Disable error logging for banned users

[Mr Robville]

This question is a bit similar to what I've asked before, but this is generally related to disabling ban errors.
I've noticed that a certain range of IP's who are spambots are browsing my forum and occasionally try to register. While the security mods have stopped all attempts so far, I thought it would be best to keep the bots away from the fence by banning the whole IP range. However, this results in quite a few errors due to spambots that receive the "Sorry guest, you are banned" error.

I actively use the error log for any mods or other functions, but I could not care less for any errors that banned bots/users receive. Whenever I ban someone/something, I don't want anything to do with it anymore. Not even knowing about their login attempts.

Is there an easy way of disabling the ban-related errors from the error log?
I found this topic somewhere else:
https://github.com/Arantor/SMF2.1/commit/d6c4f4eb8243177afcd27322976438108f42102e
But I got stuck at the mySQL part.

[Kindred]

don't use the smf ban system for things like that.

If you plan to ban IP ranges (whcih is a bad idea, for most sites, given the temporary nature of most IPs) then you should be doing so from your htaccess file, not from smf bans -- because smf bans eat up resources.

[margarett]

That MODification by Arantor is a lot more generic because it allows to choose whether or not to log those.
For you to NOT log those, you should just need to adjust this line:

Code Select Expand


// You banned, sucka!
fatal_error(sprintf($txt['your_ban'], $old_name) . (empty($_SESSION['ban']['cannot_access']['reason']) ? '' : '<br />' . $_SESSION['ban']['cannot_access']['reason']) . '<br />' . (!empty($_SESSION['ban']['expire_time']) ? sprintf($txt['your_ban_expires'], timeformat($_SESSION['ban']['expire_time'], false)) : $txt['your_ban_expires_never']), 'user');

And replace that 'user' at the end, with "false" (no quotes)

[Mr Robville]

Thanks a lot! I shall change the line of code and see if I can set the IP blocking through DirectAdmin. I haven't been able to figure out how to do so yet.

[Kindred]

just use an htaccess file