technical term for it) to double the capacity on the servers. In non-technical terms the RAID on the servers is just being changed from RAID 1 to RAID 0. Redundancy is already provided by the five file servers the sites have so best to make use of all available space. The final 10% of the file server space was taken up quicker than I expected by New Veg...

New distribution permissions options for all files

The recent launch of New Vegas and the gold rush style race there's been to get a lot of the great mods from Fallout 3 converted over to New Vegas has raised the growing concern the staff have had recently regarding the use and/or redistribution of other author's work by members of this community and how difficult it is to ascertain a mod author's wishes. Before I go on I'd like to remind everyone that converting other author's work from Fallout 3 to New Vegas is strictly forbidden right now ...

New Vegas Nexus launched

It is with great pleasure that I announce the launch of the 4th Nexus site on the internet; New Vegas Nexus (NVNexus). NVNexus will be covering the files for Fallout: New Vegas that is being developed by Obsidian and published by Bethesda. New Vegas is due to launch on Steam and through video game retailers on the 19th of October 2010 in the US and select other countries and the 22nd in the UK and other countries. Not bought the game yet? Consider buying the game through our affiliate store t...

Email validation issues

It has come to my attention that some people trying to register new accounts on the site aren't receiving the email the forums automatically send out so you can validate your email address. This is obviously an issue as you need to validate your email address in order to use most of the site and forums. I have several test accounts across many different ISPs and ISPs such as Google Mail and Hotmail don't seem to have any issues, some others do, such as GMX. I've done lots of searches across m...

[Updated] Nexus Trojan/Virus alert

Over the past 18 hours or so the Nexus sites have been sporadically serving a trojan file through the ads on the site. Thanks to the logs of a few astute members on the forums I was able to identify the source of the trojan attack and have hopefully now nullified it. The Nexus sites should, touch wood, no longer be serving these compromised ads any more. Such attacks have become natural on the internet and the fix is often reactive to an attack rather than preemptive. Indeed the patch to fix ...

New moderators on the prowl

It is with great pleasure that I introduce two new members in to the fold of the Nexus moderation team on a probationary period. DarkeWolf and HugePinball have both generously answered my invite to help moderate the Nexus sites and keep them clean and tidy for everybody. Both will be great additions to the team here as they both have great histories of helping countless individuals within the community. Please welcome them to the moderation team as without them, and the others, these sites...

Changes to commenting

The commenting system on files and images in the database has been changed. You should no longer receive a pop-up form to fill-in but instead a form will become available on the same page for you to submit. Upon submitting your comments they should become visible without the need to refresh the page yourself. In a similar vein the "Vote for this file" and "Track this file" links on all sites have now been ajax'ified and should now pop-up in their own little notification windows. These chan...

New Forum Section Available - Software Programs

I would like to extend my thanks to Dark0ne and give him kudos for allowing us to try out a new idea and carve out a section of his forums as a dedicated area for modders and the tools they use. We open today a new set of doors to the Nexus Forums. An entire section of the forums dedicated to the tools used for modding various games. Whether you are new to the tools or an old hat, take a look and see if you find something new or interesting. If you know of a tutorial or site that is partic...

UK file server back online

The UK file server is now back online after being properly upgraded to handle the load from all the EU members of the site. You can now choose the UK server as one of the file servers available when downloading files larger than 2mb on all the Nexus sites....

The Nexus chat room

As part of the server move and upgrade performed today on the forums I have added a new Chatroom application to the forums. Unlike the old chat room that was linked to the member bar that used to reside at the bottom of the screen the chatroom is a part of the forums themselves. You'll need to be logged in to the forum to use them and they can be accessed here. You can also see how many users are online while on the forums in the top right corner of the page. The chat rooms aren't meant fo...

Scheduled server upgrade complete

The server move was completed at 15:45 GMT without a hitch and all the sites are now back online. The forums have also been upgraded to the latest version with a few bug fixes. Thank you for your patience during this time. All the Nexus sites and forums will be taken offline tomorrow from 12pm GMT for up to 8 hours while a server move is performed. The forums will be moving to a new, more powerful server that will help to relieve load and improve the speed of the sites for the coming yea...

Top bar change

The top bar across the three Nexus sites has been changed today to make better use of the real-estate. If you are not logged in there's a small login form for quick and easy login. If you are logged in there's a drop-down menu with quick links to some regularly used member features on the site....

Linking to sites that use copyrighted/illegal content without permission

I'd like to remind all users that uploading or posting "illegal" content including mods, music and files from other games or authors who have no wish to share their work is strictly prohibited on Nexus sites. This ban also includes linking to such content on other sites where perhaps the rules on such issues are not the same. Please do not try to circumvent our rules and gain attention for your work by uploading content deemed unacceptable by our rules to other sites and then linking to said ...

UK File server and expected down-time for all Nexus sites

Just a quick update on the UK file server (in Maidenhead) and an announcement of expected down-time for all Nexus sites in the coming week. The Maidenhead server had a rocky life, clearly unable to cope with the amount of Europeans trying to download from the server it was hit or miss whether it would work at any time of the day. The server is now completely offline and is pending a replacement. Which leads to the next news. It's server upgrade time for the Nexus sites. With the launch of ...

[Resolved] File upload/download problems

There is currently an issue with the servers that means small files below 2mb cannot be downloaded. Similarly any new files uploaded will not work. This is because of an internal network issue in the datacentre between the servers and the SAN. Please hold off uploading any new files until I have updated this news post with the all clear as you'll only waste your time trying to upload for nothing at this time. Update #1, 16:37 GMT The issue still persists. I have put in place a temporary w...

Update on the forum situation

I thought I would provide a quick update on the previously reported forum situation before heading out. In the late hours of Sunday night a Ukranian group managed to inject some malicious code in to the forum code using an exploit of the forum software. On Monday morning I attempted to resolve the issue by taking the forums offline and upgrading them to the latest version. Upgrading the forums also removes all the skins and customisations (such as kudos and the new AP system). Today I have...

Forums security issues

The forums are currently being focused by some Ukrainian "hackers" for malicious attacks. As a result I have taken the forums offline as I work to sure up the forum security and protect against future attacks. The activity on the Nexus sites will hopefully go unhindered during this down-time. There's no reason to believe this is an attack focused on the community, rather just an attack on a popular message board that can provide the hackers with access to some potentially unsecured compute...

Activity points

Some new stats have been added to all user accounts on the site called "Activity Points" or AP. Each time you perform a beneficial action on a Nexus site you'll gain AP so that other users of the site can see how much you have done on the Nexus sites. The more AP you accrue the higher your level and rank on the sites will be. At the moment AP and levels are just for show; they don't unlock any special features or secret sections of the site but who knows, maybe in the future your AP might be ...