I've received about 20 emails in the last 8 hours from users who are suddenly banned from the forum. I don't even know where to start. I haven't changed any permissions or deleted anyone. Please help!
First thing to do, is look at your files, via FTP.
Is everything OK?
You did not provide us the informations we need in order to help you.
Please provide a link to your forum, what SMF version, are there any other admins or moderators in your forum?
Try checking your moderators and administrator's permissions. Remove their account status temporarily until you resolve your problems. Make sure none of them have the ban or delete permissions.
Wow, two people in the same day... could be an SMF error, or it could just be a coincidence.
http://sewmamasew.com/forum
version 1.1.11
Yes, there is one other administrator. She is an employee, not a volunteer, and has been doing this for over a year.
If I look at my files via ftp, which ones should I be looking at? Anything in particular I should be looking for?
Well, you always hear stories where the most faithful commit a crime. (Not blaming her, just saying, it would be smart to do this next thing) Like I said, I would temporarily disable her admin status, and try to resolve the error.
I went to your site, and I have never logged in before, and it told me I was banned. "Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!" I do not have any clue why it should be doing this, but it does seem weird that almost at the exact same time, two people said the same thing was happening.
I went away for a bit and came back. Now I'm banned too. I can't get into my admin area. I have no idea what to do.
You know, that sounds pretty serious. I would contact SMF through the 'Contact Us' page. Maybe they can do something about it.
What the...? "Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!" I think it banned the ip worldwide. :o
I don't see the Contact Us page. Do I have to pay to get there?
Quote from: klink on February 03, 2010, 12:17:41 PM
I don't see the Contact Us page. Do I have to pay to get there?
http://www.simplemachines.org/about/contact.php
Quote from: Dismal Shadow on February 03, 2010, 12:12:24 PM
What the...? "Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!" I think it banned the ip worldwide. :o
Lol I wouldn't doubt it. The only thing that is funny, is that all of my forums are fine. :P
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 12:20:45 PM
Quote from: Dismal Shadow on February 03, 2010, 12:12:24 PM
What the...? "Sorry Guest, you are banned from using this forum!" I think it banned the ip worldwide. :o
Lol I wouldn't doubt it. The only thing that is funny, is that all of my forums are fine. :P
No, I mean I am looking at the same thing you are and so are the others, I believed the OP's forum prevent all from using the forum, so in my case it look like it ban all ip...even mine. :o
Lol, ya misunderstood ya
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 12:12:08 PM
You know, that sounds pretty serious. I would contact SMF through the 'Contact Us' page. Maybe they can do something about it.
This is not good advice. If you use the 'Contact Us' page, you will get an auto-reply that tells you to post to the forum. We do not offer support via email because if we did, others wouldn't be able to search our Community or learn from the answers given here.
You've done what you should have done; you posted to the Support Community. Please be patient and one of our Support Specialists will respond when they can.
We will be unable to provide you any support until you restore the SMF copyright to your site. It is currently hidden with a style="display:none"... this is not allowed under the terms of the SMF License; the copyright must always be visible and remain unaltered.
I'm happy to change that. I had designers develop the skin and they must have changed it. Instead of none, what should it say?
Quote from: Amacythe on February 03, 2010, 04:55:45 PM
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 12:12:08 PM
You know, that sounds pretty serious. I would contact SMF through the 'Contact Us' page. Maybe they can do something about it.
This is not good advice. If you use the 'Contact Us' page, you will get an auto-reply that tells you to post to the forum. We do not offer support via email because if we did, others wouldn't be able to search our Community or learn from the answers given here.
You've done what you should have done; you posted to the Support Community. Please be patient and one of our Support Specialists will respond when they can.
Oh really? I didn't know that it had auto, because I sent a contact message to see if you could change my domain name, and I didn't get an automated reply.
Quote from: klink on February 03, 2010, 05:08:18 PM
I'm happy to change that. I had designers develop the skin and they must have changed it. Instead of none, what should it say?
You'll can just remove the whole style="display:none" part.
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 05:09:59 PM
Quote from: Amacythe on February 03, 2010, 04:55:45 PM
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 12:12:08 PM
You know, that sounds pretty serious. I would contact SMF through the 'Contact Us' page. Maybe they can do something about it.
This is not good advice. If you use the 'Contact Us' page, you will get an auto-reply that tells you to post to the forum. We do not offer support via email because if we did, others wouldn't be able to search our Community or learn from the answers given here.
You've done what you should have done; you posted to the Support Community. Please be patient and one of our Support Specialists will respond when they can.
Oh really? I didn't know that it had auto, because I sent a contact message to see if you could change my domain name, and I didn't get an automated reply.
We have nothing to do with domain names... are you referring to SMFForFree.com service? We have nothing to do with that service or site.
Quote from: SlammedDime on February 03, 2010, 05:13:04 PM
Quote from: klink on February 03, 2010, 05:08:18 PM
I'm happy to change that. I had designers develop the skin and they must have changed it. Instead of none, what should it say?
You'll can just remove the whole style="display:none" part.
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 05:09:59 PM
Quote from: Amacythe on February 03, 2010, 04:55:45 PM
Quote from: Joquan Games Studios on February 03, 2010, 12:12:08 PM
You know, that sounds pretty serious. I would contact SMF through the 'Contact Us' page. Maybe they can do something about it.
This is not good advice. If you use the 'Contact Us' page, you will get an auto-reply that tells you to post to the forum. We do not offer support via email because if we did, others wouldn't be able to search our Community or learn from the answers given here.
You've done what you should have done; you posted to the Support Community. Please be patient and one of our Support Specialists will respond when they can.
Oh really? I didn't know that it had auto, because I sent a contact message to see if you could change my domain name, and I didn't get an automated reply.
We have nothing to do with domain names... are you referring to SMFForFree.com service? We have nothing to do with that service or site.
Oh probably that's it. :P I'm having a rough day. :o
Quote from: SlammedDime on February 03, 2010, 05:01:35 PM
We will be unable to provide you any support until you restore the SMF copyright to your site. It is currently hidden with a style="display:none"... this is not allowed under the terms of the SMF License; the copyright must always be visible and remain unaltered.
I'm sorry, I thought this would be in the global.css file, but it's not there. Can you tel me which file to check?
Even though I'm not legal yet, I wanted to come back here and let you know how we resolved this problem. It might be a problem for other people and I think you should know about it.
On Tuesday our admin noticed porn spammer posting on our forum. He got up a couple of posts, she deleted them and banned him while he was still logged on. She mentally noted the name and the fact that he had 2 IPs. She banned him on user name and IPs.
When we started having these problems, I had her look back through the logs. She found the IP of said porn spammer with hundreds of hits. She opened up a second window and could see that every single time someone tried to access the forum, his IP would register another hit. In the meantime, all of those users received banned messages.
Essentially, from what we can tell, from the moment we banned porn spammer's IP, every guest and user trying to login received a ban message. As soon as we deleted his IP from the ban list, everyone has access again. The only exception was that people who stay logged in all the time had no problem getting in.
Thanks for sharing that, Klink.
Marked as "Solved". :)
Quote from: klink on February 04, 2010, 01:09:01 AM
Quote from: SlammedDime on February 03, 2010, 05:01:35 PM
We will be unable to provide you any support until you restore the SMF copyright to your site. It is currently hidden with a style="display:none"... this is not allowed under the terms of the SMF License; the copyright must always be visible and remain unaltered.
I'm sorry, I thought this would be in the global.css file, but it's not there. Can you tel me which file to check?
It'll be in Themes/[yourtheme]/index.template.php, just do a search for 'copyright' in that file and you should be able to find the code.
Quote from: Kat on February 04, 2010, 05:40:24 AM
Thanks for sharing that, Klink.
Marked as "Solved". :)
Although my problem is resolved, isn't the fact that it happened a problem with the system?